11 ms·

RapidRAW: A non-destructive and GPU-accelerated RAW image editor

278 points by l8rlump 1y ago

vsviridov 1y ago
Running it on Windows 10 / AMD RX 6900 XT, and the app is extremely slow, dragging the window, adjusting any sliders takes considerable amount of time with 6000x4000 DNG files...
bjelkeman-again 1y ago
Looks very interesting. How much work would it be to get this code signed for the Mac?
- notpushkin 1y ago
  Not much, but you might want to donate to help the author offset the Apple Developer account cost :^)
- cybertimom 1y ago
  I think it's pretty simple. I'm just focused on the core features right now but I definitely plan to sign it in the next 1-2 weeks. Thanks :)
  - 999900000999 1y ago
    I wouldn't make the Apple Developer dance a priority unless you intend to sell a commercial signed version. Few reasons. 1. It's 100$ a year, which isn't pocket change when it's making you no revenue. 2. Apple likes to randomly deny developer accounts. 3. They have no issue with outright rejecting apps with vague reasoning. 4. Plenty of high quality raw editing apps already exist for OSX. If someone really wants to use it on OSX you've provided clear instructions.
    - Svoka 1y ago
      I find it absolutely bizarre that people post about stuff they are seemingly have no idea about. Like, code signing & notarization provides clear quality of life improvement for many users. And your reasons are just plain wrong. 1. 100$ is a pocket change for many people. Depending where you live. I think it is enough of a barrier to force a thoughtful action. Also, to compare, cheapest certificates for signing windows software are like 450$/year. Microsoft has a hosted service now for $15/year, but that is still in beta. Both of those options are significantly more expensive than 99$/year Apple charges. 2. No, Apple does not deny randomly access to developer accounts. Also, this is quite besides the poin. 3. Code Signing has absolutely nothing to do with submitting your app to app store, or anything Apple has to approve of. Like, why even write about something you have no idea about? 4. True. Not sure how it is relevant.
      - 999900000999 1y ago
        100$ a year is a lot of money if you aren't planning I'm selling anything. The instructions to build from scratch or run it without signing aren't difficult. I've literally had to argue with Apple for months to get my account approved. It was not a fun process, eventually they did grant me an account, but then just keep up an old hobbyist game I was wasting that 100$ a month. I ended up just recompiling for WebGL and uploading to itch. Going through the hoops for code signing and getting account doesn't make sense if OP isn't going to sell it on the app store. Finally, it's not like this is the only raw editor. How many people. A: Will pick an open source feature lite raw editor which isn't going to be as good as Darktable or Lightroom. And B: Aren't willing to build from source or literally run a single terminal command to run the unsigned version. Now, if OP wants to sell it on the app store then I'm completely wrong. But otherwise it's not a good use of time. You're free to reach out to OP and offer them 100$ + another 300$ for time spent having to apply for a Developer account.
mrbluecoat 1y ago
> a personal challenge at the age of 18 ... with the support from Google Gemini I'm no AI fanboy, but it's neat to see some dreams come true because of it.
- tux1968 1y ago
  He's no doubt a talented young man as well. Google Gemini would be much less helpful in many other people's hands; kudos to him. That said, at some point the people so dismissive about the capabilities of current AI systems, will have to admit that they're quite powerful indeed, even with their limitations.
  - cybertimom 1y ago
    Thank you for the feedback. Yes - Gemini was a big help but as I also work / train LLM's I know very well how to use them and their limitations. With this, I can use them much more efficiently.
- kookamamie 1y ago
  I found it unnecessary to highlight their age.
  - rrgok 1y ago
    Yeah me too, sometimes it feels like some marketing technique that I’m not aware the purpose of it.
dylan604 1y ago
Why the decision to store edits in sidecar instead of the app’s library? I’m sure there’s pros/cons that were considered, so curious how the pros won out.
- cybertimom 1y ago
  Its pretty simple to explain: Imagine you have your images in a folder and you rename this folder, without RapidRAW knowing this. It would fail to associate the edits with the image. Lightroom does it the same way. Or imagine you‘re editing on your computer and want to move to your laptop to continue editing - the edits would only be saved on the computer, if it‘s only saved in the app library.
  - dylan604 1y ago
