Raw Therapee and the K-5

What is the story with RT and the K-5?
Do you set up a specific profile for that camera ?
I have done a few conversions with RT in the past with my K-7 and could never see any difference between jpgs from converted RAW and jpgs straight from the camera. Hence I still use jpgs only
I'd ask over on the RT forum but the answer seems to be read the manual

Cheers for any clues
Pete

I guess no one here uses this combo
cheers
Pete

I've used RT with the K-5 a lot, in fact only recently just moved over to Lightroom, and I still think there are some things RT is actually better at than LR (though noise reduction is emphatically not among them).

Yes, JPGs converted by RT are very close to the camera JPGs. I assume this is achieved using a camera profile but I never really bothered to look into the details. However, what you should bear in mind is that this result which is so close to the camera JPG is only the default processing done by RT - it is only a starting point from which you can tweak the image almost infinitely. RT is a powerful tool and using it you can tweak the appearance of a RAW image and still retain image detail to a far greater extent than you could do with a JPEG file.

Therefore to see this as a reason not to bother shooting in RAW is rather missing the point - unless you find you're happy with your JPEG results 99% of the time and don't really care about the other 1%, in which case fire away.

Hi Transit, I use RT with a k100d. Using RAW will allow you to make huge changes to your output image compared to in-camera jpeg, so I agree with what Mark says. The default profile is just where you start. If you tend to change certain things on lots of images (eg boost saturation by 5% etc etc) you can save the settings as a PP3 file and use those settings on other RAW files.

Don't forget that you can do things with RAW that you can't do if you only shoot jpegs. eg you can make big adjustments to the exposure, or you can alter the white balance settings. But of course, RAW eats up storage too.

If you look in the Play RAW section of the RT forum, then click on one of the latest voting posts, you will see that different users have taken the same RAW file, processed it and produced very different results. The images and PP3 files are in these posts so you can download them and try them if you want to. Using the History window in RT will allow you to go back/forward and compare the test PP3 with the default setting.

Thanks Mark.
I see what you mean that the RT converted RAW is like the cam jpg but is only the starting point. I suppose I am pretty happy with the camera jpg. Now I understand why it seemed as good as the converted RAW.
cheers
Pete

cheers Dragondrop,
When you say default profile, does RT know what camera it is and apply that specifically ?
I get the point that the RAW has much more leeway for tweaking than the camera jpg
I have had a look at their play RAW section. I'll have a go at saving my own PP3 file.
thanks
Pete

Hi Transit,

No, I don't think that it knows much in that way, although I may be wrong. It does however take stuff such as white balance from the RAW file if you tell it to (I think that's the default anyway).

You can match your camera fully by using an ICC profile and telling RT to use that, but the ICC profiles on the RT forum are for other makes. I think that I saw some post there which said that you wouldn't get any benefit doing that unless your monitor had been properly calibrated (eg with Spyder etc). I just use the RT default setting there, ie no specific ICC profile, and that works fine.

It's a very powerful piece of software but takes quite some time to get to grips with. I'm still a learner!

Thanks DragonDrop
Ok I get all that. I'll have a go with the latest release.
cheers
Pete