Hi,
I think there is a bit of misconception here. From what I understood (and @ncruces please correct me if I’m wrong, and sorry in advance in case), this is Adobe Camera Raw in disguise (no disrespect, just stating the facts). As I understand it, RethinkRAW is a “shell” that allows to exploit the fact that the free-as-in-gratis Adobe DNG converter will take into account parameters specified in an XMP sidecar when generating embedded JPEG previews during the DNG conversion procedure. So, the tool offers a convenient way to exploit this, by adding a GUI to edit the XMP files and then calling the Adobe DNG converter automatically.
So, I see a couple of use cases for this:
-
a Linux user that likes Adobe Camera Raw, but doesn’t want to install Windows and/or OSX to run Lightroom; or
-
a Windows and/or Mac user that likes Adobe Camera Raw, but doesn’t want to pay for it.
The RethinkRAW tool offers a way to do both, at least in principle (I think running recent versions of the DNG converter from wine without firing up its GUI is not so easy anymore…).
For context, a similar idea was mentioned in this forum a while ago, here’s the post (which includes a proof-of-concept script that shows how this could be done):
(though RethinkRAW seems to push this much further)