Luminous Landscape Forum

Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Other Raw Converters => Topic started by: StephaneB on November 16, 2015, 05:03:49 pm

Title: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: StephaneB on November 16, 2015, 05:03:49 pm
When I first got my Fuji X-T1 in September 2014, X-Trans processing in LR was not satisfactory for most of my landscape pictures. I looked at other solutions and came away impressed with Photo Ninja and RawTherapee.

I bought Photo Ninja because it was pretty good and ingeniously integrated in an LR-based workflow. You define Photo Ninja as an external editor. LR produces a TIF file and sends it to Photo Ninja. Photo Ninja can go and retrieve the corresponding RAW file, and when you save your work, Photo Ninja replaces the TIF files LR sent with the result of its own demosaicing and treatment.

As time passed, I came to like RawTherapee more and more, but it is not as well integrated in LR.

So I wrote a Powershell script to call RT so that it mimics PHoto Ninja's file handling :

Param(
     [string]$filepath
)

$tiff_file = Get-ChildItem "$filepath"
$save_location = $tiff_file.DirectoryName
$file_basename = $tiff_file.BaseName
$file_basename = $file_basename.Substring(0,8)
$raf_filename = $save_location + '\' + $file_basename + '.raf'
$ArgList = @('-o ' + $tiff_file, $raf_filename, '-w')
$cmd = 'C:\Program Files\RawTherapee\rawtherapee.exe'
Start-Process -FilePath $cmd -ArgumentList $ArgList -Wait -WindowStyle Maximized
$ArgList = @('-o ' + $tiff_file, '-S', '-b16', '-t', '-Y', '-c ' + $raf_filename, '-w')
Start-Process -FilePath $cmd -ArgumentList $ArgList -Wait


Since LR cannot run a Powershell script but can run a .bat script, I wrote the following little .bat to call the other script:

rem lr_rt.bat
@echo off
powershell.exe -File D:\usr\bin\lr_rt.ps1 %*


In LR, you declare lr_rt.bat as the external editor.

What the main script does is the following:

1. get all the information about the tif file produced by LR
2. from there get the path to the corresponding RAW file
3. build an argument list for RT so that it opens the RAW file
4. run RT a first time, in interactive mode. There, you get RT with your RAW file and you do all your settings. The settings are automatically saved in a .pp3 file that RT will automatically associate with the RAW file in the future.
5. run RT a second time in batch mode to replace LR's tif file with a rendering of your settings in RT.

When you edit your file in RT, there is no need to save anything. When you're finished, just close RT. The .pp3 file will keep all your settings automatically.

My explanations are really more confusing than actually using the thing.

In the mean time, LR's processing of Fuji RAW files has been considerably improved. I do not find that it lack in the fine details department anymore. RT is still maybe a bit better for that, but most of the time it comes down to sharpening.

However, RT still gives way more fine grained control on the processing and that can be useful. One thing that I find major is that RT allows to set the contrast and lightness in Lab mode, meaning I can increased the contrast without getting more saturated colours. RT has excellent film simulations as well, much much better than in LR. There are other things, but more marginally useful to me.

Hope this can be useful to someone :)

Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: smahn on November 17, 2015, 04:00:57 am
I would like to try this. Can you tell me where the scripts should be installed on a Mac running Mavericks?

Thanks
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: StephaneB on November 17, 2015, 05:01:28 pm
I would like to try this. Can you tell me where the scripts should be installed on a Mac running Mavericks?

Thanks

I'm sorry, but this would not work on a Mac. As far as I know, Powershell is a part of Windows.

However, it is entirely possible to write a shell script that would work identically. I'd be unable to test it, though, so I cannot really give you one.
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: smahn on November 17, 2015, 06:47:47 pm
No problem, your efforts are appreciated all the same.
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: Phil Indeblanc on December 14, 2015, 06:06:37 pm
cool! Thanks for sharing!
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: delfalex on October 01, 2016, 08:08:01 pm
Hi StephaneB,

Thanks very much for sharing this script; I am hoping to do the same as you.

I've been attempting to run the copied Powershell Script but am getting errors (too quick for me to see before the window closes - and every attempt so far to pause / freeze the process so as to find out what the problem is has failed - not surprising as am not at all script savvy!).

Do you mind if I check that my programs are located in the correct places as this might be the cause of the problem:(I'm guessing that just 3 elements are instrumental):

C:\Program Files\Adobe\Adobe Photoshop Lightroom 5.7.1
C:\Program Files\RawTherapee
Image files:
D:\2 CURRENT EVENTS\Camera Testing

Thanks,

Alex

Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: StephaneB on October 07, 2016, 05:40:54 am
Hi Alex

I recently had a similar request from people at the FredMiranda forum. I tried my scripts and they did not work anymore, no idea why. I have since moved on from Adobe and I am using ACDSee. It has pretty good X-Trans support, but more importantly, it is a much more open program. Using an external RAW editorr is easy as pie in ACDSee.

So I have lost interest in those scripts :)

An interesting solution would be to use Open Directly (https://www.photographers-toolbox.com/products/jbeardsworth/opendirectly/). I used that years ago.
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: delfalex on October 07, 2016, 05:54:39 am
Thanks for the link Stephane!

Essentially I'm using LR for the lens corrections but wanting RawTherapee to handle the rest (I tried copying & importing the lens correction file from LR, but RT didn't want to know).

My interest in using LR &/or RT is because they handle DCP profiles, rather than ICCs.

Alex


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: StephaneB on October 07, 2016, 06:54:21 am
Lightroom should handle dcp profiles, I think.
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: delfalex on October 07, 2016, 07:05:55 am
Lightroom should handle dcp profiles, I think.
Yep it does - It was my first experience with using DCP profiles; however I'm finding that RT is giving better results - except the issue with lens profiles.

Alex


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: MichaelEzra on October 07, 2016, 02:20:08 pm
Can this be adapted for Adobe Bridge?
Title: Re: RawTherapee as an external RAW editor for Lightroom
Post by: StephaneB on October 09, 2016, 01:11:35 pm
Can this be adapted for Adobe Bridge?

With bridge, you don't need a script. You can declare any editor you want for any file type you want. Bridge will simply pass the unaltered raw file to the external editor, and show the tif file you'll save in that external editor when you come back to Bridge.