this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2024
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[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (3 children)

When I tried darktable as a complete begginer I was completely lost and ended up learning rawtherapee instead. Would you say it changed now?

Darktable seems more popular than rawtherapee, but is there a big difference feature-wise?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

Darktable is WAY better than RawTherapee. Like, lightyears ahead.

I don't want to talk badly about RT, but it's just trash imo. Development of RT has pretty much stopped, while DT has a huge community and many developers. It has become the only FOSS alternative to stuff like Lightroom.

The only issue I have with DT is that:

  1. There's way too much stuff going on for a beginner, and even with some experience, most features are too hidden due to clutter.
  2. Some defaults are just badly set imo. For example, why do you not want lens correction and some other (neutral) stuff applied automatically?
  3. Many modules are just redundant and should never be touched. There is soo much niche and legacy stuff nobody wants or needs, like 3 different white balance modules for example.

Great news, this preset fixes both of these issues!

It "removes" many of those unnecessary modules from your UI and applies some stuff already for you, which you would anyways, like said lens correction, so you can focus on the important stuff, like adjusting colors, contrasts, and more.

This preset should be the default imo, and it makes DT simple enough to use.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago)

Thanks a lot for the presets, I'll give this another try.

But yeah you could have stopped at darktable being better without the "shit" part 😅

[–] [email protected] 3 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You do need to figure out which modules to use and how to use some of them, its not too difficult when you have all the right modules.

A lot of the modules are old/redundant/deprecated, but still there for legacy reasons. They really clutter up the ui

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 days ago* (last edited 2 days ago) (2 children)

I went down a rabbit hole of YouTube videos and ultimately ended up on like.... One set of settings I pretty much do for most images.

Lens Correction. Exposure; click eyedropper

Basic Adjustments. Color Balance RGB Global Saturation 30% Global Chrome 15% Local Contrast Detail 130%

Filmic RGB. Click black relative exposure Click white relative exposure

Crop image

I would love to hear/read some more stuff. I'm an extremely basic photographer who didn't want to pay for Adobe.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

This is mostly what I use too. Additionally, on images with high ISO I usually add the profiled denoise module, often without changing the default values. If the image has a lot of noise, I sometimes use the preset that only reduces chroma noise (so the image stays grainy, but without the color mismatches)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Yeah I'd say something like that is my baseline too, usually just some added vibrance instead of saturation on the color balance RGB.

I think the tone curve, RGB curve, tone equalizer and colour equalizer are useful if you want a bit more if a look in your images

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Why don't they remove all the old modules? I feel like they're frustrating all their new users.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Legacy reasons I suppose, it would suck to go back to a photo you took a while back, only to find out all your edits are gone because the modules you used are removed.

Some modules get a "deprecated" warning, which imo more modules could use, but there are probably still edge cases where someone might prefer the old modules

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Oh yeah I guess it could just only show them on old edits.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I think they are hidden by default with the scene-referred layout, but they will show up when searching. It's a tough situation UX wise

[–] [email protected] 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Darktable developers pride themselves for their non-destructive processing pipeline and use it as an excuse for how quirky and inflexible their UX is. I believe they are highly competent on the highly technical bits that ultimately very few people see or understand. Personally I can use it to an extent if I unlearn what other software have taught me over decades of UX conventions.

[–] 9488fcea02a9 4 points 3 days ago (2 children)

One of the developers got sick of the UX issues and forked DT.

https://ansel.photos

I only use this stuff occasionally. Is there really a big improvement in ansel over darktable? Or is the ansel dev just super angry for no reason?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

Unfortunately its not much better.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 days ago

I've compared the two a while ago, seems to me like slightly different takes around the same core ideas. It's true that a couple of things in Ansel feel more natural, but it's not much, and it's probably not worth the risk (AFAICT the bus factor is one, compat with DT isn't a goal).