Choose a colour tool by the change you need
For every selectable colour tool, use Colour & Look: all eleven tools. Each entry explains its controls and includes an example.
White balance corrects the overall illuminant. Primary correction pushes colour through overlapping tonal ranges. Colour mixer and Selective colour change hue families. Lab colour separates or balances colour axes. A Colour Range mask supplies spatial and colour limits for a local correction.
Use one clear correction at a time and compare it with the tool bypassed. Saturation strengthens existing colour; a wheel adds a colour push; hue shift rotates colours. The complete controls below explain these differences, profiles, black and white, LUTs and negative conversion.
Colour grading
Open Colour & Look for Primary correction, Print stock and LUTs. Creative profile is in the same section; grain, halation, glow and vignette are in Effects. Click a tool heading to expand it.
Use the colour wheels to shape the look after correcting the photo. They start at neutral and leave the picture alone until moved.
Primary correction affects the whole photo. For a colour push restricted to skin or another area, create a Masks → Colour Range selection and use the wheel under that mask's Colour section. The Masks help page explains how to refine the selection and keep similar-coloured backgrounds out of it.
Creative profile
Choose Warm Portrait, Clear Landscape, Soft Colour, Cinema Dusk, Silver Monochrome or Warm Monochrome for an independent colour look. Amount runs from 0 (no effect) through 100 (the designed look) to 200 (stronger). The switch bypasses it; None removes the selection. Exposure, white balance and film settings stay in place. Profiles work after film rendering and can be combined with presets.
Import profile… adds a validated 3D .cube table to the profile menu and keeps a copy in OmaRAW's profile library. Set LUT colour space to the space the table expects; sRGB is the default. Supported tables have 2–64 entries per axis and no 1D shaper. Camera-log transforms need conversion to a supported space first.
Use the tool menu to save a profile adjustment preset, or include Creative profile when saving a broader preset. An imported LUT is referenced by the saved edit, so transfer the LUT too when moving an edit to another machine. If it is missing, import and select it again before exporting. The same button imports self-contained enhanced .xmp profiles with RGB or HSV tables. Their recorded colour space and Amount limits are automatic; Amount 0 can be a nonzero minimum, and a fixed-amount profile hides that slider. Use the switch for complete bypass. OmaRAW uses its own base rendering. Profiles needing unsupported source adjustments or missing external tables are rejected with an explanation.
Colour wheels: Lift, Gamma, Gain and Offset
The four wheels correct colour and brightness with overlapping effects:
- Lift sets the black level. It has most influence in darker tones and keeps white fixed when the other controls are neutral.
- Gamma shapes the midtones while keeping black and white fixed.
- Gain scales brightness towards the white end while keeping black fixed.
- Offset shifts the whole picture, including both black and white.
Drag the puck towards a colour to add that colour; distance from the centre sets Chroma (strength). The centre is neutral. Hue and Chroma can also be typed precisely. The Level control beneath each wheel adjusts brightness. Neutral Level is 0.000 for Lift/Offset and 1.000 for Gamma/Gain.
Lum Mix, beneath the wheels, controls how colour pushes affect brightness. At 100, where it starts, a colour push also changes brightness: a strong push towards red lightens the picture as well as warming it. Lower it and the colour pushes keep the brightness the Level controls give; at 0 they change colour only. The Level controls work the same at any setting.
For a starting workflow, adjust Offset for the overall balance, Lift for the blacks, Gain for the brighter tones, then Gamma for the midtones. Make small moves and check the picture and scopes. White balance and RAW exposure are in Light & Tone.
Layout and gestures
A wide sidebar shows four dark wheels with colour rings in a 2×2 grid. Choose Single wheel, or click a range name, to enlarge a wheel. A narrow sidebar automatically uses the enlarged view with range tabs.
- Shift-drag makes finer moves. Ctrl-drag locks hue while changing strength; combine them for fine strength changes.
- Scroll over a wheel to nudge strength, or Shift-scroll to nudge hue. Scroll over a slider or number to nudge that value; Shift makes it finer.
