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Darktable 2.4.0 released

darktable.org

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Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#61

Post by k2enemy »

Andrenid wrote: post #30
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #22

So, is this a good replacement for Picasa on windows? In my case, mainly for viewing and editing Canon raw format photos?

It's nowhere near as good as Picasa or Lightroom for bulk editing, sharing, and general photo library management. But it absolutely destroys Picasa for the actual editing of raw files. I'd say if post processing is your focus, it's without a doubt worth the switch. If you're more of a "shoot lots and manage in bulk", then no. I personally find the file/library management aspect of Darktable so lacking that it's perso…

I'm in the same boat as you. I tried Darktable, Capture One, On1, AfterShot Pro, etc. None of them were close to Lightroom. Then, with low expectations I tried Exposure X3 (https://www.alienskin.com/exposure/) and now I've completely replaced Lightroom with it. It might not work for you, but I was pleasantly surprised.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#62

Post by PuffinBlue »

bitL wrote: post #58
kyriakos wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not true. There are two versions of Lightroom, the cloud one and Lightroom Classic. The Classic is the continuation of the regular desktop version and from what I understand its not going anywhere. Adobe cannot afford to take the desktop version away from photographers cause unlike photoshop there is good (or even better) competitors (e.g. Capture One is chewing up Lightroom's market share being faster and acco…

I guess you are going to weep: https://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2017/12/6-14-now-av...

I'm fine thanks. That's lightroom 6. Lightroom 7 (lightroom CC Classic) will be continuing just fine as a non-cloud product.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#63

Post by PuffinBlue »

SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #25
PuffinBlue wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep, and they steadfastly refuse to do so. Its myopic. Photo editing requires photo management to do efficiently. Even the built in filesystem access is poor. Nothing on Linux is acceptable though, so they're not alone, it's just sad that something so promising is so hobbled.

Agreed. part of the process is managing the 1000 photos imported from the camera. So, it's not a Picasa replacement then?

In no way is Darktable a photo manager. At all. In any way.

Its a raw editor only and the docs are clear about this. To edit some files you have to import them, but importing them is for the sole ourpose of performing raw edits. There's some rudimentary tagging/rating abilities but the sorting capabilities are poor and you cant actually reorganise files on disk.

Theres no way you'd import say 20,000 photos (or in my case about 100,000) and keep a catelogue. You'd have to split it into individual shoots/days to get any kind of performance (thats if importing that many wouldnt crash it, it did previously).

They only grudgingly include a file system browser which is also hobbled.

If Darktable actually included photo management as a first class citizen (by that i simply mean even just a simple file browser like lightroom has) it would probably win this particular software space. But the devs choose to actively work against that functionality so its just another minor free app.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#64

Post by PuffinBlue »

jonathankoren wrote: post #54
bedros wrote: post #11

I wish they support photo management, at least import photos into organized folders by date

Serious question: Is there any good photo management software? I’m not even a hobbiest photographer but I’ve got 300GB of photos over 15 years, and it’s a pain in the ass to manage these. I tried Lightroom, but that was excruciatingly slow to import the photos, and on top of that it had very counter intuitive controls. It was also not cheap at all, and subscription based. I tried Google Photos (my current setup), but…

No.

They're all poor in some way. Lightroom is closest, especially with the latest uodate to improve speed in the Classic CC version.

Other than that there are exceptional importers like Photomechnic ($$$) or Rapid Photo Downloader (free) but photo managers are all poor.

Its unbelievable too. All it needs is a free version of lightrooms librart module that works on the embedded raw jpegs (like Photomechnic and Rapid Photo Downloader) and it would win photo management.

Im learning to code with part of the motivation being I'm going to make my own that actually works because its so easy to see whats needed. By next christmas i hooe to have a rough first working attempt.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#65

Post by phkahler »

One thing I really want DarkTable to allow is deletion of images. They say that any kind of file manager features will not be implemented, but IMHO it's a great preview tool and the ability to just delete poor shots would make it much better for triaging a new batch of photos.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#66

Post by kqr »

phkahler wrote: post #65

One thing I really want DarkTable to allow is deletion of images. They say that any kind of file manager features will not be implemented, but IMHO it's a great preview tool and the ability to just delete poor shots would make it much better for triaging a new batch of photos.