    My folders do not have a series of sidecars written by Lightroom. The edits are stored within Lightroom’s library. I have other programs that use sidecar files, but Lightroom does not. Maybe it’s a preference, but I’ve never looked. If I move/rename a folder Lightroom was looking at, it asks me to relink it when I next open Lightroom. It’s not an earth shattering situation to fix.
- ethan_smith 1y ago
  Sidecar files (like XMP) are the industry standard for non-destructive RAW editing - they maintain file portability between different apps and preserve your original files. Library-based approaches offer better performance and organization but create vendor lock-in and complicate backups.
  - vladvasiliu 1y ago
    Aren't edits app-specific anyway? Last I tried (a month or so ago) sharing edits between darktable and lightroom didn't exactly work.
  - runxel 1y ago
    That's why I love DNGs. No Sidecar file to lose! Just one file, and still non-destructive.
Xevion 1y ago
Wild, I was literally just today looking at this repository to see how I could do raw image thumbnailing in Rust. Coincidences...
polishdude20 1y ago
Hey congrats on the app! This is just what I'm looking for :) Just installed it on my m1 mac and opened a folder of RAW files. The initial loading lagged my whole macbook. Couldn't even open the dock. Once the thumbnails all loaded it's better but not as buttery smooth as I would have hoped! Would love to know what other commercial apps do that make them not lag. Is it just that they're written natively?
- kamranjon 1y ago
  If you haven’t tried ansel: https://ansel.photos/en/ https://ansel.photos/en/ or darktable: https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/ I’d recommend trying them out - they are the current open source raw editing apps that perform well that are out there. It could be that this app is competitive with them, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet - but both ansel and darktable run well on my M1.
  - donatzsky 1y ago
    While certainly an impressive effort, it's not even close to competitive yet. As is pointed out in a comment on [1] and as can be seen from the rat piss yellow in the sky, the algorithms are very much on the naive/simple side of things. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QymsCRNRHE https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QymsCRNRHE
- cybertimom 1y ago
  Thanks for trying out RapidRAW and for the feedback. Currently I optimized the app to load small-medium sized folders (e.g. 1-300 images). Its expected that the app lags for folders with more images. Its a high priority to optimize the loading speed of large folders and you can expect an improvement in the coming days. Kind regards, Timon
- TheDong 1y ago
  I mean, it's making 720px width jpg thumbnails using the CPU https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d9787e175035fa46ebde1961e75/src-tauri/src/file_management.rs#L24 https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d97... And then it's sending these thumbnails back from rust to javascript as base64 encoded strings, not using a shared buffer: https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d9787e175035fa46ebde1961e75/src-tauri/src/file_management.rs#L280 https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d97... This is the sorta stuff that native apps mostly don't do. They don't base64 an image just to send it to a different app (react) to base64 decode it (via a third app, webkit) via a slow ipc mechanism (tauri) from itself to itself, allocating 6x the chunks of memory along the way for one bit of data (the 6x are: raw data in rust, base64 data in rust, json encoded base64 in rust for tauri ipc, json encoded base64 in javascript, base64 in javascript, raw image data in webkit to finally view).
miladyincontrol 1y ago
Will def keep an eye on things. If theres one 'must have' feature I can request, luminosity masking? Its hard to go back to raw editors that dont have it. Its not the end all or be all to masking (ie color, saturation masking, etc) but is def one the most useful to have access to without having to bust open PS or similar. Already having a workflow for AI based subject masking is def nice to see.
strogonoff 1y ago
The best raw image processing tool I know is called “RawTherapee”. It was developed by one or more absolute colour science geeks, it is CLI-scriptable, its companion RawPedia is a treasure trove of information (I learned many basics there, including how to create DCP profiles for calibration, dark frames, flat fields, etc.), and not to make a dig (fine, to make a bit of a dig) you can see the expertise starting with how it capitalizes “raw” in its name (which is, of course, not at all an acronym, though like with “WASM” it is a common mistake). Beware though that it tends to not abstract away a lot of technicalities, if you dig deep enough you may encounter exotic terms like “illuminant”, “demosaicing method”, “green equilibration”, “CAM16”, “PU”, “nit” and so on, but I personally love it for that even while I am still learning what half of it all means. I’d say the only major lacking feature of RT is support for HDR output, which hopefully will be coming by way of PNG v3 and Rec. 2100 support.
