RawTherapee

Adobe Lightroom needs no further presentation in the world of photography. Packing advanced tools for adjusting exposure, color balance, contrast, and other aspects of the image, it really lives up to its name when it comes to post-processing.

Then again, if you’re just getting started with making your portfolio and gathering customers, perhaps you can’t afford a subscription. Luckily, there are open-source alternatives out there, like RawTherapee, that might be worth checking out.

Even though the interface is not as polished as its paid counterparts, I don't think it should be easily dismissed. The program is organized into three main tabs for importing and managing files, photo editing, and exporting results, found on the left-hand side of the interface.

I found the photo editing tab a bit overwhelming, as it contains many menus and submenus that I can navigate. I found numerous buttons for extra functions, which is making me feel that I need to invest some time and effort to learn the roles with this app.

From the modifications I made during the testing, I noticed that the quality of the final photo maintains its quality. The app relies on a non-destructive processing engine and advanced algorithms that enable you to develop high quality images from their RAW files.

I noticed that I can manage the images directly through the app’s browser system, unlike other photo editors where you first need to import the files to get started. Once I loaded the image, I could check metadata information for RAW files, including details like aperture, shutter speed, ISO, and focal length, among others.

RawTherapee lets you assign color-coded tags to your image files and also rank them based on their importance or quality. This is a simple form of file organization, as you can categorize images for different purposes or assign rankings to identify the best photos in your collection.