Today the open source RawTherapee 5.5 has been released. RawTherapee is a free, extremely advanced and features-packed software to develop RAW files and manipulate images.
All details available on the RawTherapee blog, hereafter we will list the most interesting aspects:
- Filter to remove striping artifacts caused by Phase Detection Auto Focus (PDAF) in some Sony cameras (e.g. A6300/6500, A7R III, A7 III, A9) and banding artifacts in some recent Nikon ones (the new mirrorless Z6 and Z7). This filter is something not available in paid software like Adobe Lightroom.
- New de-haze tool, a very welcome addition that is available in Lightroom since a long time but not for example in Capture One.
- ICC profile creator, very interesting for custom color profile, and support for ICC v4.
- Improved chromatic aberration correction.
- Option to decide whether out-of-gamut colors should get clipped or not with respect to color space.
- New Shadows/Highlights tool.
- Contrast threshold mask which divides an image into areas of high and low details to tune some tools differently on specific portions of an image; these tools that can be matched with the new mask are sharpening, microcontrast and even demosaicing - so very interesting for RAW conversion.
- New color toning methods with grids or regions.
- Enhanced scaling in main histogram (with log scales).
- New Soft Light tool to increase contrast and saturation by emulating the effect of blending an image with a copy of itself with "soft light" blending mode in GIMP (similar effect with Photoshop).
- Support for new cameras.
RawTherapee is not for easy image handling but for experts or curious people that want to explore and experiment with the extremely high number of tools that are provided, much more than any other popular software like Lightroom, Capture One, On1, Luminar, PhotoLab.
The new version is listed in our LightPoint Photo Software Database: RawTherapee 5.5.