Take on RT as a Capture One user

Software RawTherapee
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Hey Everyone,

For quite a while now I have been using Capture One Pro 20. (This crap is expensive as all hell… but really does much better then Lightroom ever could with maintaining natural color).

Recently after getting rid of my Mac and switching to a beefy Lenovo workstation and upgrading to a wide gamut monitor I decided to dive in and give RT + Gimp a really good shot.

I like many others out there fall victim to the belief that software you pay for must be better due to the fact that there are huge teams working on the products. In some cases it can be true especially under certain circumstances like Mac where I was having crazy amounts of issues getting the Open Source software to run at a usable speed.

Fast forward to the future with no Mac and wow performance is much better. Then again my Mac had a i5, 4k monitor and only 8GB of ram… This Lenovo has a i7-9700T and 32GB of Ram huge difference by the way and I am using a SW240 BenQ 1920x1200 monitor.

At first I was getting really frustrated with RT. I was just unable to get the images to cooperate. I am a newer photographer barely with 1 year experience at this point so some of my shots are not ideally exposed and if I could go back in time I could easily correct that now. At the same time some of the shots were taken in really harsh dynamic range conditions forcing for some significant under exposure due to me not really understanding how to do bracketing. So I put the software on the back burner for a few days.

So soon I started to scour the RawPedia just trying to figure out how and what the various tools did. I did promise myself to give the software a fair shot and not give up after all. Lots of great info in the RawPedia even if some info is not quite complete yet.

I decided for this particular image the auto tone curve which was being generated by the default profile was causing issues. The scene has some really broad dynamic range to it due to the time of day and the open blue sky (even tho no sky is in the image). This lead to some harsh highlights and deep shadows. Knowing the exposure on the image was fine I decided to use a Neutral profile and build a custom tone curve with a more gradual ramp on the highlights as well as a smaller dip in the shadows.

Just wow RT can do some impressive stuff once the image is setup right.

Image quality wise RT can easily keep up with Capture One that is for sure. One nice feature I do miss is that Capture One has 2 histogram tools. One shows the Representation of the image with the Tone Curve and adjustments applied. The other shows the image with a linear tone curve and no adjustments (a neutral raw histogram) Another feature I miss is a levels tool that works in Raw. This is moot as it can be done with curves I just find levels a little easier for certain quick adjustments like shifting the middle point (Gamma I believe) a touch which I just did in gimp instead.

So with some perseverance and some RTFM I have made progress. I feel I should be able to make the switch and save myself boatloads of money for lenses. Here is a little comparison of 2 edits. Note the RT image does have a warmer white balance and saturation. Funny how edits on 2 different days can end up different. Overall the edits are pretty similar.

RT + Gimp (used gimp for some dodge/burn and a custom vignette)

20191021-132643-0010-Edit
20191021-132643-0010-Edit1920×1280 593 KB

Capture One (has layers so local adjustments done there)

20191021-132643-0010
20191021-132643-00101920×1280 1010 KB

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Hi Bill,

So with some perseverance and some RTFM

Don’t forget that there also are lots of WTFV (politely translated into Don’t forget all good video tutorials on Youtube, as well)!

Personally, I prefer the slightly warmer interpretation, on top.
But remember that there are half a million ways to develop an image :slight_smile:

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

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Even though you haven’t explicitly asked for advice, there are some things I wish to add:

  • I think that the middle point in the CO levels tool does the same as the Lightness slider in the Exposure tool
  • the black and white points in that same levels tools is much better handled by a simple tone curve, which also gives you much more editing posibilities
  • you will never ever get exactly the same result from 2 different apps, because they usually run different algorithms to do the same thing. I’m getting much better results from RT than from other apps, so I stick with it
  • you can use the Tone Mapping and Local Contrast tools to control the dynamic range of your image: they can be used to get that infamous HDR look, but they can be used to get a natural look from a somehow difficult image, too
  • take a look at the Residual Image module in the Wavelet Levels tool: it’s invaluable to control the overall look of the image
  • and don’t forget to use Capture Sharpening wisely

With some experience you will get what you want from your images

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Thanks for the tips will keep these in mind as I further dive into the wiki and learn how to use the various tools better. Also maybe some youtube assuming I can find some videos.

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FWIW, the Mac in my house also had 8gb ram and was unusable. Upgraded it to 32gb and now it hums along.

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Yea now I just need to remember to cancel my Capture One Subscription in December… Apparently their subscription is a “One year commitment.” In the mean time I think I am going to pick up the 60mm F/2.8 Macro lens for my aps-c. Will give me something to shoot while cooped up indoors when I am not at work. At least I am fortunate enough that my place of work does not have to close down. Not sure if that is a good thing or bad thing tho.

