Understanding RawTherapee color output

Software RawTherapee
3

Welcome @daviejones

Very partial answer. II let proficient people give complete answer.

  • color model

There is no XYZ color model (Color model - Wikipedia) at the input of RT. Input can be either RGB color model for demosaiced photo or camera space for raw.
Your input is thus interpreted as RGB values (0.5, 0.5,0.5).
XYZ can be used inside some processing (for instance as connection space)

If you use as input profile “no profile” and as output profile “no profile”, with no processing, the pipeline is a pass-through.
The output file will be RGB (0.5,0.5,0.5)

The values shown are 0.5 corrected with a 2.8 gamma. Note: I think this gamma correction made by design on the WS values is a bad choice.

  • Furthermore, I am not sure that your DNG metadata can be interpreted by Rawtherapee. A test case should be compliant with what the software is made for (here process raw files and demosaiced files).

Output colors depend upon the processing you did. It’s either aimed at being realistic or being artistic. If you look at the playraw here, you will see lots of different processing.
Even the camera jpeg as they are processed inside the camera, have a specific manufacturer look.
see Editor - RawPedia

The best should be to upload an example of raw photo with pp3 sidecar were output colors are not what you expect.

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