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.
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 
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
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. 
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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:
Raw Histogram:
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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.
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.
Thanks to people mentioning Affinity…first I’d heard of it, looks great and doesn’t break the bank 
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.
Would Affinity run fine under WINE? Has anyone tried it?
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…)…
@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.
Noted.
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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But there won’t be any hardware acceleration available, so in that case I’d rather use GIMP.
Windows guests have 2D hardware video acceleration and 3D hardware acceleration. I doubt it will be as good as in a standalone windows computer, but Affinity works fine and smooth in my virtual machine.
In any case, it’s just a matter of installing VirtualBox, a windows version and check if Affinity works for you. It’s all free (Affinity has a 90 days trial version) and if you don’t like it, just delete it all.
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I understand, but I’m on Linux to get away from Windows and I’m not looking for reasons to use it again.
For my needs, GIMP is just fine for now.
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You can we probably query Affinity’s paid support staff and ask them, instead of guessing here.
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Here it is, well, sort of… :
IMHO, running Affinity with VirtualBox is a bit “complicated” since you also need a Microsoft licence as regards Windows 10. If you want to run a legal Windows setup, I mean (no crack etc) .
Usually, when you buy a computer with Windows you are not given the opportunity to install the system on a Virtual Machine (WMware, Parallels, VirtualBox you name it).
To make it short, just run GIMP and spare you all this hassle
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Virtualization is tough because of the multiple layers of abstraction. You need HW, SW and OS support on both sides of the compatibility layer. If you have the wrong combination it might take weeks to figure out. If it works, it will likely be sub-optimal. In that case, it would help if your computer were super powerful, which mine is not (in fact, it is the exact opposite, so for the most part I have given up on it).