I am wondering of anyone has posted on the recommended settings and workflow for x-trans files. I am experimenting with Raw Therapee and the number of settings in the application are overwhelming. Eventually my plan is to export the converted RAF files as tiffs for cataloging in Light Room.
Thanks.
@ericgraig Welcome to the forum!
X-Trans editing an be a little flawed at times because demosaicers for it aren’t as good as those for the traditional Bayer (RGGB).
@sguyader has several Play Raw entries you may want to investigate. Play Raws are where people submit raw files and the community gets to play with them, share and discuss results and also their sidecars (containing the edit workflow). Be sure to check them out!
As for RT vs LR, I suggest you decide which one to use. They aren’t compatible. RT is free (F/LOSS) while LR is paid subscription. We only support RT on this forum.
The first thing that comes into my mind is, if you already have Lightroom, what brings you to RT?
LR is quite capable with x-trans files, especially with some plugins.
Otherwise, I don’t think there’s a workflow specific to x-trans files. By default RY should open your raw files with some settings that should bring the image close to what the embedded jpeg looks like in terms of tone/contrast. And RT will definitely use the right demosaicing algorithm automatically, so the rest of the workflow is the same as for any other camera brand.
Thanks for your reply. I just can’t get good x-trans conversions with Lightroom. The conversions I got with RT were great (though weirdly the resulting 16 bit tiffs seemed somewhat degraded when opened in LR). What plugins have you used to convert x-trans in LR. I wasn’t thrilled with Iridium either though it is better than what LR gives.
I don’t have LR, soi I don’t have any experience with it. I just mentioned plugins that I read on DPReview some users were satisfied with. But it was quite some time ago now.
If your TIFFs look degraded in LR after exporting from RT, it might be a problem of output color profile. Maybe a read of RT Color Management will help you.
There are a lot of ways “degradation” happens, need to be more specific. Color? Tone? Resolution? Artifacting? Each manifests degradation in different ways, through different tools. Just trying different tools doesn’t expose the root cause; indeed, you may settle on a set of tools because somehow that collection happens to mask the problem, rather than fix it.
Welcome to the forum. Even if you decide not to use any FOSS in your workflow, lurking here can be quite instructive.
I have Fuji cameras and switched from Lightroom a few years ago (after several years of use) to darktable.
I know exactly what you’re talking about with Lightroom’s sub-par handling of X-Trans sensors (so-called “worms” and all). These problems don’t exist in darktable (and RawTherapee / ART).
While darktable resembles Lightroom at a glance, it’s different, and I find it not only handles Fuji raw files much better, with the scene-referred (linear RGB) workflow, it produces much better results overall. But you’ll need to learn how to use it, as it is different. (It’s not hard, but it does require a little bit of effort to rethink how to edit photos.)
darktable can actually read the metadata from Lightroom XMP files (provided you’ve saved sidecar XMP files)… and it attempts to port your edits over (mainly unsuccessfully, as the modules are completely different). However, all your tags, geolocation, and other metadata are imported just fine. In other words, organization and data is there, but you’ll need to reedit your photos (which is generally fine, really).
But you may want to consider dumping Lightroom if all you’re using it for is browsing your collection. (As stated above: You can do that in darktable too. I’m not sure how RawTherapee handles that.)
If I can engage in a little self-promotion, I do a channel called FOSS Edits. It’s not a tutorial channel per se, but I post live editing sessions with X-Trans files (among others) using RawTherapee/GIMP. Here are a few that might interest you:
As always, subscribers wanted.
darktable is quite capable as an x-trans raw editor after you become comfortable with it. It needs some extra work to match the detail you get out of camera(and out of C1), but after you get it once, it becomes easy to replicate.
Scene-referred alone is worth the switch in my opinion. I went back to C1 and struggled to get a good looking picture quickly.
I think LR and C1 have better lens correction since they use the camera profiles. Lens-fun doesn’t seem to be able to match them unfortunately. The new manufacturer lens correction module solves that, but it seems that development has stopped. I merged it locally for some tests and it worked really well.
When it comes to cataloging I find darktable to be insanely slow… I usually end up selecting and checking focus with qimgv, move them to a folder and then edit from that. (If anyone has any tips for a faster lighttable, please let me know)
Lensfun can convert LCP files that LR uses. Where lensfun has complete corrections available (TCA, distortion, and vignette) they’re generally very good. But you’re not stuck with them, its pretty easy to make your own.
You can explore the use of darktable-generate-cache which will generate all the thumbnails while dt isn’t running.
Thanks, I will give a try. When I tried darktable in memory mode, It was much more responsive and loaded up the thumbnails instantly, so it might be setup related, something with my disks. Even already cached thumbnails(My current film roll after I scroll through it for example) take a while to load.
You should put the thumbnail cache and databases on the fastest disk you have. For me, that’s a data ssd. If you have a more recent machine, an nvme will help. If you’re using a spinning disk, that is likely your bottleneck.
If you’re using Linux and have a lot of ram, you could sync the cache and databases to a ram disk!
I haven’t changed their location so I assume they’re under ~/.cache and ~/.config, in that case it’s using my root and home drive which is an nvme.
Yes, I’m on Linux, thank you for the tip! I’m gonna try setting up a ramdisk for them.
I think the only problem with art/rawtherapee (and i think also darktable) and xtrans file is that there isn’t a chromatic aberrations autocorrection as there is with bayer files (you can use lensfun based ca correction, or manual ca correction, but results imho are worser than with bayer ca autocorrection almost only for chromatic aberration control), i use 3 pass markenstein and ca aside the results are really nice.
Maybe i think you can think to post an image you’ve shot in play raw section.
I have the 23mm f2 and the 35mm f1.4, use lens fun and have no issues with CA.
Well, in terms of - how to call it… - “core” or “base” quality, I think darktable blows Lightroom away. Both before introducing dual demosaicing and now, when I use:
Even though I’m the strange one, reluctant to use scene-referred workflow, I’m extremely happy with the output of not so popular combination of:
modern chromatic adaptation + pixel workflow: none (module order: v3.0 RAW) + basecurve.
I’ve got so used to darktable modules, masking and overall logic, that I don’t even think of switching back to Lightroom or Capture One, although I keep track of C1, installing the trial of every major version to see how it competes with darktable.
That’s it - I check if the famous Capture One matches darktable, not the other way 
Thanks. I’ve been using LR for years but will look into DarkTable. I’ve just gotten tired of what LR does to my x-trans files.
No problem. FYI, some are sticklers for the correct spelling:
darktable
dt
Good point about masking as opposed to fixing a problem. I will have to study the images more carefully. At a minimum though, it appears that the imported tiff has regained all the luminance noise Raw Therapee removed.
I saw these. I wish they went slower and had voice over. They look very valuable but with those two things, there not of as useful as they might be.