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Darktable 4.0

darktable.org

11–20 of 116 posts

Re: Darktable 4.0

#11

Really glad there's advanced open-source tools like darktable and RawTherapee. I've switched back and forth between RawTherapee and darktable for a few years now. I prefer the UI and workflow or RT, but dt has better performance on my machine. And RT has this strange longstanding bug where the image is extremely blurry during editing, and only becomes clear after exporting. According to a github issue, a workaround i…

I'm also glad it exists but have never figured out how to use it on MacOS. I believe I somehow imported my entire /pictures folder at some point, producing many thousands of images in a film roll; I just downloaded 4.0.0 and have spent some time trying to figure out how to reset the film roll, or darktable altogether. Or how to create a new library. There's no typical top toolbar on MacOS.

In clicking around, I've selected "add to library," and darktable is now beachballed. CaptureOne will continue to be my default.

(Before someone points this out, let me acknowledge that the apparent problems with darktable are undoubtedly my fault in some capacity and that I'm Using It Wrong, or that I can't properly read the manual, or that I should watch more videos on how to use darktable.)

Re: Darktable 4.0

#12

The name 'Darktable' reminded me of an IDE that was being plugged on HN a lot around the year 2012 -ish. It had a lot of momentum at the time as it was plugged a lot on HN, it was open source and had a similar feel to Atom. But I have not heard of it since and I'm finding it hard to recall the name. Weird.

The name "Darktable" is a play on Adobe Lightroom, since "lightroom" is a combination of "light table" and "darkroom", both concepts from film photography.

Re: Darktable 4.0

#13
Let's see if this changed anything.

But my previous experience with editing Sony RAWs on Rawtherappe and Darktable wasn't good.

The color science is missed up in Darktable and in Raw therappe, I just couldn't get something decent out.

I would be editing for an hour and end up with a weird looking image, while in lightroom I would be done in 10 minutes.

People might say that I'm just used to lightroom but I'm not, I was using Capture one, then didn't shoot anything for multiple years, then just went pack to Lightroom and could edit photos without major frustrations and get decent results quickly.

Creative apps in general are a very weak point of the Linux desktop, and when they exist, that have many weird requests and problems that just using them on windows is easier(Davinci resolve requiring the crappy closed source AMD drivers)

Re: Darktable 4.0

#14

Let's see if this changed anything. But my previous experience with editing Sony RAWs on Rawtherappe and Darktable wasn't good. The color science is missed up in Darktable and in Raw therappe, I just couldn't get something decent out. I would be editing for an hour and end up with a weird looking image, while in lightroom I would be done in 10 minutes. People might say that I'm just used to lightroom but I'm not, I w…

First time I'm hearing this. I think Sony owners make up a sizable portion of the user base.

I never had an issue with the RAWs from an a6300 and another entry level Sony mirrorless. Though I never used anything other than dt, so maybe I don't know what I'm missing.

Re: Darktable 4.0

#15

Really glad there's advanced open-source tools like darktable and RawTherapee. I've switched back and forth between RawTherapee and darktable for a few years now. I prefer the UI and workflow or RT, but dt has better performance on my machine. And RT has this strange longstanding bug where the image is extremely blurry during editing, and only becomes clear after exporting. According to a github issue, a workaround i…

I'm also glad it exists but have never figured out how to use it on MacOS. I believe I somehow imported my entire /pictures folder at some point, producing many thousands of images in a film roll; I just downloaded 4.0.0 and have spent some time trying to figure out how to reset the film roll, or darktable altogether. Or how to create a new library. There's no typical top toolbar on MacOS. In clicking around, I've se…

To reset Darktable’s databases, delete the two databases (files ending in “.db”) in the equivalent to ~/.config/darktable on your Mac.

One contains your custom configurations like presets, the other contains info about file locations, ratings, film rolls, etc.

Deleting and reimport takes time when a lot of files are involved, but is my preferred way of handling the changes of large scale file operations.

But film rolls might not be the best way to manage files.

After six years, I found searching the database using tags and Exif data such as camera and date ranges with the collection tool works better for me.

What also helps me is never deleting or moving an image file.

That way the database stays current and I avoid the busy work of file and folder manager.

To put it another way, for me flat search is better than hierarchy navigation.

Re: Darktable 4.0

#16
post #4

Really glad there's advanced open-source tools like darktable and RawTherapee. I've switched back and forth between RawTherapee and darktable for a few years now. I prefer the UI and workflow or RT, but dt has better performance on my machine. And RT has this strange longstanding bug where the image is extremely blurry during editing, and only becomes clear after exporting. According to a github issue, a workaround i…

I wish the effort is united between dt and rt (and maybe digiKam for management), then we'd have a Blender-level competitor against LightRoom maybe

This reminds me, I upgraded to the latest Ubuntu LTS and now digikam won’t open! This is with the latest app image, and there is some system library version mismatch. I looked up a bug report for the same error message that came up on a different program, and it seems app image isn’t as self contained as I thought! I recently bought a used Canon Pro 100 printer and was having fun printing my photos until this bug preventing me from opening digiKam!

Re: Darktable 4.0

#17
What's the reason behind this "As always, please don’t use the autogenerated tarball provided by github, but only our tar.xz file. The checksums are:"

Re: Darktable 4.0

#18
> This gamut sanitization is the third and last to be added to darktable, which now has a fully-sanitized color pipeline from input (color calibration), through artistic changes (color balance rgb) to output (filmic v6). Users can now color-grade pictures safely in the knowledge that invalid input colors can be recovered in the least destructive fashion possible early in the pipeline, and valid colors can’t be pushed out of gamut along the pipeline.

Oh my goodness this sounds amazing

Re: Darktable 4.0

#19

Let's see if this changed anything. But my previous experience with editing Sony RAWs on Rawtherappe and Darktable wasn't good. The color science is missed up in Darktable and in Raw therappe, I just couldn't get something decent out. I would be editing for an hour and end up with a weird looking image, while in lightroom I would be done in 10 minutes. People might say that I'm just used to lightroom but I'm not, I w…

I shoot Sony and use Darktable exclusively.

I think your problem might be the base curve module and its default "Sony" preset, which looks like garbage. Try setting it to "neutral", it should look a lot better (presets are under the little arrow next to the "base curve" header).

The base curve presets, if I understand correctly, aim to make the photo look similar to the out of camera JPEGs. In my opinion, they look like garbage.

But these days I use Filmic for everything. My process is basically switch off base curve, switch on Filmic, adjust exposure so that mid exposure looks reasonable, adjust white and black exposure in Filmic to taste and done.

The important thing to me is that this works for every photo, not just the easy ones. ETTR photos of high dynamic range scenes work just the same.

I'll occasionally run the photo through DXO and export a DNG with DXO's noise reduction for further work in Darktable too. Makes the shadows noise-free no matter how hard you push them.

Re: Darktable 4.0

#20

Let's see if this changed anything. But my previous experience with editing Sony RAWs on Rawtherappe and Darktable wasn't good. The color science is missed up in Darktable and in Raw therappe, I just couldn't get something decent out. I would be editing for an hour and end up with a weird looking image, while in lightroom I would be done in 10 minutes. People might say that I'm just used to lightroom but I'm not, I w…

> The color science is missed up in Darktable […], I just couldn't get something decent out.

If you want help you need to explain what you did or tried. Did you work in display referred or scene referred? I can recommend submitting one of your raw files to a Play Raw[0]. People will edit your raw file and send back an .xmp file with the edit metadata so that you can see what they did.

  [0] https://discuss.pixls.us/c/processing/playraw/30
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