Yes, It Processes RAW
What TETHER STUDIO actually does to a RAW file, and what it deliberately leaves to something else.
This page exists because our own site caused a misunderstanding. We spend a lot of words telling photographers they can pair TETHER STUDIO with any editor they like, which is true, and it reads to a lot of people as though the app cannot process a RAW file at all.
It can. There is a full RAW pipeline in the app. Here is exactly what it does.
The Pipeline
- Decode — RAW files are decoded with LibRaw. Not the embedded JPEG preview, the actual sensor data
- White balance — applied as camera multipliers, or set manually, or sampled from a neutral in the frame with the eyedropper
- Demosaic — Bayer interpolation to full colour
- Colour matrix — camera native colour converted into a working space
- HueSatMap — DCP camera profile applied, the same profile format Adobe Camera Raw uses
- Working space — the pipeline runs in 32-bit float ProPhoto RGB, so highlight and shadow data survives the maths instead of being clipped early
- Look — the TETHER Standard look is applied on top as a tone and colour rendering
That is the same class of pipeline as Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One, or darktable. Decode, white balance, demosaic, matrix, profile, look. The steps are not novel. They are just done properly rather than skipped.
Where The Embedded JPEG Is Used
The embedded JPEG does get used, and it is worth being straight about where, because this is the detail that causes the confusion.
- Instant thumbnails — the moment a frame lands, so you see something immediately rather than waiting on a decode
- Smart Cull analysis — blur, focus and exposure scoring run against the fast preview so that culling keeps up during rapid capture
It is a speed path for the things that need to be instant. It is not what you are looking at when you inspect an image, and it is not what gets exported.
Camera Control
ISO, aperture and shutter speed are readable and settable from the Mac over PTP, with per-brand implementations for Canon, Fujifilm, Sony, Nikon and others. You do not have to reach for the camera to change exposure.
What It Does Not Do
This part matters as much as the rest, because a tool that claims everything is not useful to anybody.
- No layers, no masking, no local adjustments — there is no healing brush, no gradient, no luminosity mask
- No retouching — frequency separation, dodge and burn, compositing all happen somewhere else
- No catalogue — this is session based, not a library that owns your archive going back nine years
- macOS only — there is no Windows build and there is not one planned
TETHER STUDIO handles capture, live view, culling, colour rendering and export. Final retouching belongs in Photoshop or Affinity Photo, and heavy catalogue work belongs in something built for it. Pairing it with an editor is a choice about scope. It is not a workaround for a missing RAW engine.
Export
- RAW passthrough, TIFF at 8 or 16 bit, JPEG, PNG
- ICC profiles for sRGB, AdobeRGB, ProPhoto RGB and Display P3
- IPTC metadata, XMP sidecars, output sharpening, resize, watermarking, rename templates
- Batch export runs in the background while you keep shooting