Getting Started with RawTherapee

Why RawTherapee

RawTherapee is a free, open-source raw photo developer. If you shoot in raw — CR2, CR3, NEF, ARW, RAF, DNG, and most others — it takes the flat, unprocessed file off your camera and gives you full control over exposure, colour, and detail before you ever export a JPEG.

It is not the friendliest app on first launch. There are a lot of panels, and it assumes you want precision more than hand-holding. But it is genuinely powerful, completely free, and it runs the same way on Linux, Windows, and macOS. This first post is just about getting it installed and making one clean edit, so the panels stop feeling intimidating.

Before you install

There is really only one rule that matters: always download RawTherapee from the official site. The official release page is the source of truth for every platform. The current stable build is 5.12 at the time of writing.

• A computer running a reasonably modern Linux, Windows 10/11, or macOS.
• A few raw files to practise on — anything straight off your camera's memory card.
• About ten minutes. Installation is quick; the learning is the slow part, and that is fine.

Install on Windows

The simplest route is the official installer. Go to rawtherapee.com/downloads, download the 64-bit Windows installer, run the .exe, and click through the prompts. RawTherapee then lives in your Start menu like any other app.

If you prefer the command line and already use a package manager, either of these works and keeps the app easy to update later:

winget install RawTherapee.RawTherapee

choco install rawtherapee

If Windows SmartScreen warns you about an unrecognised publisher, that is normal for smaller open-source projects. Choose "More info" then "Run anyway" — as long as you downloaded from the official site.

Install on macOS

On the downloads page, pick the macOS build that matches your machine — there are separate universal or architecture-specific builds for Apple Silicon (M1/M2/M3/M4) and older Intel Macs. Open the .dmg and drag RawTherapee into your Applications folder.

Because the build is not from the Mac App Store, Gatekeeper may block the first launch. The clean way around it is to right-click (or Control-click) the app icon and choose Open — you only have to do this once. If macOS still refuses, clearing the quarantine flag from Terminal does the trick:

brew install --cask rawtherapee

xattr -dr com.apple.quarantine /Applications/RawTherapee.app

Installing through Homebrew usually avoids the Gatekeeper prompt entirely, so it is my preferred route on a Mac.

Install on Linux

Linux gives you the most options. If you want the newest version with the least fuss, use Flatpak from Flathub — it is sandboxed, current, and works across every distribution:

flatpak install flathub com.rawtherapee.RawTherapee
flatpak run com.rawtherapee.RawTherapee

chmod +x RawTherapee_*.AppImage
./RawTherapee_*.AppImage

sudo apt install rawtherapee      # Debian / Ubuntu / Mint
sudo dnf install rawtherapee      # Fedora
sudo pacman -S rawtherapee        # Arch / Manjaro

Distribution repositories are convenient but often lag a version or two behind. If you want the latest features and camera support, reach for the Flatpak or the AppImage.

First launch: the two tabs that matter

Open RawTherapee and you will land on a busy window. Ignore most of it for now. There are two tabs along the top-left that do almost everything:

The File Browser is where you point RawTherapee at a folder of photos and scroll through thumbnails. The Editor is where a single image opens up with all the adjustment panels on the right. You move between them constantly, so it is worth knowing they exist before anything else.

• File Browser — navigate your folders on the left, thumbnails fill the middle.
• Editor — opens when you double-click a photo; adjustment tabs live on the right.
• Queue — a batch list for exporting many edited photos at once (more on this later).

Your first edit, start to finish

Here is the shortest path from a raw file to a finished JPEG. Do it once on a throwaway image and the whole app clicks into place.

• In the File Browser, open a folder with raw files and double-click one. It opens in the Editor.
• On the right, find the Processing Profiles dropdown at the top and choose "Neutral". This strips away the automatic look and gives you a flat, honest starting point.
• Open the Exposure tab (the first icon). Nudge Exposure Compensation until the image looks right, and if the bright areas are blown out, enable Highlight Reconstruction.
• Set white balance: in the same area, use the eyedropper (Spot WB) and click something that should be neutral grey or white. Colours snap into place.
• Open the Detail tab for Sharpening and Noise Reduction — RawTherapee's noise reduction is one of its real strengths, so zoom to 100% before judging it.
• Open the Color tab if you want to lift Saturation or Vibrance a little. Restraint reads better than a heavy hand here.

Every change is non-destructive. Your raw file is never touched — RawTherapee writes your edits into a small sidecar file (a .pp3) next to the original, so you can always start over.

Exporting the finished photo

When the image looks right, you have two ways out. For a single photo, click "Save current image" at the bottom-left of the Editor, pick JPEG or TIFF, choose a quality, and save.

For a batch, click the "Put to queue" button instead of saving. Do that for every photo you edit, then switch to the Queue tab and press Start. RawTherapee processes the whole set in the background while you get on with something else.

Where to go next

That is the entire loop: browse, open, neutralise, adjust exposure and white balance, clean up detail, export. Everything else in RawTherapee — the tone curves, the local editing, the colour management — is a variation on those same steps.

In the next posts I want to go deeper into the parts that actually change how a photo feels: reading the histogram, building custom processing profiles you can reuse, and getting RawTherapee's noise reduction to do quiet, invisible work. For now, install it, break a few edits, and get comfortable. That is the whole assignment.