Open without making a copy

Hi Everyone

Thanks for the add.

I’ve done a few searches but can’t seem to find the answers I’m looking for, I’m hoping you can help or point me in the right dirrection.

When I’ve edited a photo I can open it in an external editor as a TIFF, which is great, I can then save the edits and view the photo back in RawTherapee. if I open the TIFF again (from inside Raw Therapee) it make an additional copy, is there a way to set RawTherapee to allow opening the file directly, without making a copy.

I hope this makes sense

Thanks
Rich

Hi Rich, welcome to the forum. I just tried to replicate your issue with RT V 5.8 on a windows 10 computer. I opened a tiff and RT did not create a copy. I am unsure if you have set something inside preferences to create this issue. It might be worth letting us know what OS and version of RT you are using. Hopefully someone else can replicate the problem and suggest a solution, but it seems specific to your install of RT.

Good luck.

Hi Terry

Sorry forgot to mention I’m using the latest 5.8 version from Github (see screenshot) on windows 11

My initial (RAW) image is on the left, when I have finished my edits I click the ‘Edit current image in external editor’ button (highlighted with the red circle)

This opens the processed image and I can make further edits in Affinity Photo.

I then save the image (with layers if needed) and then hit refresh so I can see the image in RT

So far so good.

If I decide I want to make more edits in Affinity Photo I select the relevant tiff in RT and click ‘Edit current image in external editor’

It’s at this point that RT make another file, you can see from the screen shot of the file browser what I mean.

I hope this makes sense.

Thanks for your help

Rich

The short answer: Works as designed and, as mentioned on RawPedia, the created temporary file needs to be dealt with by the user.

On Linux this can be dealt with rather easily, not sure how this works on Windows, though: In Preferences, the General tab there’s a section called External Editor. There you can set an ouput directory. Set this to OS temp dir. On Linux this dir is automatically cleaned when (re)booting. Like I said; not sure how this works on Windows, you might need to use the Custom option and point it to the dir that is linked to the trash can.

Also: You mention with layers if needed. RawTherapee doesn’t do layers and this info will be discarded.

Hi Jade_NL

Thanks for the info, I’ll view in RP but open from the folder if I need to open the file again. The ‘temp’ folder on windows does not get cleared on a re-boot (which now seems like an oversite from Microsoft), I’ve got it set to save the tiff to the same folder as the RAW file anyway.

Thanks again
Richard