Darktable does deletion. If you press "delete" instead of "remove", files are deleted from the file system as well as the library.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#67

Post by kqr »

avaika wrote: post #46
pmoriarty wrote: post #7

As a long time GIMP user, coming to Darktable has been a revelation. I'm super impressed with how powerful and polished Darktable is, and overall I really love it. On the other hand, Darktable has some serious issues that make it less than ideal for me. First, on my old laptop Darktable is super, super slow... especially when the image I'm editing has lots of operations performed on it. In that case, performing a sim…

Yes, sliders are really a pain. However from my experience it's much more convenient to move sliders with keyboard arrows (hover a mouse over slider and use the arrows). it still sucks, but sucks less :)

Did you try the middle mouse button click on the Darktable sliders? That's a great feature which gives you much more control over the sliders.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#68

Post by stevekemp »

PuffinBlue wrote: post #60
stevekemp wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simplified a little. My full hierarchy looks like: ~/Images/$year/$month/$day-title/{ RAW JPG Public } RAW contains all the RAWs, JPG for processed results, and Public for any images that are shared publicly, as opposed to given to paid clients or kept for my own use/reference.

This is fine and all, but Darktable offers no 'ease of use' when actually operating on those nicely organised images. You can do exactly what you just said with PhotoMechanic, or Rapid Photo Downloader, and still open lightroom and navigate the file structure. Trying that with Darktable is a pain. It wants you to import and the file sytem browser is poor. Plus, are you going to edit all the photos you've downloaded?…

Yeah as I mentioned in my original comment I use "rawtherapee" instead. Which doesn't try to take ownership of any directories, import, etc. It just lets you work with the existing structure.

I don't necessarily edit every picture, but I want to look at white-balance, and similar things, for every shot in a specific session. (Most of the time I can replicate settings from one image to the next - when I'm using studio-strobes the lighting doesn't change.)

The only images I outright delete are those where a model blinks mid-shot, or a strobe fails to fire. In an hour-session I might have 750 images, and I'll likely rank/rate all of them, but only export 20% to JPG, and then those will be pruned as I decide which are the good ones.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#69

Post by trop »

avaika wrote: post #46
pmoriarty wrote: post #7

As a long time GIMP user, coming to Darktable has been a revelation. I'm super impressed with how powerful and polished Darktable is, and overall I really love it. On the other hand, Darktable has some serious issues that make it less than ideal for me. First, on my old laptop Darktable is super, super slow... especially when the image I'm editing has lots of operations performed on it. In that case, performing a sim…

Yes, sliders are really a pain. However from my experience it's much more convenient to move sliders with keyboard arrows (hover a mouse over slider and use the arrows). it still sucks, but sucks less :)

In addition, darktable has a newer perspective correction module which does a nice job of automatic fitting. See the write-up at https://www.darktable.org/2016/03/a-new-module-for-automatic....

I can't speak too much to the question of speed, except to say that my nice laptop from 2012 is sluggish with darktable. My decent desktop from 2017 is fairly fluid. Neither has a graphics card, but a decent graphics card with OpenCL support makes things much more fluid. Waiting a minute for a simple operation is not something I've experienced, and suggests, as they say, that something, somewhere, is wrong.

As another commenter writes, the problem is that darktable must do a crazy lot of math to display the image -- every step of the image editing process. There is a good bit of caching along the way, but at some point, the math must be done.

Re: Darktable 2.4.0 released

#70

Post by acidburnNSA »

old-gregg wrote: post #38
acidburnNSA wrote: post #5

The big news with this release is that it's the first to support Windows. I've been using this on linux for a year as a hobbyist Photographer and it's exceedingly glorious. Have not tried out the Windows build but apparently you can do that now [1]. Also if you want to learn a lot about "developing" digital photographs (it really is a digital darkroom), I learned a lot from this youtube list of 42 Darktable tutorial…

What kind of camera are you using? I've been trying _hard_ to switch from Lightroom to Darktable and so far I have been failing to even match the output of in-camera JPEG engine of my Canon 5D Mk4... The skin tone is just not there... like it knows what highlights are and what shadows are but loses something in the middle. Well-lit RAW are fine, but when the light is challenging I always get better results in Lightro…

I'm using a Canon Rebel T5i with Magic Lantern. It gets tones really well for me. Sorry it's not performing for you well.
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