move from ufraw to rawtherapee - help neede in colors and sharpening

[ulrich]

Hi there,
my start in this brilliant forum is unfortunately a need for some help.

I used to process DNG files in ufraw for some years, but seeing development slowing down and the huge gap to rawtherapee and darktable, I started using rawtherapee some months ago.

I love the features, the handling etc. really nice piece of work, thank you for that.

However there are some light conditions I can not get the results I get in ufraw.
Camera is Pentax K7, rawtherapee version 5.5, ufraw 0.22.

Sample files under: Dropbox - rawvergleich - Simplify your life

(the names of the jpegs indicate the processing software).

ufraw:
I found (by trial and error) that the Gamma 0.33 (default is 0.45) and linearity 0.06 (default is 1.0) works best, which became my standard. The rest is standard processing (base curve, color temp etc…). As a sharpening tool is missing in ufraw I do the sharpening batch wise (under Linux) with the command:
convert -unsharp 5x2+1+0 $foto
(which is: radius=5, Sigma=2, amount=1, threshold=0)
The result is in uth-007119_ufraw.jpg

rawtherapee:
the best I can get is uth-007119_rawtherapee.jpg. I tried the sliders in the white balance tab, the curve CH in the lab settings, the red channel in RGB channel mixer etc…
(the later in some cases shows good results by reducing from 100 to 98 (not in the sample picture)).
The result however looks weaker, with less contrast and somehow the green is not what I expected - compared to the ufraw version.
The sharpening is worse and the colors look a bit artificial.
I could not find anything like gamma setting or linearity in rawtherapee(?)

darktable:
just for completeness, the result is not really fair, as I did not really get into darktable, this was just a quick test.

I assume that there is an issue with the import colors(?) Unfortunately I did not find any icc profile for Pentax K7, but read several times that “color matrix” works well - which is the setting in ufraw and rawtherapee.

Somehow I’m lost now and think I am going to a wrong direction…

Any hints, or is there anybody using a Pentax K7 color profile (input profile).

[ggc]

I have also a Pentax K20, i attach a profile, could you please try it? For me results are not bad.

uth-007119.jpg.out.pp3 (12.5 KB)

Comparison here, my on the left, your with ufraw on the right, full and 100% view. I often use also provia 100 generic film simulation.

.

The really interesting thing is that there is still someone using ufraw and getting rather nice results . I’ll try it with my 32 bit old pc that doesn’t work with Raw Therapee .

I’ve seen anyway there is a nufraw ufraw imrpoved → nUFRaw

nufraw

[ulrich]

Thank you for trying and playing with it. I Loaded you profile and the first quick impression is that sharpening is a lot better than my rawtherapee version. Colors are relatively strong now.
But this helps me a lot to go through your settings and learn how to play with the millions of options.
I used to start with the “Auto” mode, but it seems that you are starting from the default settings.
I need more time to check what you did and how this affects the photo.
Thank you again, this is exactly what I needed!

Ulrich

P.S.: ufraw is still on my pc and I will track how nufraw develops, always good to have alternatives

[ggc]

To make colors stronger: vivid colors (color tab) - film simulation, try e.g. fuji provia 100 generic, or velvia 100 generic (see rawpedia film simulation in order to install them), with Cromacity by Cromacity in lab tab…

sharpening, well, you can play with amount (details tab unsharp mask), with local contrast, with microcontrast aumount…

I don’t remember exactly what i’ve tweaked in that profile, it’s years old even if i modify it often, i use it as a base profile, tweaking only few things per image basis (mostly curves and wb, sometimes noise reduction) .

[Morgan_Hardwood]

Your UFRaw image:

RawTherapee 5.5 matched to UFRaw:

uth-007119.jpg.out.pp3 (11.0 KB)

[ulrich]

Thank you Morgan that’s amazing! I will check one by one what you did and adjust my default profile.
(was not aware of “sharpening after scaling”).
There is sooo much in Rawtherapee…

Ulrich