I’m a long time user of RawTherapee (RT) and I just discovered ART.
It’s really awesome and a major improvement over RT in many ways.
I particularly like the local adjustments, especially the ability to specify the area with a brush, something that is sorely lacking in RT.
Furthermore, I find the general UI much more intuitive with great defaults.
Alberto, you did (and are doing) amazing work with ART, thank you so much. Keep up your awesome work
However, there are 2 things I miss from RT and I don’t seem to find a way to replicate their effects:
White balance module
The White balance module on RT features 3 settings :
Temperature (blue-yellow)
Tint (purple-green)
Blue/Red equalizer (blue-red)
In ART, the first two are present but not the last one, Blue/Red equalizer. Is there a way to produce the same effect as the Blue/Red equalizer in ART?
Color toning
I found the “Color toning with Lab color correction grid” module in RT very useful.
Is there an ART equivalent?
for WB, you can fine-tune it directly with the temp and tint sliders, or if you prefer using the channel multipliers. What exactly can you do with the blue/red equalizer that you can’t achieve with the other sliders?
there are multiple methods in the “color / tone correction” module in the local edits tab that should allow to get similar effects to the “lab grid” one of RT. Perhaps the closest is using the 3 separate wheels for shadows / midtones / highlights (i.e. the “HSL factors” mode). Also in this case, if you can provide an example of what you would like to obtain and what you think is missing, then I can try to provide more concrete suggestions.
@agriggio I am going off on a tangent here but I became a dedicated DT user because of the localised adjustments through masking. I feel you are doing a great job increasing the ability to do localised adjustments in RT. Please keep up the great work and accept this comment as the compliment it was intended to be.
Indeed, the Color/Tone correction module in local edit is fairly similar and I can produce similar results to RT’s color toning. Thanks!
I didn’t think of looking in the local edit for things that I thought were settings for the whole image.
Out of curiosity, and a bit off topic, what is exactly the rationale for having certain things under local edits and some others in global settings?
Thanks for your speedy answer and reactivity, it’s very appreciated!
The only reason for the distinction is practical: I wanted a set of tools that was general enough to cover most needs without having to rewrite the whole thing, that’s just it
In retrospect, “local editing” is not the best name, probably something like “selective editing” would be better.
Just curious – What’s the chances of having a local version of capture sharpening (and maybe noise reduction)? I.e., subject to masking? Or is the presence of the threshold slider in CS and the Texture Boost / Sharpening tool enough to rule that out?
The reason I ask is that I tend to get better results from capture sharpening than TB/S and often sharpening / NR are needed only in selected places of an image, not globally.
The Exposure Compensation CTL script is a most welcome addition for tonal touch-ups although I have to admit I don’t understand how to (fully) use most of the scripts.
not big, sorry. For what I need texture boost is sufficient when used with care (though I’m not particularly picky about sharpness I must say). For noise reduction, there are different options in the smoothing that you can try. Indeed having a wavelets-based method in there would be nice, but I don’t know if/when I will get to it.
Just an idea, maybe it’s silly/stupid or impossible, but since a depth map is computed for Haze Removal (I think), could a depth map be used as a mask for sharpening as an option? It could be useful to focus sharpening on foreground subjects and less on background.
I think being able to use depth maps embedded in raw files (e.g. by fancy phones) would be cool, for instance to emulate the shallow dof effect. This is something I would consider doing (maybe), but I would need to get such a phone first
As for sharpening, I’m still of the opinion that what is already there covers most needs with a reasonable amount of effort, but if you disagree I’m happy to see some counterexample.
Regarding the depthmap, I thought that there was a pseudo depthmap that was computed from the image in the Haze Removal module, behind the scenes. Or maybe is it specific to RT’s Haze Removal? I remember it was possible to visualize this depthmap at some point.
If such a depthmap is already computed, maybe it could be used for something else such as selective sharpening of estimated foreground. But that was just an idea, and not even a feature request, because as you said what’s already there satisfies me.
You are right, but I’m not convinced it could be useful for sharpening. I’m not saying it is a bad idea, just that I don’t have enough motivation to try this out.
Is this what the depth data setting is on the newer pixels…my pixel 8 has something like this but it says it may slow image taking so I have it disabled…it also mentions something about it being data social media sites can or may use so again…for me…disabled…
I guess the depth map on cell phones is obtained from 2 lenses/sensors, using the difference in parallax to produce a stereographic view of the scene from which the phone can extrapolate distances.
It’s different to the depth map RT/ART can extrapolate from a single image.
On social media, I think that images with depth map encoded can be view like pseudo-3D scenes, by moving the image or the phone on which you look at the image, you see the foreground moving in front of the of the background.
