The Fujifilm X-trans sensor has been a bitter-sweet addition to the photographic community; people praise it for its pixel array “randomness” that emulates the emulsion on film. In the same vein, the pixel array can wreak havoc on your post-production workflow. Lightroom is infamous for not being able to decipher the “random” pixel array efficiently. Programs like Capture One and Iridient have helped wayward X-photographers; now RawTherapee has thrown its hat into the ring with their new update.

[REWIND: IRIDIENT BRINGS ITS POWERFUL RAW PROCESSING FOR FUJI TO WINDOWS WITH THE X-TRANSFORMER]

The updated version 5 of RawTherapee introduces new features, two of which included wavelets and retinex tools. Other features include automatic chroma noise reduction, manual luminance noise reduction using sliders and curves, post-resize sharpening, “Luminance” and “Perceptual” tone curve modes. RawTherapee 5 boasts over two years worth code optimization and bug fixes, making the program faster and more stable (something Adobe could take note of).

RawTherapee does not just have improvements for processing X-Trans RAW files, photographers with Foveon sensors can benefit from better processing as well. If Lightroom has slowed your workflow to a crawl, give RawTherapee a try – after all, it is free and opened sourced.