{"slug": "rawtherapee", "name": "RawTherapee", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "", "recommenders": 2, "commenters": 5, "warners": 0, "score": 2.455, "rising": -0.65, "first": "2026-01-01", "latest": "2026-10-12", "why": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "why_is_quote": true, "has_verdict": false, "sentiment": {"recommend": 3, "neutral": 1, "compare": 2, "warn": 0}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 2, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0], "listed": false, "loved": [], "caveat": "", "short_quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "icon": false, "domain": null, "github_repo": null, "official_url": "", "pricing": "", "aliases": ["RawTherapee", "RAWTherapee"], "verdict": null, "praise": [{"label": "", "summary": "", "quotes": [{"id": 778345640, "item_id": 48646602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646602", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ones I actually use.", "excerpt": "Ublock-origin with Firefox, Audacity, Batch Photo Resizer, calibre, cardflow, Diffraction, Ejimo and Ultra Character Map (try finding emojis without them), Libre Office, Paprika Recipe Manager, Samurai Safe, SeaMonkey (who else edits HTML?) GIMP, Darktable, RawTherapee, Super Photo Upscaler, Sublime Text, VLC, Clearview (and why isn't epub supported natively?), PhotoSync (share photos with all platforms), GhostText f", "context": "", "use_case": "raw photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 766800049, "item_id": 47925003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925003", "by": "MrDrMcCoy", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "excerpt": "By photo editing, do you mean a RAW editor alternative to Lightroom? Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\" [1] [1] https://artraweditor.github.io/Book.html", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"}, {"id": 761852496, "item_id": 47615781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615781", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "awesome RawTherapee and DarkTable software", "excerpt": "Long ago, I wanted to export \"iphotos\" to external disk. I sneakernet a lot. They were all in a tree structure by date. Thanks to Unix, one command got them all. I keep all photos as files. \"Read the SD card, Luke\". It gets a bit tedious with a bunch of cameras, and I might turn on bluetooth one of these days. Here's the rub. Apple photos, any camera photos, are wildly anonymous. Any useful info is buried in the EXIF", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Goodbye, Apple Photos"}]}], "caveats": [], "who": [], "tags": [], "use_cases": ["raw photo editing", "raw photo processing", "photo editing", "raw photo editing on linux"], "compared": [{"slug": "darktable", "name": "Darktable", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "gimp", "name": "GIMP", "co": 3, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "adobe-lightroom", "name": "Adobe Lightroom", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "davinci-resolve", "name": "DaVinci Resolve", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50054751", "title": "QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49096654", "title": "Darktable", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48643848", "title": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47916543", "title": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615301", "title": "Goodbye, Apple Photos", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457770", "title": "Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"compare": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 2}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"neutral": 1}, "2026-08": {}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800904530, "item_id": 50056533, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50056533", "by": "bwnkl", "date": "2026-10-12", "stance": "compare", "quote": "also compared to the open source Lightroom alternatives that have been around for a while (e.g. Rawtherapee)", "excerpt": "I never used Photoshop that much, but I used to be well versed with Lightroom. So I tried Lightcraft[1] which is their Lightroom clone, and I was disappointed after all that hype. I couldn't get any of my photos to look nice, using the workflows I was used to from Lightroom. It felt cheap, unfinished, and barely usable, also compared to the open source Lightroom alternatives that have been around for a while (e.g. Ra", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "QGIS enacts moratorium on AI contributions"}, {"id": 785601361, "item_id": 49100085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100085", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "so I switched from Rawtherapee to Darktable.", "excerpt": "I've been told that Darktable is more powerful than RAWtherapee and thus the learning curve is worth it, so I switched from Rawtherapee to Darktable. I've been liking Darktable", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 778345640, "item_id": 48646602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646602", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ones I actually use.", "excerpt": "Ublock-origin with Firefox, Audacity, Batch Photo Resizer, calibre, cardflow, Diffraction, Ejimo and Ultra Character Map (try finding emojis without them), Libre Office, Paprika Recipe Manager, Samurai Safe, SeaMonkey (who else edits HTML?) GIMP, Darktable, RawTherapee, Super Photo Upscaler, Sublime Text, VLC, Clearview (and why isn't epub supported natively?), PhotoSync (share photos with all platforms), GhostText f", "context": "", "use_case": "raw photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 766800049, "item_id": 47925003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925003", "by": "MrDrMcCoy", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "excerpt": "By photo editing, do you mean a RAW editor alternative to Lightroom? Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\" [1] [1] https://artraweditor.github.io/Book.html", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"}, {"id": 761852496, "item_id": 47615781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615781", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "awesome RawTherapee and DarkTable software", "excerpt": "Long ago, I wanted to export \"iphotos\" to external disk. I sneakernet a lot. They were all in a tree structure by date. Thanks to Unix, one command got them all. I keep all photos as files. \"Read the SD card, Luke\". It gets a bit tedious with a bunch of cameras, and I might turn on bluetooth one of these days. Here's the rub. Apple photos, any camera photos, are wildly anonymous. Any useful info is buried in the EXIF", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Goodbye, Apple Photos"}, {"id": 743340484, "item_id": 46458780, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46458780", "by": "MerrimanInd", "date": "2026-01-01", "stance": "compare", "quote": "They're mostly /fine/ but it's one of the weaker software categories in FOSS-alternatives IMO.", "excerpt": "I love this. I spent my holidays hearing non-technical family members complain about their ever deteriorating Windows experiences, issues that make me righteously angry at Microsoft. IMO the next important unblocker for Linux adoption is the Adobe suite. In a post-mobile world one can use a tablet or phone for almost any media consumption. But production is still in the realm of the desktop UX and photo/video/creativ", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Linux is good now; to feel like you actually own your PC, put Linux on it"}]}