Show Your Snaps...December 24, 2012

The software that I use is free and available in Windows as well as Linux. Gimp, UFRaw and RawTherapee are all fairly ordinary installations from the Internet at no further cost.

RawTherapee has its own independently derived faithful style for several Canon cameras. It also borrows a slightly vivid style for all supported cameras from David Coffin's DCRaw, which in turn may be an independent calibration, or a simple matrix that imitates the Adobe style for that camera. RawTherapee boasts its own advanced demosaicing and noise reduction algorithms. The next release will have a new noise reduction method that keeps your computer crunching in the background minutes at a time for each photo in the queue. Other than processing layers and a database for lens aberrations, I can not think of a feature that I have not found.

UFRaw is an alternative to Canon's software which is apparently even more simplified than that utility in some respects. It uses the color matrix from DCRaw, or the ICC files from Canon if you install them. And it displays the desaturation levels from raw to rendered color (that are remarkably different for each available calibration). I find this utility completely satisfying for processing the files from my Digital Rebel. I must simply keep notes on white balance and exposure from calibration shots with a ColorChecker 24. And I have not missed the use of a sharpening control.