- mikae1 1y ago
  Local adjustments are really difficult though, as it only supports the good ole "Nik u point" tech. For this reason only I use darktable instead. Would really like to be able to use RawTherapee's dual-illuminant DCPs (not available in darktable).
  - strogonoff 1y ago
    I can see that it would not work well for cases like painting over parts of the image, which Lightroom et al. allow with ease. If you try to be “holistic” in your raw treatment and like me at most do a graduated filter or mask by colour, RT works well enough (the latest versions improved it a lot, too).
    - mikae1 1y ago
      I do a lot of mild re-lighting. If RawTherapee had the path masks from darktable I'd be more than happy.
      - strogonoff 1y ago
Springtime 1y ago
I'm glad there are an abundance of visual overviews in the readme. Too many readmes about GUI programs lack them (or they'll point to a site which still lacks a clear indication of how it behaves). That said, they're all GIFs and each ~10-22MB. Making loading the readme larger than the program size itself. Embedding some video would be snappier.
dxroshan 1y ago
In my opinion, a web based UI for something like an image editor is a bad idea. It will be slow and resource intensive.
- pvdebbe 1y ago
  Check out color.io for reference. It is a color grading focused app but nevertheless has bells and whistles for many workflows regarding raw photos. The thing is that it is offline, runs on browser, and is much faster than Rawtherapee or Darktable on my aging PC.
- zero_bias 1y ago
  It’s not "web" in a way you mean that, it uses rust and gpu processing very heavily, up to the point where it just launched by web browser and that’s it
brcmthrowaway 1y ago
What is the difference between RAW and Bitmap. I thought Bitmap had no compression
- cfn 1y ago
  No an expert here but RAW is the data generated by the sensor and requires some heavy processing before you can show it on screen. A bitmap is an image format (assuming you mean the BMP files).
- mkl 1y ago
  They are different lossless image formats. What is called "raw" is quite a few different formats from different manufacturers, and they contain lossless image data from the camera sensor without significant postprocessing. They usually need some postprocessing to look "good". A "bitmap" is just pixel data, not a file format, but .bmp is a file format, which does support some compression, and usually won't contain raw camera sensor data but something ready to be displayed on a screen.
- Jaxan 1y ago
  A big difference is bit depth. BMP normally is 8bits per pixel per channel (colour). RAW is often more bits (say 10 or 12 or even more). This means you can adjust lighting without introducing banding and so on.
- _bent 1y ago
  most importantly a RAW file hasn't been demosaiced, ie instead of pixels of colors, it's a grid of scalar sensor measurements that, depending on the pattern (eg Bayer) each represent either red, green or blue intensity. since we only know one for each position in the image, the other two have to be interpolated (which is demosaicing)
Mashimo 1y ago
Neat. We need an easy to use RAW editor. For a long time I used Darktable, with default settings I would get images that where close to the camera jpeg. I just had to change in what artistic direction I wanted to go. With update after update I had to fight to even get decent skin colors. Currently on a pirated copy of CaptureOne, but would rather use something open source (Or buy something affordable) Do you have default camera and lens profiles build in?
rkagerer 1y ago
Is there a System Requirements page? What's the minimum OS version required?
ioma8 1y ago
Very nice, I will probably join your efforts on the project.
pradn 1y ago
I couldn't immediately find information about how the metadata is stored? Is it one shadow file per RAW file, as I've seen in other OSS RAW editors? I'm not sure what the perfect solution is, but it is hard to sync a ton of shadow files to cloud storage, versus one big catalog file. Is the metadata in an open format, so I can take the edits to other programs? I am glad there's alternatives to having to shell out for Light Room every month. I only need to edit RAW files after holidays!
Melatonic 1y ago
Capture One I always thought was highly underrated and still easy to use. And I've never used of their PhaseOne cameras

