RapidRAW
Shares rank 10 of 12 photo editors by recommenders
A free raw photo editor, recommended as a Lightroom alternative and for Linux users, with frequent updates. Critics say it still trails Lightroom and has colour problems on Linux.
A free raw photo editor, recommended as a Lightroom alternative and for Linux users, with frequent updates. Critics say it still trails Lightroom and has colour problems on Linux.
10 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 7
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 70%
Recommended in 4 of 13 months
- November 2025: not recommended
- December 2025: not recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: not recommended
- March 2026: recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: not recommended
- June 2026: not recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: not recommended
- September 2026: not recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it doesn’t carry the badge
- 7 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, not met.
- 2.3 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 4 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Frequent updates and new features
“the developer is super active and releases new features every couple of weeks”
Comment from 29 Jul 2026 in “Darktable” “The recent updates list is so impressive. Good steady stream of updates.”
Comment from 19 Apr 2026 in “The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe”
Other photo editors people recommend
The four most recommended other photo editors, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Photopea | 84 | 13 | 87% | 11 | 6 yrs4 owners | Approved |
| Affinity Photo | 81 | 41 | 66% | 11 | — | — |
| Adobe Lightroom | 68 | 75 | 48% | 10 | 17 yrs6 owners | — |
| Pixelmator Pro | 29 | 9 | 76% | 10 | — | Approved |
| RapidRAWThis page | 7 | 3 | 70% | 4 | — | — |
What people said
9 of the 10 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the developer is super active and releases new features every couple of weeks”
“the AI leaves even worse artifacts, and the low-tech solution, that is, manually selecting what you want to copy over, is not available”
“offers a good lightroom alternative nowadays”
“No tools on Linux (RawTherapee, Darktable, RapidRAW) render their colors correctly no matter how you mess with the sliders”
“It is nice to at least see some options like RapidRaw try their hand at AI/ML masking”
“The recent updates list is so impressive. Good steady stream of updates.”
“it's been tough as most features are just trying to catch up to LR.”
“this is exactly what I'm looking for”
“Worthy mention of RapidRAW for photo editing on Linux”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.