dcraw vs RawTherapee

dcraw is a free utility for decoding camera RAW photos, displaying metadata, and extracting thumbnails. The maker’s page reports support for 731 cameras, with documented examples of camera-specific formats including CRW, CR2, MRW, NEF, and RAF. Its four interpolation methods are bilinear, VNG, PPG, and AHD. Output color-space choices include sRGB, Adobe RGB, ProPhoto RGB, XYZ, and ACES. By default, dcraw writes PGM, PPM, or PAM; the -T option writes TIFF with metadata. The maker provides C source and Linux build instructions, including a gcc command, and says a self-contained DCRAW.EXE can be built for DOS or Windows from a source file in the directory. A basic plugin loads RAW files into GIMP, while the manual lists gphoto2 and Netpbm utilities among related command-line tools. The maker describes using it to process camera images after downloading them to a Linux PC. One important format limit: dcraw cannot decode JPEG files. It is free for all uses and is listed for Linux and Windows.

RawTherapee is a free desktop program for developing raw images on Linux, macOS, and Windows. Its non-destructive, 32-bit floating-point engine handles raw files from many digital cameras, including HDR DNG, as well as JPEG, TIFF, and PNG images. Photographers can control demosaicing and development with multiple algorithms, use masking tools, and batch process images. Editing parameters can be copied or pasted across files, and the program can also be used from a command line. RawTherapee can open raw images from GIMP as a plugin and return edited images there, or send processed images to GIMP or another editor. It is libre software under the GNU General Public License version 3, with RawPedia documentation and a community forum for help. The project says it does not include digital asset management, printing, or uploading features. The macOS 5.13 build has different minimum system requirements for Apple Silicon and Intel, and must be installed in /Applications to start.