# RawTherapee (open-source image editor)

> RawTherapee is a free, open-source image editor for Windows, macOS and Linux. A powerful cross-platform raw photo processing program. It has 4,213 GitHub stars and is released under the GPL-3.0 license, and people use it instead of Adobe Lightroom. Its source code is on GitHub at RawTherapee/RawTherapee.

RawTherapee is a powerful, cross-platform raw photo processing program, released as libre software under the GNU General Public License Version 3. It is written mostly in C++ using a GTK+ front-end. It uses a patched version of dcraw for reading raw files, with an in-house solution which adds the highest quality support for certain camera models unsupported by dcraw and enhances the accuracy of certain raw files already supported by dcraw. It is notable for the advanced control it gives the user over the demosaicing and development process.

## Key facts

| Fact | Value |
|---|---|
| Repository | https://github.com/RawTherapee/RawTherapee |
| Platforms | Linux, macOS, Windows |
| Interface | desktop GUI |
| GitHub stars | 4,213 |
| License | GPL-3.0 (open source) |
| Replaces | Adobe Lightroom |
| Language | C++ |
| Website | https://rawtherapee.com |
| Official | no |
| Category | Image editing & photo |
| Latest release | 5.13 (Jul 26, 2026) |
| Last commit | Oct 5, 2026 |

## Install

Download a build for your system from the project's releases (https://github.com/RawTherapee/RawTherapee/releases) or website, or build it from source by following the README.

## Similar desktop apps

- [Aseprite](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/aseprite): Animated sprite editor & pixel art tool (Windows, macOS, Linux). (39,940 stars, Aseprite EULA, official)
- [PicGo](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/picgo): The Ultimate Image Uploader for Efficient Creators. (27,320 stars, MIT)
- [Photocraft](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/photocraft): An open-source, clean-room reimplementation of Adobe Photoshop in pure Rust. (18,600 stars, Apache-2.0)
- [PhotoGIMP](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/photogimp): A Patch for GIMP 3+ for Photoshop Users. (18,322 stars, GPL-3.0)
- [darktable](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/darktable): darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. (13,221 stars, GPL-3.0, official)
- [Krita](https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/krita): Krita is a free and open source cross-platform application that offers an end-to-end solution for creating digital art files from scratch built on the KDE and Qt frameworks. (10,494 stars, GPL-3.0, official)

---

Canonical page: https://appsgit.com/desktop-apps/rawtherapee
Source: appsgit (https://appsgit.com), the app store for github. Data from the GitHub API, refreshed nightly.
Machine access: JSON API https://appsgit.com/api/v1/apps (OpenAPI: https://appsgit.com/openapi.json), MCP server https://mcp.appsgit.com/mcp, full index https://appsgit.com/llms-full.txt.