PhotoFlow, a new open source RAW editor

[DrRAW]

First of all, let me say hello to everybody in this forum: this is my first post, although I've been frequently visiting the luminous lanscape in the past years, always learning something new each time.

I would like to introduce to the readers of this forum a new open source RAW editor, called PhotoFlow, hoping that there will be people interested in the project.

PhotoFlow is a fully non-destructive layer-based editor, which means that the image processing is performed using layers and layer masks (like in photoshop). It can directly read and process RAW files, using code inherited from Darktable and RawTherapee.

The list of provided tools is already quite complete:

- loading of RAW, TIFF and JPeg files, including EXIF data and embedded ICC profiles
- fully color-managed processing in floating-point precision
- real-time preview of the processed result
- on-the-fly colorspace conversions
- several color-correction tools:
  - brightness/contrast adjustment
  - custom tone curves
  - channel inversion
  - horizontal, vertical and radial gradient
  - hue/saturation adjustment
  - black & white conversion (desaturation or channel mixer)
- gaussian blurring
- sharpening
- cropping, scaling and rotating
- optical corrections via lensfun (experimental)
- interface with the G'MIC filters:
  - several smoothing algortihms, including the well-known "dream smoothing"
  - color and B&W film emulation
  - tone mapping
  - interactive foreground extraction
- freehand drawing

All tools are implemented as non-destructive layers (except a couple of very slow ones), meaning that the tool parameters can be tweaked at any moment and the effect immediately seen in the preview window. The layers structure, including masks and tool parameters, can be saved as a sidecar XML file.

I am providing an up-to-date windows installer here, and Ubuntu packages are available from Dariusz Duma PPA. Linux users can also compile the code from source following the instructions given here.

Here are few additional resources: github repository, project's homepage, google+ page and dedicated blog with several step-by-step tutorials.

The project is relatively young (about 1 year of spare-time development) and the program is likely to crash from time to time, however I think that it has already reached a stage where complex edits can be created, saved and exported to TIFF or JPeg. Moreover, given the editing approach similar to photoshop, lots of tutorials and well-known techniques can be successfully used in photoflow with (hopefully) not too many difficulties.

I will greatly appreciate any positive or negative feedback, with the hope to get professional and advanced users involved in the project, especially for reporting their experience and suggestions for improvement. Please take into account that I'm by no means earning my life with this project, I'm just working on it for fun, intellectual interest and personal research.

 Thanks for looking!

[Lundberg02]

better get familiar with porting to Mac.

[DrRAW]

better her familiar with porting to Mac.

Support for Mac packages is in the todo list, but as I'm not really an expert on that nothing has been done so far...

[Stardog2]

It doesn't seem to support orf files (Olympus) even older orfs.  I know it's too early to worry about Camera support but when you're ready I'll give it a test.

[DrRAW]

Actually, ORF files are supported but were not listed when using the "Open file" dialog. I've now added an "All files" selector in addition to the existing "Image files" to allow choosing files that are not recognized as "TIFF" derivatives. You will however need to compile from the GitHub sources in order to get this update, at least for the moment.

Alternatively you can also run photoflow from the command line and append the ORF file name directly after the photoflow command, at least for some initial testing. This will work also with the photoflow version you already have.

In any case, in order to properly "develop" the RAW file you will need to add a "RAW develop" layer on top of the opened RAW file. The "RAW develop" tool will let you adjust the white balance, the exposure, the demosaicing method and the color rendering (if you have for example an input ICC profile specific to your camera). For details, you can have a look at this tutorial on the photoflow blog.

Thanks for looking!

[Plateau Light]

better get familiar with porting to Mac.

+1..... I know more Mac users than Windows users when it comes to photo editing and graphics users.

[AlterEgo]

+1..... I know more Mac users than Windows users when it comes to photo editing and graphics users.

I do not have any chinese friends, ergo chinese people do not exist in any significant numbers

[DrRAW]

+1..... I know more Mac users than Windows users when it comes to photo editing and graphics users.

I do not have any chinese friends, ergo chinese people do not exist in any significant numbers

I've some good news... I'm almost done with porting the application to OSX. The code already compiles and runs fine, only the bundling is still missing before I can provide an installable package. This will hopefully not take more than few more days.

Together with the already existing Windows and Ubuntu Linux packages, this should satisfy almost all existing as well as virtually non-existing users ;-)
Other Linux users still need to compile from sources for the moment...

[Jim Kasson]

I would like to introduce to the readers of this forum a new open source RAW editor, called PhotoFlow, hoping that there will be people interested in the project.

Kodak, or what's left of them, might give you a hard time about the name. Seeing as how both products relate to photography, I think adding the "w" at the end might not be enough difference.

Jim

[DrRAW]

Kodak, or what's left of them, might give you a hard time about the name. Seeing as how both products relate to photography, I think adding the "w" at the end might not be enough difference.

Jim

Thanks for pointing that out... actually, after starting the project I've realized that there exist at least another software project with exactly the same name, a flash image gallery generator. As my code is free, open source and non-profit, it will be rather easy to rename it, for convenience or necessity. At least, I would prefer not to do that during this early phase of development...

[tnargs]

What features are you offering that nobody else offers?

And what are you hoping to do better than anyone else is doing?

Comparison example: RawTherapee?

[DrRAW]

What features are you offering that nobody else offers?

And what are you hoping to do better than anyone else is doing?

Comparison example: RawTherapee?

Photoflow organizes the editing into layers, layer groups and layers masks, like photoshop or Gimp. Each layer is associated to a specific editing tool (curves, sharpening, blurring, etc...). However, all tools work non-destructively. For example, if one adds a gaussian blur layer the blur radius can be changed at any moment, and the preview image will immediately reflect this change. This is true for most of the rest of the tools. Each layer can have an associated grayscale mask for local editing.

RawTherapee has no support for layers and layer masks, and as far as I know has very limited local editing capabilities.

To my knowledge, photoflow is the only open source project offering non-destructive layer editing directly on RAW images. Moreover, it uses very little resources (it can edit a Nikon D810 RAW file with as little as few hundred MB of RAM), it allows to open and edit several images at the same time, and integrates a growing number of filters from the G'MIC project (http://http://gmic.eu).

[tnargs]

Thanks, that's the 'point of difference' that I was trying to grasp. 

[Lundberg02]

I guess you have never heard of PhotoLine.

[tnargs]

Photoline is commercial.

[DrRAW]

Photoline is commercial.

Exactly! PhotoFlow is free and open source, meaning that you can actually SEE how things work, change and improve the code if you want, and use it without paying a single cent.

In addition, PhotoFlow runs natively under linux in addition to windows and osx.

[Lundberg02]

PhotoLine is only sort of commercial, it's very cheap and has an active interaction with its very friendly German developers who are happy to share details of the code. I actually prefer Iridient to any of the RAW developers/editors I have ( I have so many I don't bother to count them but it's more than ten including Photoshop) because it handles my Fuji without any problems, after some discussion with the developer two versions ago.
Are you saying you have released the OSX version? Not as of Friday you haven't.

[bernie west]

Your webpage URL is stuffed. (i.e. the "webpage" link from your blog).

[lhodaniel]

I'm getting nothing on opening D800E NEFs. I guess I'm out. 

[ario]

I have tried to open ARW and DNG files with no result.  (OSX 10.10)