I really, really want to like Darktable, mostly because of the name lol. I must’ve tried it 8 or 10 times over the years, but I just can’t get my head around it. Something about the design language or the UI or something just doesn’t click for me and I can’t get decent images out of it. So I keep going back to Rawtherapee, even though I’d rather not…
Every major update has broken something or fundamentally changed my workflow to such a degree that I no longer feel I understand the program. I currently use it in a semi-automated setup and I’ll likely have my package manager ignore its upgrades in the future barring total breakage of the package. Note: I’m not saying the program is bad, it’s just not something I’m interested in constantly tweaking/relearning if a future update is just going to break it.
I just learned about Ansel, which is a fork by someone who did a ton of work for DT but was ultimately too opinionated and got the boot. Apparently it’s way more streamlined and easier to work with. YMMV.
I’ve also heard about vkdt, which is very early, but still something to look at.
If something is broken, please file a bug report on github. AFAIK you should be able to work however you please, using any modules that are available, dating back almost to program inception.
The defaults change, but if you have a workflow dialed in, make a style and have at it.
The author of Ansel did not “get the boot,” he left on his own accord. That is for the better, he is so toxic it was effecting the project.
Have you read the basic editing section in the manual?
You can share a raw image at https://discuss.pixls.us and people will edit it and post the sidecar so you can see their edits.
RawTherapee is also good tho.
Yes, and I understand the process pretty well I think, as well as what I’m striving to output (long time Lightroom user). But the DT just doesn’t respond how I expect it to, with unexpected results. Frustrating.
Wasn’t aware of the pixls site though; I like that idea!
If you expected to apply your lightroom workflow, then you will be frustrated, yes.
Personally i’m okay with the UI, but the default rendering is often so bad that I have to “fix” every single image. To me it’s either Raw therapee or just reboot into Windows …
You should make a style to apply that brings you (close) to what you want. Out of the box, dakrtable shows you a minimally processed image. Its your job to take it from there.
It shows me a very wrongly processed image. It was better when I used Fuji, but even then it was never anywhere close to what an unprocessed bland raw file should like.
This is too vague to provide any further guidance. Again, darktable shows you a minimally processed raw image by default. You can get a good looking rendering by adding a few more modules in a style and applying that style by default.
