Do watch this series for more information on my adventure with Windows in Dubai and Photography….

For the impatient ones, download the application here.

Recently I was stuck with a Windows only laptop for a months time and I was in Dubai. Went to Dubai Aquarium and Underwater Zoo there and as usual took the photos in RAW mode with my D5000 Nikon camera. Alas, now I did not have a decent application to modify the images. On my Fedora system I use UFraw and the hunt began for a decent and somewhat advanced software for windows. Couple of them looked promising like Picasa, FastStone Image viewer but nothing comparable to UFRaw until I remembered anothe one that I used RawTherapee (BTW, UFRaw port for cygwin is there but I was not able to install it on cygwin, the server was not reachable). So, here is the features of this pretty good image editor having the capability to edit RAW images.

Here are the features of the application from their homepage.

Features

High Image Quality

• Get the most details and least artifacts from your raw photos thanks to modern and traditional demosaicing algorithms: AMaZE, DCB, fast, AHD, EAHD, HPHD & VNG4.
• Advanced color handling from white balance to HSV (Hue-Saturation-Value) curves and color management.
• Enhanced exposure and tonality tools: tone and Lab curves, highlights and shadows tools, etc.
• Multiple denoising methods: luminance, chrominance, impulse (for salt and pepper noise) noise reduction.
• Several tools to enhance details: unsharp mask, RL deconvolution, contrast by detail levels.

Efficiency

• Multi-threaded algorithms for high performance (RawTherapee can utilize modern processor featues).
• Quick thumbnails load lightning fast and are replaced later with live thumbnails
• Batch processing: convert all the developed images at once without not loading the processor while you work.**
  **
• Basic tools immediately at your hands.
• Parallel editing of multiple images.
• An optional secondary display can be used.

Versatility

• Wide variety of supported cameras: almost all DSLRs and even some medium format bodies are supported.
• Advanced control over the algorithms with many fine-tuning parameters.
• Command line usage besides the normal graphical interface.**
  **
• Various layouts: multiple tabs, single tab with filmstrip, vertical tab with filmstrip.

Freedom for Free

• RawTherapee is free and open source software, meaning you can use it free of charge, wherever you like on whatever hardware you like, as long as you abide by the copyleft GPLv3 license. Download the source code, modify it, feel free to do what comes to mind. We believe in open software.
• RT is cross-platform: Linux, Mac, or Windows, be it 32-bit or 64-bit – you pick, we provide.
• International: it is available in 25 languages!

Hope this will save your day someday like it did mine 🙂

Update :  A very useful and detailed article can be found here : https://www.jenreviews.com/dslr-camera/

Related articles

• 4 Great Tools For Editing RAW Photos In Linux (makeuseof.com)
• 8 Powerful & Inexpensive Desktop Design Apps (mashable.com)
• Raw Photo Processor with Photivo (madrasgeek.com)
• Adobe warns of severe but rare Lightroom bug (news.cnet.com)

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