Sharpening not working

Software RawTherapee
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I’ll add in as a +1 to the group of power users satisfied by the power icon ui design, for the same performance and control reasons mentioned above.

Maybe there should be a noob mode that undoes the power off mode upon adjustment of sliders that can be turned on and off, based on preferences.

Anyway, I was able to figure out the power button on tools just fine, without consulting the forum or even the documentation just fine, so thought on this matter should be last or near last on developers’ priority list in my opinion. The developers had taken care of my UI concerns long ago by adding those pretty vector flowers at the bottom of the tool tabs :slight_smile:.

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However darktable’s power button does turn on automatically if you touch a slider - even on computationally heavy modules like denoise. Something about the UI of darktable also makes that power button easier to spot.

The problem with a complaint like this is that issues (like auto turn on with slider movement) can potentially take devs a lot of time to fix, and as devs are unpaid power users who don’t have an issue with things like that, they would rather spend their time working on and developing other tools. Thus, it becomes a program designed for primarily power users. Moreover, as the program is free and thus lack of sales, devs are not necessarily encouraged to tailor things to the new user - they often couldn’t care less whether a new user stays or goes. This is in complete contrast to the proprietary software a lot of new users come from - which sometimes cares more about making the sale than about innovative development, or employing better colour science. Thus, those programs are usually fairly simple to use straight out of the box - they have to be, or sales would plummet - and that’s what people get used to and base their expectations on.

I’m often amazed at how command line applications like g’mic, imagemagick, etc… can put so much time and effort into making image editing operations, but seemingly no time into making it useable for the majority of people. But there it is - they develop it for themselves, and other geeks, and are happy with that. At least programs like RT and DT have GUI, and quite easy to install and start playing.

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Personally, I would be very much in favour of having a module turn on when I move a slider. I put an issue in the tracker some time ago, if anyone likes to comment and argue either for or against this: Changes to a module should activate it when it's not · Issue #4744 · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub

There is already one downside mentioned, which imho is very minor.

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This is possible, however, I personally much prefer you don’t make assumptions on what we can or can’t or won’t do. Please throw things at us and let us (read: RT devs) decide if it’s worthwhile or not.
Even if things stay in the tracker for years, doesn’t mean they will be forgotten.

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I like this attitude. Just trying to help the OP understand why there might be some resistance to his suggestion, when on the surface it seems like a sound request, and is experienced by many users.

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In dt, it is visually obvious that the power button is a power button both when is is off and when it is on. In RT, that is only true when it is on.

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I’ve been using command shells for a looong time now, so my perspective is appropriately biased…

There’s an efficiency in the bare ability to assemble processing ops into a chain without burden of click-this drag-that that I can’t readily convey. Also, that chain is readily regarded, without adornment of <xmp:this></xmp:that> or other encoding obfuscations. For instance, here’s my default raw processing chain in rawproc:

colorspace:camera,assign subtract:camera whitebalance:camera demosaic:ahd blackwhitepoint:rgb,data

This delivers a linear, appropriately scaled rgb for further processing using the camera-supplied/looked-up white balance, black subtract, and color parameters. I can use this chain in an img command line, or in rawproc’s input.raw.default property. G’MIC and it’s ilk were the inspiration for this, as I really learned a lot early on from just running commands against my images with various combinations of operators.

There’s nothing like a batch tool to process the large quantity of raws from a day’s shooting. And I find a command-line environment to be the most effective way to wrangle that.

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I unintentionally seem to have stirred up a hornet’s nest here. For one, I was not aware the actual devs were lurking in these premises (that’s a HUGE bonus for its users, so big kudos to you guys for doing that, btw!). Secondly, the smirky comment was meant as a tongue-in-cheek comment to something Glenn wrote :slight_smile: It was really not mean as a bug report. I maintain a few open source libraries and know how vital a detailed bug report is. You are absolutely right that wasn’t the best way of setting the tone for a newcomer.

I’ll try to tread more carefully in the future, being the rhetorical elephant I can be.

With regards to the UX thing, it’s mainly tainted by the design thinking in the integrated dev-design teams I have worked with in the past: design for easy adoption, allow for adaption. It’s also based on maintaining software libraries. When you see bug reports on your API from new users that’s caused by it trying to cater to too many fringe/specialized needs, you often rethink the API to cater to the UX of the new users, as the early adopters often represent the tech elite, rather than the vast majority of potential users. Striking a balance is hard, of course, but making the common cases easy and the complex possible usually caters to both. The techies/power users can live with toggling some setting, while new users probably leave long before knowing it exists.

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Absolutely, point taken. Sorry for the rhetorical belly-flop (it’s common where I come from) :pray:

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We do welcome feedback, but you should certainly get to know the application a little bit before you start making requests. Raw processing and image processing are complicated, and I think the general UI ethos of the applications you’ll find here is a bit different than the commercial counterparts. We have no markershare to gain, no stock holders to please; if the people using the application were limited to the people here, we wouldn’t be displeased. We write tools to please ourselves first, not a product manager or other people.