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If that’s the Canon macro lens you’re talking about, I have it and I love it. Really nice affordable lens with great optics. It’s my default portrait lens as well.
If you want some local adjustments without using GIMP, you might want to try ART, which started out as a fork of RawTherapee.

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Hello @blj

There are loads of them on YouTube: [1] [2] etc etc
This being said, just asking on this forum will get you started pretty fast IMHO :slight_smile:

As an aside, I have read your post with great pleasure since I have read great reviews about Capture One and it is both interesting and inspiring that you have chosen to stick with RawTherapee instead, for the better or worse :slight_smile:

Every end of the year, I plan to test the new version of Capture One for Windows but in the end I never do it because, nowdays, with open source softwares, you have so many powerful alternatives…

Thanks a lot for your post!

[1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCf9_6u5OyoKqF9HkDGTqdsQ/videos
[2] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzjEwT4abOm3SrbN04r7d_w/videos

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No problem. Capture One is really amazing software but what is the point of you can get on par results with open source assuming you can wrap your head around the extra complexity.

From a ease of use point C1 wins but in reality a lot of that comes from removing granularity in tool settings which in return takes some control away. As well as more simplistic naming of sliders/tools.

Go from Lightroom to C1 and you would swear you are using RT or dt by comparison.

In the end they are all tools for the same thing. After seeing how easy good results can be with a little learning effort I am sold. :+1:

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Actually, Rawtherapee has this feature. By default, the Rawtherapee histogram shows the after processing result, as seen top right of the editor mode by default here is the full gamma processed result, top picture.

To see the linear unprocessed raw histogram, just click the 2x2 bayer array icon to the right of the histogram for the raw histogram display, which is true uprocessed raw data (bottom picture, featuring yellow arrows pointing to it.

Processed Histogram:

Screencap 1
Screencap 11510×980 1.79 MB

Raw Histogram:

Screencap 2
Screencap 21510×980 1.78 MB

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Also, Open Source is not an All or Nothing endeavor. As a matter of personal taste, I found Rawtherapee and Affinity Photo to be a great combo, meeting 99% of my still photo editing needs (that one percent is astro, panoramas, and image sonification). The raw processing in Affinity Photo is very weak, and Rawtherapee is stellar in raw processing, but doesn’t have much for local adjustments, and adjustment layers (this is changing soon with the local lab, but that is still in dev build). Thus, they make for a great combo that does near everything.

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I do have a copy of Affinity I picked that up to replace Photoshop and it does really well. Overall I wanted to give gimp a try but I may stick to Affinity simply because of adjustment layers, Pano, HDR, Focus Stacking, and in painting. I got Affinity for $25 and it can save me from some headaches needing to fiddle 3 other softwares trying to get a proper result. The adjustment layers and in paint brush alone are worth it. Even when the local lab gets released some things just need a raster editor to get done even if those moments are rare.

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Yeah, I totally agree. Honestly, I just want to see people start switching away from Adobe, so it is really important to have an alternative workflow that can realistically and accurately be sold as ‘professional’ and Gimp doesn’t cut it for many highly demanding uses. I have had no problem editing 20-30+ layer 24 megapixel 16 bit projects in Affinity Photo, while Gimp struggles at 4 layers at same resolution and bit depth.

Not to say Gimp is trash, when I was a Highschool student with no disposable income, I made a lot of cool things in Gimp, albeit in lower resolution and at 8 bit, and I think all public library/ business/ academic computer labs should have Gimp installed when there is no budget for paid graphics apps, if for nothing more than convenience.

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Thanks to people mentioning Affinity…first I’d heard of it, looks great and doesn’t break the bank :slight_smile:

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You are welcome. It’s only $25 now, quite the steal, has all the bread and butter features found in Photoshop, and the focus stacking is killer.

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Would Affinity run fine under WINE? Has anyone tried it?

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Hello @zerosapte

I own a copy of Affinity Photo, however, I run it on Windows 10, not on Linux…

Regarding Wine it looks like it might be a problematic route to choose:
https://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=38437

In the long past, I have read in the Serif’s forum that they are not interested in porting their software to Linux since it would require a lot of work and the economical return for them is not secure.
Personally speaking, on Linux, I would run GIMP (not Affinity…)…

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@zerosapte I highly doubt affinity will run well under wine. It is not the swiftest program natively on windows already. If you can work around the lack of adjustment layers Gimp is solid.

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Noted.

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Or you can use VirtualBox and install Affinity on native Windows. I’ve done it. It works. It’s not sluggish depending on your CPU and amount of RAM.

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