@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
Have you tried Filmulator’s crop tool?
In RawTherapee it takes forever to experiment with different aspect ratios because they’re locked away in the dropdown box, which requires a long mouse movement with a fairly high precision click, then a visual search, then another click, just to change to something that might be temporary.
And once you’re locked in, that makes manipulating the cropped area unintuitive, especially when you drag a side instead of a corner.
Compare Filmulator, where, while dragging a corner, holding Shift makes the crop area snap to the nearest common aspect ratio. This snapping only happens with corner dragging meaning the behavior remains intuitive, plus because it’s not locked in it’s easy to experiment with different aspect ratios, or even easily select portrait or landscape as desired; just drag the corner while holding the Shift modifier.
The number of mouse interactions needed to achieve the same result is annoyingly high in RawTherapee.
I’ll give Filmulator another go! Has been ages since I last tried… What you describe sounds indeed more user friendly than RT. If there is one particular area with rather frequent and mostly negative feedback for RT it’s the crop tool. I wish it were easier to change the behavior, but its functionality is at the core of RT, so it takes great care to modify.
If ART has found another solution, it may be worthwhile to check it out.
Hello, and thanks. I found this late last night. It wasn’t very obvious, but knowing it now, I’m all set. Again, thanks for the reply.
I think you’ve explained everything, but I also think some things could be made more intuitive. In order…
The disc icon to save a image - I found in the documentation what icon to look for, found it, and never thought to make sure it wasn’t used in additional place(s). I never bothered to read the text around that image - I was just following the instructions, saw the appropriate icon, and clicked. It was late, I was tired, and I just wanted to save an image to email it. If I remember correctly, I did a “screen capture”, copied and pasted into email, and went to sleep. …of course I learned, and from then on, I’m using it with the correct icon to click on. Unless it messes up the code, I think the icons should be obviously different from each other.
The image growing and shrinking as I was moving my mouse around is probably just what you guessed, I must have had a finger on the scroll wheel. Maybe later I can find a way to switch the mode so this doesn’t happen. For me, it was annoying, but I could work around it. I probably selected something I didn’t realize would cause this to happen. Again, I eventually finished, and figured next time I would find out how to prevent this.
Processing Queue - good to know I need to read about this. I assumed I could right click and select several images, then send them. This doesn’t matter to me, but I’m guessing it matters a lot to others. Once it worked, I selected one image at a time for export. Will read up on this later today.
Can I ask why RT doesn’t have a menu bar up at the top?
Finally, I’m sure it’s very useful to be able to snap to all those many aspect ratios, but I wish it had one simple choice at the top “unrestrained”, and I wish I could make that the default for me. Again, for me, for unrestrained crops, I have no need to click and drag the box anywhere. All I need is a way to crop from the straight lines, or from the corners, and a quick way to adjust the angle if needed so it’s not tilted.
I’m not trying in any way to be “negative”. I’m sure eventually I’ll get things sorted out so it’s easy for me to use. At least as of today I’m feeling pretty comfortable, rather than “lost”. 
If you want an unrestrained crop, in the crop tool, uncheck the box labeled “Lock ratio”.
Thank you. I hope this change is “sticky”, but even if I have to do it every time, that’s fine.
Most changes you make to the defaults can be made “sticky”, if you save a new profile, and then set it as default. It’s all explained in the rawpedia.
I agree. The documentation is not clear enough and may lead to confusion.
Because everything is at hand (more or less) throughout de GUI?
As @bobm and @mbs have told you, you can create a custom processing profile and use it as your default values for the tools you wish/need. Don’t miss the processing profiles documentation, and very specially the last (and short) part.
RawPedia will always be your friend…
Just a thought - you guys, and the people who wrote the software, probably know, what, maybe 10,000 times more about this than I do. I won’t be creating custom processing profiles until I’m at least familiar with how everything is supposed to be used now.
If I mention things that confuse me more than usual, I get an answer, and maybe there are things that can be changed to minimize confusion in the next new user. But as for me, I need to keep on using it just as it is now, and eventually I may start doing things more efficiently.
The single biggest change that would make life easier for me, is to open up all the images and cull out the ones I don’t like. That was a problem for me last time, but I have two ways to improve things for me - either continue to ingest images using PhotoMechanic, or to do so in RawPhotoViewer, and only open up Raw Therapee after I’ve deleted the worst of my images.
I suspect for the time being, I will continue to edit my “normal” photos in PhotoLab4. PhotoLab won’t open images from my Leica M8.2, so those will go to RawTherapee. My infrared photos will all be coming from my Leica M8.2, so by definition those will also go to Raw Therapee. (The reason I first downloaded Raw Therapee was because I read it was a wonderful way to edit IR photos, and it is SO much better than my attempts with Lightroom).
If I ever sound frustrated, ignore that. I’m always frustrated nowadays, because no matter how much I understand something, I’m constantly trying to learn how to do more. Nothing wrong with being frustrated.
One more IR photo from Sunday - need to do better… …but I’ve got a big smile on my face from getting even this far.
Here in Spain we have a creed stuck into our minds: don’t read the manual!, and most of the time it works! 
But when things doesn’t work as expected, common sense asks to read at the very least the appropriate chapters of the manual…
Same applies here: it’s been said many many times that the learning curve of RT is steep, but a lot of time and effort has been spent on creating RawPedia to solve many of your doubts, so I think it’s wise to use it. In the end there’s even a help icon in the interface that everybody knows what it is for. You just have to click it.
Could RT be better? Yes, and I know devs are working on it, but it will take time.
And about the culling process, to my knowledge RT won’t ever have that feature built-in, so we will have to keep using our favorite software to do it.
Keep learning RT, and for the time being you will use it for all your photos… 
Selecting several images then right clicking and sending to queue is exactly how I always do it. Make sure the auto start box is checked in the queue tab.
@CarVac I must say, I’m very impressed by your crop tool handling! Would be awesome if RT worked more like that…
Slightly off-topic here: is there a way in Filmulator to fit the crop to view?
That’s been requested before, but I can’t think of an elegant UI to do it besides just adding a keyboard shortcut for it. If I have a good idea (or if someone suggests one) I’ll probably add it.
It’s a year later - from the website, version 5.8 for Mac seems to be the latest version, which I downloaded a year ago I think. Has anything changed?
I’m back to shooting infrared images, both B&W and color, and Raw Therapee still seems to be the best software around for IR.
There has been a lot of work since 5.8, and it appears that the more current code is very stable and is widely used. Have a read of this thread for some more info (there are others as well):
Thank you @elGordo - I asked my question in the thread you linked to, and now understand the situation - nobody who knows how to prepare, test, and post new distributions is available.
Like I said in that thread - I’m just a user, and I am not prepared to process and compile the source code and install it on my macOS computer. My February 2020 download still seems to work fine on my 2018 Intel-based Apple Mini running Monterey as the OS, so as long as it continues to run, I’ll use it as-is.
Again, thank you for the pointer!!
There is a link in this post that might be useful for you:
I am happy for you that it worked! Congratulations. I think for me, I will quit while I’m ahead. I’m now involved in DxO PhotoLab 5, and also working with DarkTable. When I get back to doing color infrared, I think the RawTherapee tools were VERY useful.