Install rawtherapee with Homebrew Cask

Project links

• Homepage
• Package manager page

Commands and aliases

• rawtherapee-cli

Project history

RawTherapee began in 2004 after Gábor Horváth started experimenting with dcraw and image-processing algorithms. A preview version 1.1 was announced in 2006, followed by version 2.0 in 2007.

Horváth released the source under the GPL on 4 January 2010. The contributor community subsequently developed version 3.0, whose stable release arrived in July 2011. The project now describes itself as GPLv3 free software developed by volunteers.

Adoption history

The program matured through user-requested features while it was closed source. An official 2010 retrospective reported 35,000 downloads by the time of version 2.2. Opening the code enabled contributors to form an international development community, and a contributor branch became the main project trunk.

The source was initially hosted on Google Code and later on GitHub. In January 2025 the project moved from a maintainer's personal GitHub namespace to the dedicated RawTherapee organization.

How it is used

Photographers browse RAW files, adjust exposure, color, demosaicing, noise reduction, sharpening, lens corrections, and other parameters, then queue images for export. Edits can be stored in `.pp3` sidecar processing profiles, leaving source images unchanged. The configuration folder holds preferences, custom processing profiles, dynamic-profile rules, and user camera data.

Why package nerds care

RawTherapee is a major free-software option in the RAW-development niche, notable for exposing a deep photographic processing pipeline without requiring a proprietary photo-library subscription. Its cross-platform GTK application, color-management data, camera support, processing profiles, and sidecar-oriented nondestructive workflow make packaging more involved than a typical image viewer.

Its configuration and cache are deliberately separable through `RT_SETTINGS` and `RT_CACHE`, a useful property for portable installations, testing development builds, and keeping multiple configurations.

Timeline

• 2004: Gábor Horváth began developing RawTherapee.
• 2006: Preview version 1.1 was announced.
• 2007: Version 2.0 was released.
• 2010-01-04: RawTherapee became open-source GPL software.
• 2011-07-16: Stable version 3.0.0 was released by the contributor community.
• 2025-01: The GitHub repository moved to the RawTherapee organization.

Related projects

• dcraw provided early RAW-decoding code and inspiration.
• RawPedia is the project's official user documentation.
• Darktable and proprietary applications such as Adobe Lightroom occupy the same broad RAW-development category.

Sources

• Official file-path documentation: https://rawpedia.rawtherapee.com/File_paths
• Official homepage: https://rawtherapee.com/
• Official project retrospective: https://www.rawtherapee.com/2010/09/back-in-time-rawtherapee-from-2004-till-2010-today/
• Official repository migration announcement: https://www.rawtherapee.com/2025/01/github-project-moved-to-organization/
• Official version 3.0 release notes: https://rawtherapee.com/downloads/3.0.0/