RawTherapee

If you're now also looking at non-free apps, Photoshop Elements with the optional 3rd party Elements+ plugin gives you access to a large chunk of the full Photoshop at a fraction of the cost.

PSE comes with a slightly watered down version of the full ACR.

PSE also comes with a fully featured DAM which enables you to do "google-like" searches to find images in your catalogue.

Both PSE and E+ have free trial periods.

I have been using the combo for around 10 years now.

I also have Raw Therapee and can get a good raw conversion, but I think other raw converters make it easier. Of course you have to pay for them.

I had previously done a couple of raw conversions in RT. Problem was in this file, raising shadows created some side effects.

Update

Two days ago I bought ACDSee. For anyone interested, it has a large discount finishing today (04/09/24)

However I found it lacking in many ways. I created a subject mask to raise highlights. That was ok until adding contrast and a few other things introduced artifacts around the edge of the mask - so bin that idea.
It has a good tool called LEQ. That is the goto for shadows and highlights. Works on the whole pic but is clean, unlike the problems I found in RT.
But sharpening and noise reduction are lacking. In fact raising shadows introduced a ridiculous amount of noise - in the sky and the subject. I know the original pic was not great.
Faststone sharpening is at least on a par with ACDSee - I expect better for a paid app.
ACDSee has a forum and also an online page called Connect where account holders can discuss. I signed up to both but required "validation"
I had a lot of questions to ask but couldn't post. Just a few minutes ago the validation came through for Connect. Too little too late... I am going to cancel and get a refund.

Earlier this evening I signed up for the free trial of Lightroom. In a much shorter time I had by far the best edit of the pic we had been playing with in Weekly C&C.
I have a lot of issues with the Lightroom interface - dull text on dark grey??? My eyes are good for my age but I shouldn't have to squint to read the options. I can't see where to change things yet - not sure if it's possible... Everything seems geared to working in THEIR cloud. I want to work in my cloud - on my Laptop. It is doable, just have to work it out. The save to jpg (they call it export - why?) is dangerous. If I hadn't checked what was happening I would have overwritten my original sooc jpg. But if you select custom name, it doesn't fill the edit box with the raw filename stub. You have to type it in yourself or copy paste from elsewhere. What century are we in??? Then I discovered the "Export with previous" menu item. Previous what??? Filename of course... Duuuuhhhh Just to be different.
I had tried Elements a while ago. Should have given it more of a workout, but didn't like it for some reason.

So, I don't like the Adobe subscription model, DXO is rather expensive at this point. The LR interface sucks. But the result is there...

If the creators of Faststone ever decided to knuckle down and give it some enhancements - like raw developing, it would easily be the best tool. Simple intuitive interface, uncluttered, configurable... I need to sleep...

FastStone can convert most raw files, even early Sigma/Foveon X3Fs - but you have to select it to do so, otherwise you just get the extracted JPEG.

As to sharpening, I find that applying USM three times is almost as good as RT's deconvolution, try:

2.3px, 13 amt; then 0.7px, 23 amt; then 0.3px, 29 amt .... vary to taste ...

Both Photoshop Elements and Elements+, which combined give access to a large chunk of the full Photoshop at a fraction of the cost, are non-subscription.

I started with Elements 7 long ago but made the mistake of enabling the Catalog thingy which slowed my Windows XP computer to a crawl and it could not be turned off, thanks Adobe. So bad that I bought an Elements 6 CD cheap so that I could re-load the app if necessary.

Then I tried to add some DCP profiles for my Sigma camera into the ACR profiles folder ... nope, they were invisible to ACR (5.4?).

Shortly after that my computer became completely Adobe-free and have never looked back since ...

Elements 7 is at least 5 versions/updates back from the current version.

You can now run the catalogue, raw converter (ACR) and editor separately.

PSE runs super quick on both my Win 10 and Win 11 computers.

I know that...

Do you mean just selecting the raw in the thumbnails pane? I was under the impression Faststone only worked on jpgs. Will investigate.

Never thought of applying sharpening more than once. I do normally use USM with radius <= 1.0 Varying the radius is effective depending on the pic

No problem.

I was clarifying for the sake of accuracy because your comment:

"So, I don't like the Adobe subscription model, ..."

could be interpreted by some who are not aware that PSE is subscription based when in reality it is not.

I am using Classic, although the plan seems to include all versions.

Yes I found the Local Storage pretty quickly - why on first use do they assume you already have some photos stored on their cloud?

I get the interface is geared around DAM. Something to definitely use as one's photo catalogue grows. But initially, for me at least, it's about editing.

Go to Settings and click on the RAW tab:

I remember selecting that once and it ran awfully slow. Anyway, I hope to be using something more advanced in the future

Thx for that tip.

I had a play with successive sharpening of a lesser amount decreasing radius each time. It did a nice job bringing up a feather pattern on a bird's wing.

For anyone interested,...
ACDSee Ultimate 2025 will be released in the next few days.. It has a pre-Sale discount running right now, costs about 75 USD as a one-time purchase fee.
Apparently the masking and selection tools among other things have been improved with some AI techniques