rawtherapee-film-looks — film-look pipeline for Nikon raws

Each look is a folder holding its color grade and effect doses. The shared pipeline turns NEFs into finished JPEGs through a lossless intermediate:

RawTherapee grade → lossless TIFF → halation → grain → JPEG

Grain is deterministic for each source/look/variant, so rerunning an unchanged photo preserves the same grain pattern. Pass --random-grain when variation is wanted.

Process a folder of photos

./bin/process.sh <folder-of-NEFs>                          # boardwalk, all 4 variants
./bin/process.sh <folder> 01                               # boardwalk Classic only
./bin/process.sh <folder> all --web                        # + 2048px web copies
./bin/process.sh <folder> <look> all --web                 # a different look
./bin/process.sh <folder> <look> 02 --random-grain         # deliberately fresh grain

Output lands next to the photos, in a per-look subfolder:

• <folder>/renders/<look>/DSC_xxxx_NN.jpg — full-res finished images
• <folder>/renders/<look>/contact/ — labeled comparison sheets for multi-variant runs
• <folder>/renders/<look>/web/ — 2048px sharpened copies (with --web)

Originals are never modified. Finished files are replaced atomically only after the new render succeeds. Contact sheets are built only from the current run, so old variants cannot leak into a new comparison. Running without --web removes an affected stale web copy if one exists.

Boardwalk variants: 00 Color Only (grade without exposure/tone changes, for already-well-exposed shots) · 01 Classic (balanced) · 02 Punchy (more contrast, deeper teal) · 03 Faded (soft pastel, heavy grain).

CLUT-based looks (HaldCLUT film emulations from the RawTherapee Film Simulation Collection plus separately downloaded Fuji X-Trans samples):

• fuji — 01 Classic Chrome · 02 Velvia · 03 Astia · 04 Acros (B&W)
• portra — 01 160 · 02 400 · 03 800 (warm, soft negative film)
• kodachrome — 01 25 · 02 64 · 03 200 (vintage slide film)
• polaroid — 01 669 · 02 PX-680 · 03 Lomo X-Pro (instant / lo-fi)
• bw — 01 Tri-X 400 · 02 HP5 Plus · 03 Delta 3200 (classic B&W)

Curve-based (like boardwalk):

• cinema — 01 Soft · 02 Classic · 03 Deep (dark cinematic teal/sage with warm amber accents, matte blacks, film grain — moody museum / available-light aesthetic) · 04 Bleach Bypass (retained for compatibility; use the standalone family below for a choice of intensities)
• postcard — 01 Cream · 02 Sunfade · 03 Candy (bright vintage pastel: cream highlights, flat gentle contrast, milky sage skies, salmon/mustard accents — faded-60s-postcard, inspired by a certain symmetrical filmmaker)
• night — 01 Tungsten · 02 Neon · 03 Sodium (mixed-light night color, protected practicals, stronger grain and halation)
• editorial — 01 Clean · 02 Warm · 03 Cool (restrained fashion and portrait finishing with protected skin tones)
• flash — 01 Disposable · 02 Afterparty · 03 Gloss (grades for images made with direct flash; these do not synthesize flash lighting)
• bleach-bypass — 01 Half · 02 Silver · 03 Grit (progressively stronger silver-retention treatments, from restrained color to hard olive near-mono)
• landscape — 01 Golden · 02 Alpine · 03 Forest (season- and environment-oriented color with controlled highlights)

Layout

bin/            shared pipeline, validation, setup checks, and GUI export
cluts/              vendored HaldCLUT PNGs used by the looks
boardwalk/, cinema/, postcard/, night/, editorial/, flash/, bleach-bypass/, landscape/,
fuji/, portra/, kodachrome/, polaroid/, bw/   one folder per look:
  rawtherapee/  portable source .pp3 color grades
  fx.conf       per-variant grain strength/size + halation dose

Adding a new look

Copy boardwalk/ to a new folder, edit the .pp3 files and fx.conf, then:

python3 bin/validate.py
./bin/process.sh <photos> <new-folder-name>

Profile filenames must contain NN - Label.pp3; fx.conf must have one matching NN grain_strength grain_size halation line per profile. Missing, duplicate, malformed, and orphan variants are rejected before rendering.

Tuning

• Grain / halation: numbers in <look>/fx.conf
• Vignette: [PCVignette] Strength in each .pp3 (scale −6…6; currently mild)
• Color/tone: everything else in the .pp3 files (plain text)

Setting up on a new machine

The supplied launcher and setup notes target macOS. Install Python dependencies and check the checkout before processing photos:

python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt
python3 bin/doctor.py

Five machine/local assets are deliberately not in the repo:

1. bin/rtcli — machine-specific binary; recreate it (see Notes below).
2. The four cluts/Fuji XTrans III - *.png CLUTs used by the fuji look — author allows free use but grants no redistribution license, so download them yourself from https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-profiles/ and drop them into cluts/ with those exact names. All other looks work without them.

The committed CLUT profiles use portable cluts/<filename> references. The pipeline materializes temporary profiles with absolute paths at runtime, so the repository can be moved without changing tracked files.

To load profiles in RawTherapee’s GUI, export machine-ready copies and load them through Processing Profiles → load from file:

python3 bin/export_gui_profiles.py ~/Desktop/rawtherapee-gui-profiles

Curve-only profiles are also directly loadable from their source folders.

Notes

• bin/rtcli is a re-signed copy of RawTherapee's CLI (the one inside /Applications crashes when launched from a terminal because of its App Sandbox entitlement). After a RawTherapee update, recreate it: copy rawtherapee-cli out of the app bundle, then codesign --remove-signature <copy> and codesign --force --sign - <copy>.

• Set RAWTHERAPEE_CLI=/path/to/rawtherapee-cli to use a different executable.

• RawTherapee diagnostics are preserved when a render fails.

• Validate the repository at any time with python3 bin/validate.py; use --strict-assets to require the locally downloaded Fuji CLUTs.

• Run the automated checks with python3 -m unittest discover -s tests -v.

• Requires: RawTherapee 5.12, Python 3.8+, numpy, and Pillow.

• See cluts/CREDITS.md before redistributing the CLUT files.

• See docs/LOOK-RESEARCH.md for the visual targets, source material, and current calibration limits of the original curve-based looks.

  a