Sifting through DPReview, came across this software:
https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW
Written in Rust, WGSL GPU processing (it even works on my Surface 7 tablet), clean UI. A bit simplistic, some of the tools don’t look to be implemented yet.
Anyway, an interesting effort.
I wonder what the color support is like, it’s an electron app essentially.
I’ve tried to do some basic edits with it, but it seems to lose image fidelity quite fast.
For example a perfectly exposed sky (with lots of cloud details) turns to a muddy grey when increasing the overall exposure first and then use a mask to reduce the exposure in the sky only.
I’ve just quickly tried it, here’s my remarks:
Yeah, i got to thinking about the “too good to be true” aspect regarding running on my tablet, may be he’s using low bit depth integers to get the image into the crappy GPUs. I’m not in a place where I can dig into the code right now (Rust, Electron, new things to learn), but this might really be an eventual FOSS Lightroom replacement.
Andy Hutchinson did a video about it the other day
Apparently it’s by an 18 year old who did this in 2 weeks with considerable AI help. I’d imagine the most complicated parts of this were the UI and not anything photocentric. You can read some of the comments to get a sense of this:
@armanuki38911
2 days ago
I looked at the code of RR a bit. Don’t get me wrong, this is impressive for an 18 year old and two weeks of development time. But don’t expect this to be a replacement for Darktable. The math used here is very simple. For example the tonemapping step (for which Darktable has sophisticated modules like filmic, sigmoid and hopefully in the future agx) is just 4 lines of code here that apply a simple gamma 2.4 function. Adjusting shadows and highlights without loosing all the contrast requires some sort of masking, i.e. a guided filter. This is not implemented here, so your experience with these sliders is because crucial (and difficult) parts are not implemented yet. This software has a long way to go. But there is some momentum behind the “rewrite everything in rust” movement, so there surely is a chance.
The Dev is also in the YouTube comments and takes all the comments gracefully, says he doesn’t understand some of the math and will keep working on it. Good kid, it seems.
Two weeks! And while working a day job, apparently. Goodness me, the world has changed. My own experimental port of some of Darktable’s algorithms took a few months, and that’s with something like two decades of software development experience, and without having to come up with algorithms.
Even just for a GUI mockup, that’s darn impressive. Kudos to the author, that’s a massive achievement.
I think the bad quality/artifacts outcome is mainly caused by the poor math used in the algorithms, and as said by others because he used AI to prototype his software. Looks promising however!
Incredible for 2 weeks of development , I can foresee a real & popular competitor to Lightroom with some fleshing out.
Is anyone following this project? I see that on GitHub he regularly makes new releases. I’m very busy at the moment with a number of hospital treatments but if I get time I will have a good look at this software
It’s nice, elegant and very easy to use. That said, it is at a basic stage and will need more work to make it a viable alternative to say Affinity Photo or Lightroom, on which the UI is designed.
It’s an excellent effort. I see some others have joined in as well, which is good. I wish him all the best
Well that didn’t go down well. Unable to open Fuji Raw files. Software just crashes…
Thats noted in the 4 post of this thread…its a short thread and context and state of the software are pretty well summed up…its a young man working something up from scratch with UI that is clean but work on the gears motor and suspension are not there yet…
It wasn’t meant as a criticism. I think what he has achieved is quite amazing. I’ll keep up with his GitHub to see when this resolved.
I’ve recently done a number of interviews with possible new hires. It’s so hard to judge whether they’re actually interested in tech, or merely looking for a nine-to-five. Nothing wrong with a nine-to-five, but some jobs requires some intrinsic motivation.
Anyways, having a Github profile with a few projects is the best signifier for a motivated individual that we’ve been able to find. So, good on the author of this project to build something of their own. They’ll go far in this world, regardless of how the project will ultimately end up.
It’s just heartening to see a motivated individual trying something “impossible”. Here’s to the crazy ones!
A few people have asked the Rapidraw developer to join this forum , I guess he forgot.
Hey everyone!
I just came across this thread from a user who created an issue on the GitHub repo: Forum topic on Pixls.us · Issue #138 · CyberTimon/RapidRAW
I’m on my way home from work now, but I’ll take some time later to respond to the questions here.
Also, I haven’t forgotten about Pixls.us! I just wanted to wait another week or two until the software has received some shader improvements and polish - hopefully to leave a better impression.
Thanks so much! 
For example a perfectly exposed sky (with lots of cloud details) turns to a muddy grey when increasing the overall exposure first and then use a mask to reduce the exposure in the sky only.
Thank you for the report. I just noticed that I accidentally clamped the values before applying the masks. This is now fixed will be in the next release.
I’ve made significant improvements to the shader over the past 13 days. It might be worth testing it again.
Thank you for the great feedback!
Yes it’s sadly know that Fuji RAW’s aren’t working yet. This is dnglab / rawler-related, so it’s not entirely in my hands whether the underlying RAW loader supports it. I’ll try to patch it to make it work in the near future.
