They kind of are in my case. Plus, none of the profilles I have will work either. It’s a bit hard to explain, but there we go. I’ll just chug along with 5.9.
As I said before, that’s the great thing about RT and Linux — while it’s a bit of a shame I won’t enjoy any new features, I can still work with this great piece of software that I love and continue creating my images exactly how I see fit.
Basically, RawTherapee, as it is now at 5.9 with all the features present is perfect for me. Removing those features, not so much and re-working everything from scratch… well… But that’s just me. I’m one of the few people who found those features really useful, took the time to learn how to use them, and put them to good use. I’ll keep what I think is the best version of RT for me — but I’ve no doubt that for others, RT 6.0 will be a fantastic new adventure.
There’s no cause for concern yet. It’s merely a discussion about which tools are redundant or not useful. Users’ experiences, like your own, will be factored into the final decision.
Thanks for the reassurance. I must confess that I’m a nit-wit — I didn’t notice the date on thread!
Just one question, though: I can see that 6.0 will also break back compatibility with PP3s — I have custom PP3s that I use, so would it just be a case of duplicating my settings manually, or is 6.0 planned to be a completely different animal altogether? Just being nosey, really, and looking for a bit more info on this as the PP3s are, as far as my limited knowledge tells me, nothing more than plain text files.
First, an explanation of what 6.0 means. The versioning tries to follow semantic versioning. At some point, it may be necessary to break backward compatibility. Maybe it will be after 5.10, or maybe it will be after 5.37. The takeaway is that 6.0 is not necessarily something we have planned for release on a specific date.
Now, regarding breaking pp3 backward compatibility, you may have guessed from the previous paragraph that there are no plans on exactly what will break. To my knowledge, there are two significant changes to the pp3 that have been discussed in the past. One has been covered on this thread already, and that is the removal of tools. The other is a change in the pp3 format (see issue #2624). If RawTherapee uses a pp4 or xmp format to store edits, then the main change from the user’s perspective is a loss of forward compatibility. It is entirely possible to open a 5.9 pp3 in 5.8. If that pp3 contains only the tools available in 5.8, then the edit can be replicated in 5.8. A pp4 or xmp, however, is not usable at all in 5.8. Backward compatibility will still be maintained by keeping the pp3 decoder in RawTherapee 6.0.
Please then go to pp4 rather than xmp. If you go to xmp you get things like basename.jpeg.xmp and basename.tiff.xmp which opens up the whole almost political/religious question of whether there is an xmp “standard” that says it should be solely of the form basename.xmp. I know I won’t get much sympathy on this forum, but if we end up with something like basename.jpeg.xmp it will break my workflow compatibility with PhotoMechanic. But if we go to pp4, then we define the standard and we avoid interoperability issues. (I am sure Camera Bits would revise PhotoMechanic to handle PP4 files, as they did with PP3 files if requested, but there is no way they they would “go against the standard” and handle basename.jpeg.xmp files. I use PhotoMechanic as my DAM.)
Have I asked that specific question explicitly? No. However I have spent enough time on the Camera Bits Forums (Camera Bits Forums - Index) over the last decade to have absolutely no doubt about the answer. (I am the guy that lobbied for and got support for PP3 files in PM).
But my point is go to PP4 files (and leave the xmp files alone) and avoid the interoperability issue completely.
Yeah unfortunately - darktable is architecturally more suited to this as while it doesn’t support dynamic loading of modules, the pipeline is structured in a fairly modular way, and definitely moreso than RT’s current pipeline. (Modularizing RT’s pipeline a bit would greatly improve maintainability but is itself a MASSIVE undertaking…)
You can also do ‘global’ local adjustments such as just midtones. For example, I find a very light touch of tone mapping to midtones really brings out details.
You can also easily apply dehaze to just the sky of an image which can darken the blue and make the sky much richer, all while easily avoiding below the horizon and even the clouds if you want.
