Very specific question

Software RawTherapee
#1

RT works great and swift on my M1 MacMini, my compliments!

My problem is this: I use Apple Photos as a catalogue for fotos, it’s simply crazy fast and I can’t go back to anything else. I would like to do RAW conversion in RT and then send the endresult to external editor, being Photos. And it works brilliantly! Except it sends a 100MB TIFF file :frowning: !
Wow, that is even worse (sizewise) than directly importing the RAW file in Photos (15MB) which I was hoping to avoid for size reasons (library already 130gb with 13.000 jpegs alone, you see my point).

Is there a way to send IN STEAD OF a 100mb TIFF file a 5mb jpeg file to external editor? And I don’t mean by generating jpegs on disk, and importing these to Photos, that’s makes my workflow too sluggish…

#2

For each pixel, a raw file contains 12 or 14 bits of information, often compressed in some way. That’s less than 2 bytes. My 16 MPixel Nikon D7000 photos are similar in size to your 15 MB files (around 19, if I recall correctly).

Normally, when you export TIFF files, you can choose the bit depth, and whether or not you want to compress it (this is typical for image processing programs). So, you could export the file (from the editor or via the queue), instead of sending it to an external editor.

For external editor, you are stuck with 16-bit files: Edit Current Image in External Editor - RawPedia

#3

Depends on your needs. If full resolution is not a must, you may want to use Resize tool which is applied before the export, but most probably you are still far from expected file size.

#4

If you are planning on further edits you need to be using a 16 bit tiff file for better quality than an 8 bit jpeg. I presume that is why RT will not give you the option to downgrade to a jpeg.

I hope you find a solution that works for you.

#5

Why the frown… a standard camera-ready page for print purposes runs about 25MB. Your needing more dynamic resolution than that in the editing phase-- 100MB is actually pretty reasonable. Your storage concerns should be thought of in terrabytes, as with gigabytes you don’t have enough space for media.

#6

It sounds to me that @Bas_Hamstra isn’t actually going to edit the files but (ab)use the send to editor function to import to Photos is a quicker and more fluid way?

I don’t know how Photos work or why send to editor would be faster than export > switch to Photos window but I read his post as if there are advantages.

#7

Yes, I will tweak the image further in Photos, to do the final edits. But the idea is to get an optimized jpeg from RAW (exposure/brightness/contrast/WB/Crop done) in stead of the out of cam jpeg. And it absolutely works, done that, BIG difference. I do understand TIFF is a more pure way of doing this, but I don’t want 100mb per image stored in Photos :slight_smile: Than I would rather directly import the 15mb RAW in Photos, which is possible, and is even more purist than TIFF.

Anyway, there is always the workaround of exporting JPEGS and importing those. After which the jpegs can actually be deleted.

Bas

#8

See also Output RT to GIMP in jpeg

Looks like 16b TIFF is a hard-coded format for exchange between external apps to avoid any loss. One thing to check is if the deflate compression is enabled (w/ horizontal prediction), but it’ll still be larger than the raw.

1 Like
#9

There must be something curious about how Photos work if you can’t just save over the exported file? Why the need to delete? Does it by necessity copy imported files to an inaccessible location/format and lacks the ability to move rather than copy files?

#10

Hmmm, seems i don’t get the point…

Exporting to an external editor in full quality Tiff will store the file in a temp-folder. In external editor then use “save as…” and define the compression for jpg. The transferred tiff file located in temp-folder then can be deleted without any losses.

Am i overlooking sth?

1 Like
#11

Yes, you are overlooking Photos is like the Borg, once the TIFF is shared with Photos it is assimilated in the library. It’s the basis for further non-destructive edits, or it can be deleted from the library. No other options. So I rather have 5mb files assimilated than 100mb ones :slight_smile:

Bas

#12

Yes.

Bas