278 points by l8rlump 1y ago

Running it on Windows 10 / AMD RX 6900 XT, and the app is extremely slow, dragging the window, adjusting any sliders takes considerable amount of time with 6000x4000 DNG files...

bjelkeman-again 1y ago

Looks very interesting. How much work would it be to get this code signed for the Mac?

notpushkin 1y ago
Not much, but you might want to donate to help the author offset the Apple Developer account cost :^)
cybertimom 1y ago
I think it's pretty simple. I'm just focused on the core features right now but I definitely plan to sign it in the next 1-2 weeks. Thanks :)
- 999900000999 1y ago
  I wouldn't make the Apple Developer dance a priority unless you intend to sell a commercial signed version. Few reasons. 1. It's 100$ a year, which isn't pocket change when it's making you no revenue. 2. Apple likes to randomly deny developer accounts. 3. They have no issue with outright rejecting apps with vague reasoning. 4. Plenty of high quality raw editing apps already exist for OSX. If someone really wants to use it on OSX you've provided clear instructions.
  - Svoka 1y ago
    I find it absolutely bizarre that people post about stuff they are seemingly have no idea about. Like, code signing & notarization provides clear quality of life improvement for many users. And your reasons are just plain wrong. 1. 100$ is a pocket change for many people. Depending where you live. I think it is enough of a barrier to force a thoughtful action. Also, to compare, cheapest certificates for signing windows software are like 450$/year. Microsoft has a hosted service now for $15/year, but that is still in beta. Both of those options are significantly more expensive than 99$/year Apple charges. 2. No, Apple does not deny randomly access to developer accounts. Also, this is quite besides the poin. 3. Code Signing has absolutely nothing to do with submitting your app to app store, or anything Apple has to approve of. Like, why even write about something you have no idea about? 4. True. Not sure how it is relevant.
    - 999900000999 1y ago
      100$ a year is a lot of money if you aren't planning I'm selling anything. The instructions to build from scratch or run it without signing aren't difficult. I've literally had to argue with Apple for months to get my account approved. It was not a fun process, eventually they did grant me an account, but then just keep up an old hobbyist game I was wasting that 100$ a month. I ended up just recompiling for WebGL and uploading to itch. Going through the hoops for code signing and getting account doesn't make sense if OP isn't going to sell it on the app store. Finally, it's not like this is the only raw editor. How many people. A: Will pick an open source feature lite raw editor which isn't going to be as good as Darktable or Lightroom. And B: Aren't willing to build from source or literally run a single terminal command to run the unsigned version. Now, if OP wants to sell it on the app store then I'm completely wrong. But otherwise it's not a good use of time. You're free to reach out to OP and offer them 100$ + another 300$ for time spent having to apply for a Developer account.

mrbluecoat 1y ago

> a personal challenge at the age of 18 ... with the support from Google Gemini I'm no AI fanboy, but it's neat to see some dreams come true because of it.

tux1968 1y ago
He's no doubt a talented young man as well. Google Gemini would be much less helpful in many other people's hands; kudos to him. That said, at some point the people so dismissive about the capabilities of current AI systems, will have to admit that they're quite powerful indeed, even with their limitations.
- cybertimom 1y ago
  Thank you for the feedback. Yes - Gemini was a big help but as I also work / train LLM's I know very well how to use them and their limitations. With this, I can use them much more efficiently.
kookamamie 1y ago
I found it unnecessary to highlight their age.
- rrgok 1y ago
  Yeah me too, sometimes it feels like some marketing technique that I’m not aware the purpose of it.

dylan604 1y ago

Why the decision to store edits in sidecar instead of the app’s library? I’m sure there’s pros/cons that were considered, so curious how the pros won out.

