I’m not exactly sure what you are seeing, but the preview can be soft on high resolution displays due to a lack of full hi-dpi support. It will be improved in 5.13.
Are the color labels saved to an XMP sidecar file or directly in the image metadata? Make sure you have rating and color label synchronization enabled in RawTherapee (Preferences → “File Browser” tab → “File Browser / Thumbnail Options” group → “Load/Save thumbnail rank and color from/to XMP sidecars”). Also, color labels are not standardized. digiKam saves color labels in its own tag. Check your digiKam settings and make sure it is reading and writing to the xmp.Label tag too (“Settings” menu → “Configure digiKam” → “Metadata” group → “Advanced” tab → Choose “Color rating” in the drop-down and make “Xmp.xmp.Label” the first item). If you are writing the color labels directly in the image metadata, you’ll have to wait for 5.13.
What kind of blur are you talking about? If it’s just general softness, make sure you have Capture Sharpening turned on, then go to the Details tab to refine your sharpness levels. With the way RawTherapee works, you must be zoomed in to 1:1 to see the full effect. A tool that I don’t use often enough is the Detail Window that pops out another small screen with a selected area zoomed 1:1. Using this tool, you can use things like Sharpening and Noise Reduction to see what’s actually going on with your image.
Those two ~should~ be the same. The trick is to getting both applications writing to and reading from the same file. As mentioned, try writing to the XMP sidecar file in RT. I’ve been able to get RT, digiKam and Capture One all communicate with one another this way. It’s a beautiful thing when it works.
I’d completely forgotten about this… Haven’t used it for a while… Thanks for the reminder… There’s so much to remember and even more to learn. Thanks @Rick
