So, now I’ve gotten further into the lowdown of RAW photo processing. I’ve tried out Darktable, and now I’ve become enlightened as to why I wasn’t quite getting the RAW photos that I wanted out of RAWTherapee, namely that they didn’t look as similar to the built-in RAW development in my Pentax K-1 camera.
Digital cameras tend to have a non-linear luminosity curve profile that they apply to the base linear luminosity data before converting to sRGB gamma-coded image samples. Darktable has corresponding profiles for each such camera. When I removed that luminosity curve profile from Darktable, I ended up with developed RAW images that looked very similar to those that I got from RAWTherapee.
So, once I got that out of the way, I had no more questions whether Darktable supported my Pentax K-1 camera. Of course it did, with excellent quality development, giving me better results than I got with my Pentax K-1 camera’s built-in development. Note when highlight correction comes into effect, this means you’ll be adjusting exposure compensation manually when doing your own RAW development to get equivalent results.
Indeed, Darktable supports Pentax K-1, with correct color profiles as I’ve verified from testing.
20180819/DuckDuckGo pentax k-1 color profile darktable
20180819/http://www.darktable.org/resources/camera-support/
This is an interesting site that is used by Darktable for automatic regression testing on RAW file support. So if you find sample RAWs for your camera in there, you’re good.
20180819/https://raw.pixls.us/
RawSpeed is the RAW decoding library used by Darktable. So yes, a bit
different than the older systems that used dcraw or similar. And it
is covered by Google Fuzz testing, which is not available to all
open-source projects.
20180819/https://github.com/darktable-org/rawspeed
20180819/https://github.com/google/oss-fuzz
20180819/https://www.coreinfrastructure.org/
But the challenges don’t end there. That’s only considering simple single-exposure photos. Now, my Pentax K-1 camera also supports super-resolution, dubbed Pixel-Shift Resolution (PSR), by taking 4 exposures at single-pixel sensor shifts and saving them into a single DNG RAW file. Likewise, the high dynamic range capabilities take three exposures and saves them into a single DNG RAW file. Now, I’ve verified that both Darktable and RAWTherapee can open and process those files okay, meaning that I have no worries about major data loss. However, I haven’t yet verified that they can use the extended data available in those files correctly. At first sight, it appears they are processing the first embedded exposure and ignoring the subsequent ones.
So, does Darktable support super-resolution? Inconclusive, but indeed
there is libre software available for you to do it yourself: enfuse.
But yes, that might mean that you first need to use the Ricoh Silkypix
software to split up multi-exposure RAW files into separate files
before piping them into.
20180819/DuckDuckGo darktable super resolution
20180819/https://redmine.darktable.org/issues/9132
Take note, you might need to adjust the noise reduction filters manually when using Darktable, compared to the camera’s built-in development.
20180819/https://photo.stackexchange.com/questions/41219/how-can-i-insert-my-own-demosaicing-algorithm-into-rawtherapee-or-darktables-pi
20180819/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super-resolution_imaging
20180819/DuckDuckGo enfuse entropy weight photo
Beware, it’s been a while since the enblend/enfuse software was last updated, I may need to look for more up-to-date alternatives. But, if the software works well, then I guess there is no need.
20180819/http://enblend.sourceforge.net/enfuse.doc/enfuse_4.1.xhtml/enfuse.xhtml
Finally, comparing RawTherapee and Darktable. My verdict: RawTherapee is easier to use when your just getting started, when you have never had the opportunity to do a digital RAW development workflow ever before because you never before had a digital camera capable of saving RAW files. Darktable has a more difficult to use interface, though its interface is also clearly targeted at speeding up the workflow for power users. Also, Darktable has more built-in presets than RawTherapee, and this proved to be quite useful. Finally, Darktable is on a faster release cycle than RawTherapee, and from the outset looks to have many more developers involved. So yes, the future is in Darktable, but I concede that Darktable is similar to GIMP in that the user interface is made more complicated and more difficult than needs be the case, for both first-time users and power-users alike.
20180819/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RawTherapee
20180819/https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darktable
Now I’ve got to find libre software that can split apart multi-exposure RAW DNG images, so I don’t need to rely on Windows emulation to run Silkypix.
Failed search.
20180819/multilayer dng
20180819/DuckDuckGo split apart multiple exposures dng
Wait, hold on here. You can shoot RAW on Android nowadays? Oh, excellent. That means it must be possible on Raspberry Pi cameras too. You sure can do a lot with modern smartphone software that you couldn’t do with old-fashioned proprietary firmware digital cameras of times past.
20180819/https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/shoot-process-raw-photos-android-youd-want/
To shoot in RAW, your phone (or tablet) needs to support an optional part of the Android operating system called the Camera2 API. This must be implemented by the device’s manufacturer and cannot be added via an app. In other words, if your phone doesn’t support it, then RAW shooting is off the menu (unless you want to flash a custom ROM).
Camera2 was introduced with Android 5.0 Lollipop. Most mid- to high-end phones launched since then are likely to support it; it is much more likely to be absent in budget handsets.