cybertimom 1y ago
Its pretty simple to explain: Imagine you have your images in a folder and you rename this folder, without RapidRAW knowing this. It would fail to associate the edits with the image. Lightroom does it the same way. Or imagine you‘re editing on your computer and want to move to your laptop to continue editing - the edits would only be saved on the computer, if it‘s only saved in the app library.
- dylan604 1y ago
  My folders do not have a series of sidecars written by Lightroom. The edits are stored within Lightroom’s library. I have other programs that use sidecar files, but Lightroom does not. Maybe it’s a preference, but I’ve never looked. If I move/rename a folder Lightroom was looking at, it asks me to relink it when I next open Lightroom. It’s not an earth shattering situation to fix.
ethan_smith 1y ago
Sidecar files (like XMP) are the industry standard for non-destructive RAW editing - they maintain file portability between different apps and preserve your original files. Library-based approaches offer better performance and organization but create vendor lock-in and complicate backups.
- vladvasiliu 1y ago
  Aren't edits app-specific anyway? Last I tried (a month or so ago) sharing edits between darktable and lightroom didn't exactly work.
- runxel 1y ago
  That's why I love DNGs. No Sidecar file to lose! Just one file, and still non-destructive.

Xevion 1y ago

Wild, I was literally just today looking at this repository to see how I could do raw image thumbnailing in Rust. Coincidences...

polishdude20 1y ago

Hey congrats on the app! This is just what I'm looking for :) Just installed it on my m1 mac and opened a folder of RAW files. The initial loading lagged my whole macbook. Couldn't even open the dock. Once the thumbnails all loaded it's better but not as buttery smooth as I would have hoped! Would love to know what other commercial apps do that make them not lag. Is it just that they're written natively?

kamranjon 1y ago
If you haven’t tried ansel: https://ansel.photos/en/ https://ansel.photos/en/ or darktable: https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.darktable.org/ I’d recommend trying them out - they are the current open source raw editing apps that perform well that are out there. It could be that this app is competitive with them, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet - but both ansel and darktable run well on my M1.
- donatzsky 1y ago
  While certainly an impressive effort, it's not even close to competitive yet. As is pointed out in a comment on [1] and as can be seen from the rat piss yellow in the sky, the algorithms are very much on the naive/simple side of things. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QymsCRNRHE https://youtube.com/watch?v=7QymsCRNRHE
cybertimom 1y ago
Thanks for trying out RapidRAW and for the feedback. Currently I optimized the app to load small-medium sized folders (e.g. 1-300 images). Its expected that the app lags for folders with more images. Its a high priority to optimize the loading speed of large folders and you can expect an improvement in the coming days. Kind regards, Timon
TheDong 1y ago
I mean, it's making 720px width jpg thumbnails using the CPU https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d9787e175035fa46ebde1961e75/src-tauri/src/file_management.rs#L24 https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d97... And then it's sending these thumbnails back from rust to javascript as base64 encoded strings, not using a shared buffer: https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d9787e175035fa46ebde1961e75/src-tauri/src/file_management.rs#L280 https://github.com/CyberTimon/RapidRAW/blob/fc21ede729b45d97... This is the sorta stuff that native apps mostly don't do. They don't base64 an image just to send it to a different app (react) to base64 decode it (via a third app, webkit) via a slow ipc mechanism (tauri) from itself to itself, allocating 6x the chunks of memory along the way for one bit of data (the 6x are: raw data in rust, base64 data in rust, json encoded base64 in rust for tauri ipc, json encoded base64 in javascript, base64 in javascript, raw image data in webkit to finally view).

miladyincontrol 1y ago

Will def keep an eye on things. If theres one 'must have' feature I can request, luminosity masking? Its hard to go back to raw editors that dont have it. Its not the end all or be all to masking (ie color, saturation masking, etc) but is def one the most useful to have access to without having to bust open PS or similar. Already having a workflow for AI based subject masking is def nice to see.

strogonoff 1y ago

The best raw image processing tool I know is called “RawTherapee”. It was developed by one or more absolute colour science geeks, it is CLI-scriptable, its companion RawPedia is a treasure trove of information (I learned many basics there, including how to create DCP profiles for calibration, dark frames, flat fields, etc.), and not to make a dig (fine, to make a bit of a dig) you can see the expertise starting with how it capitalizes “raw” in its name (which is, of course, not at all an acronym, though like with “WASM” it is a common mistake). Beware though that it tends to not abstract away a lot of technicalities, if you dig deep enough you may encounter exotic terms like “illuminant”, “demosaicing method”, “green equilibration”, “CAM16”, “PU”, “nit” and so on, but I personally love it for that even while I am still learning what half of it all means. I’d say the only major lacking feature of RT is support for HDR output, which hopefully will be coming by way of PNG v3 and Rec. 2100 support.

