@mikemyers Please read this Getting Started - RawPedia
For example, with regard to your comments about cropping if you had done so, you would have seen this:
You can zoom to fit the crop area by using the f keyboard shortcut, or ⎇ Alt+f if you want to fit the whole image.
Also, try playing with these buttons:
To address some particular points:
I looked it up, found that I need to look for an icon that looks like a floppy disk, found it at the top right of my screen, and after a dozen or so attempts gave up.
I see how this can be confusing, however, the icon in the top right is clearly in a box saying “Processing profiles” which shouldn’t sound to you like exporting an image. Again, if you had read the documentation, you could have found this page which explains it all: http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Saving_Images
Also, please inform yourself about the processing queue, which can export multiple images simultaneously.
I would prefer to be able to right click on the large image down below, where I’m checking for sharpness, etc., and if I don’t like the image, right click and delete it. Instead I had to program the film strip to only show non deleted images, and click the trash can icon to get rid of the image I want to delete. I still don’t know how to actually delete those files.
I agree that this is a little strange. It stems from the design choice that RT has no typical menu bar. However, this should always work to delete an image from your disk:
When I bring up the tone curve, to make adjustments, it already has a bunch of spots selected for control points. That means I need to waste time moving them to the end of the line so they seem to vanish. There is probably a good reason why they are there, but there should be a way to get a straight line, and I can move it around as needed. Maybe that’s the first thing I should do - not sure, rather confused.
As @CarVac said correctly, this is the default processing mode to approximate the look of the in-camera JPEG. You can either change the default, or reset the curve to linear by using this:
or simply use ‘Tone curve 2’ right under the first one to make further modifications.
This sounds like very strange behavior. I have no idea what might be going on here, except that you are accidentally scrolling instead of moving your mouse.
And finally @CarVac
You are already able to pick any number of common aspect ratios
What more would you want?
Also, you can easily move the cropped area around by using Shift+Drag. See here: http://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/Crop