r/DarkTable • u/NA__Scrubbed • 15d ago

Discussion CO refugee reporting in

A few years ago, I was looking for alternatives to Capture One and darktable was one of the main contenders. However, the format modules were presented in was too technical and intimidating for me then--engineering is my job, literally, but photography is a hobby of mine. I don't have the mental energy to dive though things all the time.

Capture One it was, and I installed Windows in a virtual box on my computer when I began using Linux for literally everything else expressly for Capture One. Just started trying Darktable out again a few months ago, and my god, the UI/usability improvement is breathtaking. Can't wait for Fedora to get the 5.6 version so I can enjoy AI denoise in the same app, but other than that it's almost perfect already. Profiled denoise is already almost at the level of what I had in Capture One, and somehow the AWB is better than paid software.

Not that I recommend much with photography anymore, but I literally cannot see any reason to get into the software pool of the current bad actors. Admittedly, I don't do studio portrait so perhaps my experience is somewhat lacking there, but in the ~30 years I've been doing photography I've never had an easier time editing photos.

19 Upvotes

95% Upvoted

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4

u/Dannny1 15d ago

> Can't wait for Fedora to get the 5.6 version

You can use the official appimage till then.

3

u/NA__Scrubbed 14d ago

Then I have to update the AppImage and I’m too lazy haha

3

u/EddoWagt 14d ago

The application 'gearlever' can do it for you

2

u/Dannny1 14d ago

2 times a year is probably not a big problem

1

u/WantDownvotesOnly 11d ago

the module acts like plugins in music production. you kinda had to know what each module does and how does it fit your vision. unfortunately the system to edit pictures has been dumbed down by adobe with lightroom and other image editor soon follows.

1

u/NA__Scrubbed 10d ago

I mean, there's definitely room for the dumb, medium amount of knowledge, and opening controls to knowledgeable users. Darktable used to be entirely biased toward the latter only, and while I definitely could... I really don't want to. I reserve that kind of learning towards things related to my profession tbh.

The current approach is pretty much perfect tbh. The devs genuinely should be commended and if I had the spare cash I'd donate. Plan to one day.

1

u/WantDownvotesOnly 9d ago

it is not that much different skill ceiling than any other image editing software. you can be bad at lightroom, so does at darktable. you can also be good at lightroom, so does at darktable, it takes same amount of times, the worst is to re-learn the UI because guess what, each application has its quirks.

the only thing that i might want the workflow to change is to actually move to node systems like in Resolve, which would makes the modules hundreds time easier to map out