- A focused wheel accepts arrow keys. Hold Ctrl to adjust strength with hue locked.
- Double-click, right-click or Home on a wheel clears its colour while keeping Level. Double-click a slider resets only that value.
- A wheel's reset button clears its colour and restores its neutral Level. The panel reset restores all four wheels.
- After / Before compares with primary correction bypassed and keeps all settings. Earlier adjustments remain applied.
The image updates while dragging; at high zoom it briefly uses a softer preview, then restores sharp detail when you release. Each completed drag or numeric scrub is one undo step. The panel menu copies, pastes and saves all four wheels as a preset. Opening the panel and switching views preserve stronger settings.
Built-in looks and imported split-toning tints use these same primary wheels, so their colour adjustments remain visible and editable. Imported split toning is an approximation because Lift and Gain overlap differently from tonal ranges.
Primary correction works after Tone or Film tone. With a print stock on, it works before the print instead. Strong settings can push colours beyond the output range; use the preview and scopes to judge the result.
Colour
White balance
White balance is the first tool in Light & Tone. It offers Temperature, Tint, As shot, Auto and the neutral picker.
RGB primaries
RGB primaries changes the working colour space's red, green and blue primaries. Each Hue slider covers −20° to +20° for practical colour correction; Purity controls how far the primary lies from neutral. Tint hue and Tint amount can deliberately colour the neutral axis. These are global colour changes, so use Colour mixer or Selective colour when you want to adjust one hue range.
Vibrance and saturation
- Vibrance strengthens the muted colours first and is kinder to skin.
- Saturation strengthens every colour equally.
Advanced adds Colourfulness, Colour brightness and Hue shift. Overall Contrast has its single home in Light. These settings share this tool's effect switch, reset and adjustment presets.
Open Colour mixer, Selective colour, Black and white or Lab colour by its heading. Lab colour is visible in the Colour & Look section by default. Enable RGB primaries through Customise tools. Camera profiles and optional Negative conversion are in Prepare. Colour wheels and LUTs are in Colour & Look.
Adjust skin or another selected colour
Open Masks → Colour Range, then click or drag across the colour to select it. Use Range width and Softness to refine the selection. Under Colour, push the wheel towards a colour to add it, use Saturation to strengthen the existing colour, or Lightness to brighten it. Similar colours elsewhere are selected too; add a shape to limit the correction to the person or object. The Masks help page covers the wheel, precise sliders and range controls.
Image Match
Open Colour & Look → Image Match. Drop a JPEG, PNG, TIFF or WebP onto the reference thumbnail, choose a file, or press Use current edit to capture the rendered appearance of the photo open in Develop, including RAW edits. The reference stays fixed while you edit or change photos. Replace and Clear reference change the reference without removing an applied match.
In Choose or Replace, click a photograph to see its preview beside the file list. Arrow keys browse the images too. Press Open to use the selected reference, or Cancel to keep the current one.
Choose Consistency for photographs from a shoot, or Creative Look for the reference's palette and contrast. Select Exposure, White balance, Tone / contrast, Colour and optional Grain separately. Colour, tone and grain have independent strengths. Changing these strengths does not change the exposure or white-balance correction.
Protect skin-like colours limits colour shifts in skin and similarly coloured subjects, including some wood and fur. Turn it off when those colours should follow a stronger treatment. It affects the draft before Apply and the saved match afterward, with ordinary Undo.
Press Preview match to compare the reference and target. Before / After changes the target view without writing an edit. 100%, or a click on the fitted target, shows native pixels for checking grain and detail; drag the target to inspect another area. Fit returns to the whole image. Both sides use OmaRAW's viewing transform and monitor colour profile.
