delaboratory is free (GPL), small and simple utility for non destructive image editing, it's available for Linux, Windows and Mac

http://code.google.com/p/delaboratory/

features:
- floating point precision
- RAW support via dcraw
- native support for multiple colorspaces (sRGB, ProPhoto RGB, LAB, CMYK, LCH, HSL, HSV, BW),
- basic operations: CMYK curves, CMYK levels, RGB curves, RGB levels, white balance in LAB, saturation in LAB, LAB curves, BW curve, HSV equalizer, LCH equalizer, recover shadows/highlights, vignette, local contrast, LAB/BW/RGB/CMYK gradients
- expert operations: levels, curves, equalizer, exposure, saturation, white balance, fill, tone, local contrast, auto_dodge/auto_burn, sharpen, vignette, gradient, gaussian blur, recover highlights, recover shadows, channel mixer, high pass, c2g, copy
- histograms, samplers and color matrices

Version 0.8 makes delaboratory interface more user-friendly for casual users.

This is also final release of this code branch - don't expect any new features soon.

You guys have done a spectacular job on this color control editor and i for one am very grateful for your contributions.
Thanks again for this fine program!

I tried it and it didn't seem to see Olympus ORF files so I stayed with raw therapee.

gms most of my photos are ORFs so I assure you it reads ORF

Can you tell me what the error message you got while opening ORF files?

I opened an ORF file just now (Delaboratory 64-bit and 32-bit) and it opened just fine.

Appreciate the update Jacek.

I've downloaded the Mac OSX version and is working beautifully. It keeps getting better. It is so fast and responsive to changes.

Jaceke what a great program, I even gone to read more about color and the techniques it's based on. Partha, thank you so much for helping getting this on Mac OS X!

WW

Hey WW,

Thanks for testing out on the Mac!! Appreciate all your feedback.

Partha

It didn't even see them to load them but I'll try them again today.
amendment: I tried thre more after re installing delaboratory and it loaded them Who knows what was wrong, bad install, bad orf file, but it does work now.

Thanks for the feedback. Please let us know if you have any issues.

Just as a point, you had mentioned RawTherapee. Delaboratory is not a RAW Editor per se. It opens RAW files just like any other programs such as Photoshop. Delaboratory is a color correction utility.

@WW,

You mentioned reading up on color corrections. It's a worthy endeavor. Jacek is a big fan of Dan Margulis (the only writer to be inducted in the Photoshop Hall of fame).

You can find his books (2 of them on Amazon). You can read some of the chapters here: http://www.ledet.com/margulis/articles.html

Hope that helps.