mikae1 1y ago
Local adjustments are really difficult though, as it only supports the good ole "Nik u point" tech. For this reason only I use darktable instead. Would really like to be able to use RawTherapee's dual-illuminant DCPs (not available in darktable).
- strogonoff 1y ago
  I can see that it would not work well for cases like painting over parts of the image, which Lightroom et al. allow with ease. If you try to be “holistic” in your raw treatment and like me at most do a graduated filter or mask by colour, RT works well enough (the latest versions improved it a lot, too).
  - mikae1 1y ago
    I do a lot of mild re-lighting. If RawTherapee had the path masks from darktable I'd be more than happy.
    - strogonoff 1y ago

Springtime 1y ago

I'm glad there are an abundance of visual overviews in the readme. Too many readmes about GUI programs lack them (or they'll point to a site which still lacks a clear indication of how it behaves). That said, they're all GIFs and each ~10-22MB. Making loading the readme larger than the program size itself. Embedding some video would be snappier.

dxroshan 1y ago

In my opinion, a web based UI for something like an image editor is a bad idea. It will be slow and resource intensive.

pvdebbe 1y ago
Check out color.io for reference. It is a color grading focused app but nevertheless has bells and whistles for many workflows regarding raw photos. The thing is that it is offline, runs on browser, and is much faster than Rawtherapee or Darktable on my aging PC.
zero_bias 1y ago
It’s not "web" in a way you mean that, it uses rust and gpu processing very heavily, up to the point where it just launched by web browser and that’s it

brcmthrowaway 1y ago

What is the difference between RAW and Bitmap. I thought Bitmap had no compression

cfn 1y ago
No an expert here but RAW is the data generated by the sensor and requires some heavy processing before you can show it on screen. A bitmap is an image format (assuming you mean the BMP files).
mkl 1y ago
They are different lossless image formats. What is called "raw" is quite a few different formats from different manufacturers, and they contain lossless image data from the camera sensor without significant postprocessing. They usually need some postprocessing to look "good". A "bitmap" is just pixel data, not a file format, but .bmp is a file format, which does support some compression, and usually won't contain raw camera sensor data but something ready to be displayed on a screen.
Jaxan 1y ago
A big difference is bit depth. BMP normally is 8bits per pixel per channel (colour). RAW is often more bits (say 10 or 12 or even more). This means you can adjust lighting without introducing banding and so on.
_bent 1y ago
most importantly a RAW file hasn't been demosaiced, ie instead of pixels of colors, it's a grid of scalar sensor measurements that, depending on the pattern (eg Bayer) each represent either red, green or blue intensity. since we only know one for each position in the image, the other two have to be interpolated (which is demosaicing)

Mashimo 1y ago

Neat. We need an easy to use RAW editor. For a long time I used Darktable, with default settings I would get images that where close to the camera jpeg. I just had to change in what artistic direction I wanted to go. With update after update I had to fight to even get decent skin colors. Currently on a pirated copy of CaptureOne, but would rather use something open source (Or buy something affordable) Do you have default camera and lens profiles build in?

rkagerer 1y ago

Is there a System Requirements page? What's the minimum OS version required?

ioma8 1y ago

Very nice, I will probably join your efforts on the project.

pradn 1y ago

I couldn't immediately find information about how the metadata is stored? Is it one shadow file per RAW file, as I've seen in other OSS RAW editors? I'm not sure what the perfect solution is, but it is hard to sync a ton of shadow files to cloud storage, versus one big catalog file. Is the metadata in an open format, so I can take the edits to other programs? I am glad there's alternatives to having to shell out for Light Room every month. I only need to edit RAW files after holidays!

Melatonic 1y ago

Capture One I always thought was highly underrated and still easy to use. And I've never used of their PhaseOne cameras