Raw processing workflow and pp3 files

Hello,

I have a question about the general workflow with raw files, RawTherapee and other image processing apps.

I’m a beginner with RawTherapee and noticed it saves all the processing parameters as a separate .out.pp3 file that is saved together with the target image. This makes it possible to easily change the processing parameters after the images have been converted. This is a very useful feature (and a great improvement over DigiKam which I’ve used before).

I use the following naming system for importing my raw files: “year/month/raw/”. Example:
~/images/2026/2026-05-00/raw/imgp1234.pef

Because RawTherapee doesn’t (yet?) support saving images in JXL format, I’m currently using RT to process raw files into TIFF images that are in a separate temporary directory. Then I use DigiKam to convert the TIFF into JXL format. I end up with the following files:

~/images/2026/2026-05-00/raw/imgp1234.pef
~/images/2026/2026-05-00/raw/temp/imgp1234.tiff
~/images/2026/2026-05-00/raw/temp/imgp1234.tiff.out.pp3
~/images/2026/2026-05-00/imgp1234.jxl

After the TIFF->JXL conversion I have no use for the temp files. Is it ok just move the “.tiff.out.pp3” file(s) back to raw dir? Can I re-use them if I need to make another edit in future?

Thanks!

welcome to the forum @art-rasa

the location of the pp3-file doesn’t matter, you can store it wherever you want. You even can have several edits, means several pp3-files, in the same folder just with different names. Recalling one of them is easy by using the “open” folder-icon (load profile) top right.

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