Apply to photo saves one editable Image Match adjustment. Your other tools keep their settings. After Apply, the five component switches, Colour strength, Tone strength, Grain strength and Grain adjustment controls update the photo directly, without another Preview or Apply. Switching a component off keeps its settings and strength; switching it on restores them. Switching all five off shows the photo as it was before the match. Each switch or slider drag can be undone. They read the saved settings when you return to a matched photo, even without a reference. Preview match starts a new draft; its switches and strengths affect the comparison until you apply it. Open Edit applied match to change its exposure, warmth, tint, tone, colour and grain controls. The heading's effect switch hides or shows the entire match; its reset removes only Image Match. Ordinary Undo and Redo restore the complete previous match. Repeating a match replaces this adjustment rather than stacking another correction over it.
For a batch, select photographs in the Library or filmstrip, open a target in Develop and press Match selection. Each target is analysed separately using the same reference and choices. A reference captured with Use current edit is skipped if it is in the selection. Stop matching leaves completed photos editable. Undo last batch reverses the completed matches, skipping a photo if you have edited it since. Individual photo Undo remains available afterward.
Grain adjustment edits the proposed amount, size, roughness, coloured character and shadow/midtone/highlight distribution before applying. Grain size is relative to a 3000-pixel long edge so differently sized photos have a similar apparent scale at equal output size. Check at 100% as well as Fit. After applying, the same settings remain available in Edit applied match.
Analysis uses quiet areas at native resolution and adds only the estimated grain missing from the target, including noise revealed by the proposed tone correction. A clean reference adds no grain. If the target is already grainier, the panel explains that a separate denoise step is needed. Image Match never automatically denoises or smooths detail. Uncertain texture or compression samples are rejected and reported; you can still set grain manually.
The first version runs locally using statistical colour, tone and grain analysis. It works best with related subject matter and lighting. Consistency keeps corrections conservative for different compositions. Creative Look transfers contrast even when exposure cannot be estimated reliably; use Tone strength to control the effect. Bright highlights limit nearby tone adjustments without suppressing the entire shadow lift. Mostly grey references keep small coloured subjects coloured. Extreme looks can need manual refinement; check the warning and comparison before applying. Re-preview existing matches to use the revised estimate; saved settings keep their original appearance. Grain and skin protection are estimates, so review difficult textures, mixed lighting, strong colour treatments and compressed references before applying a batch.
HSL by colour
Eight bands, Red through Magenta, each with Hue, Saturation and Luminance. Darken a blue sky with its Luminance, shift the greens with Hue, or pull the saturation of one colour without touching the rest.
Lab colour
Richer, better separated colour without the picture getting lighter, darker or harsher. Lab describes a colour as a lightness and two colour axes, green to magenta and blue to yellow; these sliders work on the two colour axes only, so brightness never moves. Every slider rests at 0 and runs from −100 to 100; double-click one to put it back.
- Colour separation pulls the picture's colours apart from each other and from grey. Muted colours gain the most, strong ones are held back so nothing clips, and greys stay grey. To the left it draws them together.
- By colour family: Greens, Reds & magentas, Blues and Yellows & warm tones make one family richer or quieter and leave the others alone. Lift the greens of foliage without touching skin, or quieten a loud blue sky.
- Remove a cast: Green–magenta and Blue–yellow slide every colour along one axis. Move the slider away from the cast you see; the second one also serves as a last touch of cooler or warmer.
Reset Lab colour puts every slider back to zero.
Show curves
The sliders only place points on two curves, one for each colour axis. Show curves opens them for shaping by hand, the way Lab curves work in other editors.
- a · green–magenta and b · blue–yellow: the strips along the bottom and the left show which end is which. The readout is in Lab's own units, −128 to +127.
- The centre of the square is neutral grey. Keep the line through it and greys stay grey.
- Steepen the line through the centre to pull colours apart on that axis; do it on one side only to enrich, say, the warm colours and leave the cool ones. Move the centre point to shift the whole picture along the axis.
- Most real colours sit close to the centre, so small moves go a long way.
A curve shaped by hand is no longer something the sliders can describe, so they read zero and a note says so; moving a slider then replaces the hand-made shape. ↺ beside the axis buttons straightens the curve shown.
Lab colour shares the engine's Lab tone curve with Tone regions (under Curves), so presets, snapshots and copy/paste carry them together. While Lab colour is in use, Tone regions act on lightness alone (their colour looks a touch less saturated than otherwise); put Lab colour back to zero and they return to their usual behaviour.
