Fuji X100 Raw Files and Raw Therapee

KillRamsey

Hall of Famer
Location
Hood River, OR
Name
Kyle
Hi folks.

I got my mitts on RT a month back, and have been enjoying the fleixibility to develop shots from raw files, finally. But something odd happened on this last trip: Shots with "burnt" lows (underexposed) would show up with blue splotches actually on the image. At first I thought "oh this is just that guide feature to show you problem areas like blown highlights" but it literally shows up on the exported jpg's too. The only way to make it go away that I could figure was to raise the lows to the point that there was nothing left down there in the murky black zone. This, of course, ruined the photo. It got so bad that I deleted a few I might've otherwise kept, and it made me convert the City Museum shot of my wife climbing into a big steel tube (see St Louis thread I just posted) into a black and white.

What in the HELL am I doing wrong?
 
Hmm RT is a very capable program, especially for freeware, but it's not the most intuitive to use. I gave up on it as soon as I got a good deal on LR4.

There's every chance I won't be able to help you, but do you know what you did before you encountered this problem?
 
"Did before," as in "is this a new problem that just started?" I just started using the software, so I don't think I ever opened files exposed so low before. Or "did before" as in "the steps you took just seconds before you noticed the blue spots?" In that case, just opening the file up to edit. It's funny - the thumbnails always look good, ALWAYS. They look fantastic as thumbs, even regular shots, the thumbs are always crisp and contrasty and nice. Then when I actually double click and open the files, it gets washed out or less desirable, and I have to chase the look of the thumbnails. Odd, huh?
 
hmm could be that the thumbnails are using the embedded jpeg, and the raw file proper only loads when you double click. That's what LR does, anyway.

I meant 'just before' as 'the steps seconds before you noticed the blue spots'. But if it's directly after opening the files, I'm clueless as to what might be causing it :confused:
 
yup, that's also what you see if you review the raw file in the camera (decoding a bunch of raw files every time you review your images would simply be too much work, particularly for older cameras). Still that gets us exactly 0 closer to answering your question :tongue:
 
I am not a Raw Therapee user, so take this as ideas only. It is very likely you have a Lumosity setting turned up too high either in your default profile, or applied at some point -- perhaps a profile on import? I doubt this program would just inject color into your pictures without a setting being switched or slid in one direction.
 
I sometimes use Rawtherapee when I want to achieve a certain look in an image. I find it a good (but sometimes temperamental) Raw processor. I've experienced some problems of a similar type to those which you describe - though I can't recall the details now. IIRC, the blotches were red and blue, and they were pretty much how I'd expect Chroma noise to manifest itself in the shadows. If this is what you're seeing, then I'm not sure that you'll ever escape it entirely, but Adobe's Raw convertor seems to reduce it fairly well. If that's not what you're seeing, perhaps you could post a sample of a blotchy image.

Here's a left-field suggestion::) try Photivo. It's another freeware program, is a little slow, and has a not-very-intuitive UI, but I find the results to be excellent. Overall, I prefer its Raw conversion output to anything else that I've used, including Adobe's Raw conversion (YMMV, of course). One caveat: I found that Photivo took a lot of learning and experimentation before I got proficient with it. It rewards time and effort, but it certainly won't suit everyone.;)
 
Thanks all. I was going to reopen the raw files from a few of the troubled shots, but I don't seem to have saved anything but the jpgs. I'll try again with fresh shots.
 
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