File Paths

RawTherapee makes use of a "cache" folder to store temporary files which are safe to delete, and a "config" folder which stores your RawTherapee settings and saved custom processing profiles. These folders reside in a special place, described below, and have a name that begins with the word "RawTherapee" optionally followed by a suffix. This suffix is set by the person who made the build of RawTherapee you're using. Some examples of what it can look like: The first part, "RawTherapee", is hard-coded. The second part, the suffix, is up to the person who made the build. It might be specific, like "4.0.12", it could be general, like "4", it could be anything else, like "_test", or it could be not set. Take this into account when looking in the locations specified below.
 * RawTherapee
 * RawTherapee4
 * RawTherapee4.0.12
 * RawTherapee4.2
 * RawTherapee_test

Config
The "config" folder contains the "options" file which contains all of your settings from Preferences, the "batch" folder which stores temporary processing profiles of the photos you sent to the Queue, and the "profiles" folder where you can save your custom processing profiles to if you want them to appear in RawTherapee's drop-down list. You could include this folder in your backups so that you can regain all of your settings and custom processing profiles if you install RawTherapee on a new system.

Default locations for this folder (look for the "RawTherapee*" prefix as described above):
 * "Config" in Windows XP


 * "Config" in Windows 7, 8 and 10


 * "Config" in Linux


 * "Config" in OS X
 * Under the Finder's 'Go' menu click 'Go to Folder' (shortcut Command+Shift+g), you can then type/paste any path you want to navigate to, even if it's hidden.
 * Under the Finder's 'Go' menu click 'Go to Folder' (shortcut Command+Shift+g), you can then type/paste any path you want to navigate to, even if it's hidden.

Cache
The "cache" folder contains cached thumbnails, processing profiles, metadata and histograms.

Keep an eye on the "cache" folder as over time it may grow considerably in size! This is mostly due to the cached thumbnails which are stored in the "images" sub-folder. Deleting the "images" sub-folder is safe, you will not lose any image settings, RawTherapee will just have to regenerate the thumbnails.

Default locations for this folder (look for the "RawTherapee*" prefix as described above):
 * "Cache" in Windows XP


 * "Cache" in Windows 7, 8 and 10


 * "Cache" in Linux


 * "Cache" in OS X
 * Under the Finder's 'Go' menu click 'Go to Folder' (shortcut Command+Shift+g), you can then type/paste any path you want to navigate to, even if it's hidden.
 * Under the Finder's 'Go' menu click 'Go to Folder' (shortcut Command+Shift+g), you can then type/paste any path you want to navigate to, even if it's hidden.

Custom config and cache folders
Even though the path and name of the cache and config folders is hard-coded into RawTherapee, as of version 4.0.12.33 you can change them to any absolute path by using the  and   environment variables. How you do that depends on your operating system, so just search on the internet for "how to set environment variables in  ".

Some examples:
 * Windows


 * Linux and OS X

Processing Profiles
If you create your own processing profiles, to have them appear in RawTherapee's "Processing Profiles" list you should save them to the "profiles" folder which you will find inside the "config" folder as described above.

Temporary Folder
The "Edit Current Image in External Editor" tool stores intermediate image files in a temporary folder:
 * Windows
 * The default location is the one stored in the  environment variable, which is usually
 * If you do not have the  environment variable set,   is used.


 * Linux and OS X
 * The default location is the one stored in the  environment variable, which is usually
 * If you do not have the  environment variable set,   is used.