RawTherapee v2.1

RawTherapee 2.1 has been released!

The main changes are:

  • Tone curve and Luminance Curve editors implemented
  • Sharpening now entails much fewer sharpening halos
  • Improved response to color boost and luminance curve adjustments
  • Much better highlight handling
  • Auto white balance algorithm has been replaced
  • A new (faster) demosaicing algorithm, HPHD, is available and it is now the default
  • Hideable history and file browser panels
  • New cameras are supported: Fuji SuperCCD, D1X and raw files with the Canon hack
  • Thumbnail size in file browser is now adjustable in the Preferences dialog

More details about some changes:

  • Sharpening: in this release you can set a higher amount of sharpening with less artifacts. The postprocessing profiles have been updated as well to apply more sharpening. If you think the images are oversharpened, you can always edit/change the default profiles.
  • Color boost and luminance curve enhancements: you dont have to be as careful with these controls as before. The colors do not get oversaturated so easy in you adjust color boost and the image does not get too bright as easy as before if you increase luminance brightening.
  • Imroved highlight handling: an other highlight recovery method has been implemented (thanks to Dave Coffin and Cyril Guyot). This new method called ‘Luminance recovery’) does not recover colors in the overexposed areas, but it recovers the luminance channel more reliably. It is much faster than the existing one, and causes no false colors, so I decided to enable it in all of the built-in profiles. If your photo is overexposed only moderately, the old method (called ‘Color propagation’) gives better results.
  • The new demosaicing method, HPHD: This method has even better resolution compared to the existing algorithm, EAHD. It is also at least twice as fast, and is parallelizable (so on dual core processors it is even faster), and has better noise pattern. HPHD is now the default demosaicing method in RawTherapee. It also has some drawbacks compared to EAHD: with cameras having a weak antialias filter it entails moire and zipper effect a bit more often. If you are not pleased with its quality, you can switch back to EAHD in the Preferences dialog.

Please test the crisp profile as well and give me feedback if you find it oversharpened or oversaturated, and indicate if crisp could be used as the default profile in future versions.

If you like RawTherapee please do not forget about the donation (it is only $5!).