Adobe has done a great job at dressing up the complexity of imaging into single sliders, but we think different. I think in general most are math/science oriented, we enjoy knowing the reason why things work they way the do, we enjoy flexability and control eve when it costs us ease of use, and we don’t stray from the math and science in our UX/UI.

We are aware this isn’t for everyone. There are reason to use other software and you should use the tooling that suits you. We are not trying to appeal to the masses and we probably never will. We are OK with that.

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I wonder how many RT users are out there. Is it hundreds, thousands or tens of thousands. Are the majority really “math/science oriented”. Perhaps you’re right yet we might never really know.

I am not “math/science oriented”. I was looking to get away from subscription based software since I am a hobbyist and not a professional. RT as a RAW processor is hard to beat. That was the draw for me though I do find that the workflow is just so frustrating and time consuming at times. But, that’s just me.

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Hello, I understand your frustration but I have good news for you. RawTherapee is not difficult to use, you must just take some time to find out how it works, that’s all. Read rawpedia to find out some basic ways to process raw files, then read a bit around in this forum, try a lot yourself and you’re done!

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Oh really!

Exposure Tab First Steps:. . .
## Lightness

This slider applies a hard-coded tone curve to lift or lower the tonalities of the photo, resulting in a more or less light image. The same tone curve is applied separately to each R, G and B channel. The black point and the white point keep their positions.

## Contrast

This slider increases or reduces the contrast of the photo. It applies a contrast curve centered at the average luminance level. Tonalities above the average are lifted (lowered), while tonalities below the average are lowered (lifted). The same contrast curve is applied separately to each R, G and B channel.

## Saturation

This slider makes the photo more or less saturated. In more technical terms, it adjusts the saturation of the image by applying a multiplier to the saturation level of pixels in the HSV color space.

LAB Module. . .
## Lightness

When using the Lightness slider in the Lab section, a tone curve is applied to the L-channel of the Lab color space. As with the brightness slider in the Exposure section above, the black point and the white point do not move.

## Contrast

The contrast slider in Lab increases or decreases the contrast of the photo, again applied to the L-channel. In developer’s terms: this slider applies a contrast curve centered at the average lightness level. Tonalities above the average are lifted (lowered), while tonalities below the average are lowered (lifted).

## Chromaticity

The Lab Chromaticity slider increases or decreases the chromaticity of the image, by applying a contrast curve to the a- and b-channels of Lab space. Setting this slider to -100 removes all color, making the image black and white. The best way to convert an image to black-and-white is by using the dedicated and powerful Black-and-White tool in the Color tab.

Well, when you place Lightness, Contrast and Saturation on the Exposure tab along with the LAB module with Lightness, Contrast and Chromaticity on the same tab, then it’s no wonder that folks like myself find this a difficult way to work.

RawPedia doesn’t explain the differences as to where to use one over the other. Is there a video out there that explains where to use one over the other? Is one better than the other in all cases. If so, then why offer both. I find this confusing at best. Then again, that’s just me.

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I think you are correct that RT has a steep learning curve, and that the documentation is not oriented towards helping newcomers.

I think of rawpedia more as a reference manual than a user’s manual or tutorial. You have the perspective of a less technical user, and that is very valuable, because once you master something, then you tend to forget how hard it was to get there. I’d encourage you to contribute to rawpedia, write blog posts, tutorials, videos, etc that address what you find currently missing.

For learning, this forum is invaluable. There are also more and more RT videos on YouTube, for example from Andy Astbury.

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I have watched all of Andy’s videos, many times more than once. His extensive knowledge of both Adobe software and RT is what keeps me going.

I am not familiar with RawPedia write blog posts at all. Perhaps you could direct me to that. I am not knowledgeable enough to do videos and tutorials. All I know is that there should be a way to satisfy the technical users and those like myself at the same time. Right now I don’t see that.

Anyway, I think that this discussion has gotten off topic.

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I don’t doubt this. I don’t question their efficiency, nor their appeal for users comfortable with command line - they obviously serve an intended purpose for the creators. Only amazed at the amount of effort put in, to appeal to such a narrow audience. Not saying there is anything wrong with it - indeed I hope to start utilizing those programs in time.

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@fatso83 @gaaned92 @paperdigits @elGordo @Soupy @stuntflyer and basically anyone flustered by RawTherapee’s ‘unconventional’ GUI, please see GUI changes: highlight enabled modules, RawTherapee theme CSS clean-up, minor tweaks by Thanatomanic · Pull Request #5929 · Beep6581/RawTherapee · GitHub
Any comments are welcome, let me know what you think. Does this improve the UX? :slight_smile:

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For me it does :+1:

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Likewise.

Is it difficult to compress the overall height of the active window by closing the gap between the sliders, etc. and to decrease the height of the active blue bar?

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Not difficult, but there is a careful balance between compactness and clarity of the options. I found the current RawTherapee theme a little too compressed and therefore messy, so I opened up things a bit. I can try to compress it back a little.

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