Editing raw images without Adobe, for absolute beginners
Yes, yes, yes, editing .RAW/.ARW images is probably more straightforward if you’re willing to fork over for the full Adobe Creative Suite, but some of us are too frugal for that and are willing to take a gamble on installing software maintained by 2 people in Berlin that wrote the original version of the program in a year when the Harry Potter kids were still kids.
So if you’ve stumbled onto this article because you saw it on my Twitter page or from the Brickstackr homepage, what do I mean by “raw images”?
If you have a digital camera with interchangeable lenses, it is most likely a DSLR or mirrorless camera. I have one of each - my older photos are mostly shot with a Canon Rebel DSLR, and the newer ones are from a Sony Alpha mirrorless camera. The default shooting mode for these cameras is going to be to produce a familiar .JPG image type - honestly, if you’re just posting the images on your personal Facebook page or something, the .JPG is probably fine. If you want to get more into image editing and photography as a hobby, you will need the .RAW/.ARW (“raw”) images from the camera to be able to do that.
The camera should have settings to let you shoot in just .JPG, just raw images, or both. Doubling up is not a bad idea because you will still have the .JPG but if you are going to edit you can’t do much with it.
One reason you might want both is that most programs won’t open a raw image, for example in Windows it just displays an error message instead of the image preview.
Typical error message in trying to open a raw image.
If you want to edit these without spending boatloads of money on Adobe to get Lightroom and PhotoShop and all the other subscription-only tools for this, here is what I would recommend.
Download GIMP. It’s free and it works on Mac, Windows, and Linux. The UI is not quite as pretty as PhotoShop but it works much the same way and doesn’t cost anything to use. GIMP will not let you open the raw images by itself, so you will need a plugin or two (see below).
Download Darktable. Also free, also cross-platform. The UI is unwieldy but it will allow you to open your raw images directly in GIMP, which is pretty easy to use.
Download Rawtherapee. Same. This one is a bit easier to use for editing, but the port over to GIMP was not as seamless.
Mostly what I ended up doing was opening the raw images in Rawtherapee, making the big changes there, then exporting as .JPG to open in GIMP for cropping and other final fixes. Everyone ends up finding a slightly different workflow that they like to use, though.
One thing you have to watch for with this is that the color profiles can look dramatically different between the 3 programs. I didn’t realize this at first and I ended up ruining my first attempt at raw image editing - I made what felt like minor tweaks in Darktable, and then I opened the file in GIMP and the colors were completely distorted. I did not realize that the color profile had to be converted. If it gives you the choice when you open the file, convert the color profile over unless you really know what you are doing. (I don’t.)
A picture of Lake Lugano that almost made me cry when this non-converted color profile from Darktable turned it an icky shade of blue when I opened it in GIMP.
Luckily, these programs mostly use non-destructive editing and so changes are fully reversible at the pixel level. Use the snapshot tools to preserve changes you like and make stepping backwards from stuff that doesn’t work out as planned a lot easier. It will save you a lot of time and hassle while you are still getting to know what to do.
The “rescued” image after figuring out my error with imported color profiles. Non-destructive editing is a lifesaver!
This had some pretty extensive editing beyond what I usually like to do - I bumped up the colors on most of the signs.
My favorite picture from this set, and it’s not close.
I am far from an expert on image processing/editing, but I think if I had known that they could be used without spending a lot of money on Adobe products I would have started shooting raw images a lot sooner.