Selective colour
Eight hue bands with hue, saturation and brightness, plus Smoothing and neutral protection under the disclosure: smoothing stops adjacent bands from tearing, and neutral protection keeps greys grey.
Advanced colour controls
Open Advanced in Vibrance & saturation.
- Colourfulness: perceptual colour intensity independent of brightness.
- Colour brightness: brightness of the coloured areas.
- Hue shift: rotates every hue.
Camera profile
Shows the photo's camera. OmaRAW calibrates its colour automatically, with no download or setup.
Apply camera look appears when an included preset matches your camera. It adjusts contrast and saturation for a look inspired by the camera's JPEGs. Exposure, white balance, crop, local edits, local contrast and detail stay. It replaces Tone and Colour balance settings and switches off an active Print stock or DCP. Undo restores your previous look.
The Colour profile menu offers Automatic colour and, for supported cameras, Community colour · included. Community colour is an alternative supplied by RawTherapee contributors; it works offline. Only matching camera profiles appear. A DCP supplies its own colour and contrast, replaces Print stock and parks the regular tone controls. Your other adjustments stay. Choose Automatic colour to restore those controls; this does not reset them or undo a camera-look preset. Colour & Look → Creative profile can add a separate look on top.
Additional profiles → Import profile… adds a DCP you own and retains a copy. Profiles folder… scans an existing collection and its subfolders; Refresh picks up changes. Search appears for larger collections. Unavailable profiles explain why they cannot be used. The technical input-colour controls remain under Advanced input colour.
The 54 included community profiles and camera-look presets are freely redistributable; their licences and credits are supplied with the app. These are community interpretations, not exact manufacturer picture styles. DCP rendering is approximate and currently uses daylight calibration rather than blending lighting calibrations. JPEGs already contain their camera rendering, so these choices are for RAWs.
Advanced input colour contains the original calibration controls:
- Input profile: how the camera's colours are interpreted. The standard matrix is right for nearly every file.
- Rendering intent and Gamut clipping: how out-of-range colours are handled on the way in.
- Working profile: the colour space the edit runs in; linear Rec.2020 is the default.
Black and white
Switch the tool on to convert the photo to monochrome. The eight colour sliders control how bright the original Reds, Oranges, Yellows, Greens, Aquas, Blues, Purples and Magentas become. Move left to darken or right to brighten; zero keeps the neutral mix. For example, lower Blues for darker skies, raise Oranges for lighter skin, or adjust Greens for foliage. Moving a slider enables the tool. Neighbouring colours blend smoothly and neutral greys are protected.
Open Filter controls for Filter size (a broader response gives gentler filtering) and Highlights (preserves brightness in lighter areas). Each slider can be reset individually; the tool menu resets the complete conversion. These settings are included in adjustment presets, copy/paste, undo and exports.
LUT
The LUT runs after Tone or Film tone, and before a print stock. With normal tone mapping, choose a LUT intended for a rendered picture and set the colour space its maker specifies. Choosing a log colour space converts the LUT's input into that encoding; it does not undo tone mapping. With a print stock on, the regular tone mapper is parked, so the LUT feeds the print and the same LUT can look different.
- File: a .cube, .png, .3dl or .gmz look-up table.
- Colour space: the space the LUT expects its input in; the LUT's maker says which.
- Interpolation: tetrahedral is the usual choice.
RGB primaries
Choose RGB primaries through Customise tools. Hue rotates each primary; purity controls how saturated it is. Tint adds a hue to the neutral axis. These controls affect the overall colour rendering.
Negative conversion
Choose Negative conversion through Customise tools for photographed or scanned film. Prepare negative enables conversion and disables Tone, Film tone and the base curve. Select colour or monochrome stock, set the film-base RGB values from an unexposed border, then adjust density range and scan exposure bias. Shadow/highlight RGB corrections handle colour casts; paper black, grade, gloss and print exposure shape the positive image. Film-base values are set manually.