
Darktable 3.2.1 - mycernerapi
https://www.darktable.org/news/
======
geppetto
Workflow changed with darktable 3 and to get the most out of it I recommend
reading this article: [https://pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-
modul...](https://pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-modules-
help/) Many modules - that still work - are now deprecated in favour of RGB
workflow new modules. The article above suggests proper alternatives for each
of them.

~~~
hatsunearu
It's mostly the same since 3.x though. The filmic rgb code got a pretty spicy
color science update though. I'd even wager it's better than Lightroom in that
aspect.

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2bitencryption
I will definitely give this update a try today!

After switching to Linux I had trouble replacing CaptureOne, mostly because of
its simplicity. Pretty much every setting has a sensible default, and making
the most important changes to a photo (exposure, sharpening, noise reduction,
levels, etc) can be done without being exposed to any overly-complicated UI.

For awhile, I switched rapidly between Darktable and RawTherapee, not really
satisfied with either. Even after doing my best to learn the ins and outs of
each, I could still make my photos look much nicer in 10mins in CaptureOne
than in 30mins in Darktable/RawTherapee.

I settled on RawTherapee over DarkTable last month. It's still the case that I
can't get as good results in RawTherapee as I can in CaptureOne (not because
RT is not powerful, but rather because there are SO many knobs/switches/etc
and it's hard to find the ones that actually do what I want).

The moral of this rant is, I'm exited to try this new version of DT, and
hopefully I can finally settle on a RAW editor that only shows me the knobs
that matter to me by default without making me feel like I'm playing with a
747's control panel.

~~~
jamesponddotco
I was a Lightroom Classic user before fully moving to Darktable, and now I get
better results with Darktable. Not because it is easier to work with, but
because the rendering engine for Fujifilm RAW files is miles ahead of whatever
Adobe uses.

Still miss my film simulations, though. They were great starting points when
editing a big photo shoot.

I should give RawTherapee a try. The UI with Darktable is definitely its
biggest disadvantage.

~~~
Derbasti
There are great free LUTs out there that can emulate the Fuji film simulations
quite well. That might be worth a try.

~~~
jamesponddotco
Stuart Sowerby[1] released a few that I will try as soon as the pandemic is
over, and I can go outside for photo shoots again. From the comparisons I saw,
they look pretty damn close to the real thing.

[1] [https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-
profiles/](https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-profiles/)

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podiki
Darktable is fantastic, if a bit of a beast to learn. It is what finally let
me sever ties to Windows/Mac for Adobe software.

I put together a little guide [1] to FOSS for photography a couple of years
ago that I think is still pretty relevant (happy to hear about anything I
should update!), including resources for learning Darktable.

[1]
[https://9bladed.com/post/foss_photography/](https://9bladed.com/post/foss_photography/)

~~~
andrei_says_
How does one manage round trip to photoshop with darktable?

With lr it’s one click and the edited image appears in the strip.

~~~
podiki
Depends on what you want to do, if you want the edited photo in an external
program, you can export it with a click to the open it elsewhere (and re-
import it back if you need). If you want to do raw edits, you'll need to make
sure changes are synced via a sidecar XMP file, but I'm not sure what things
will overlap or not with external programs. So you can use Darktable for
organization and then do edits elsewhere, if that's what you want, though
Darktable is more about its editing capabilities than as a database. It does
give you tagging and do all that too. You can also extend with LUA, so
probably you can have a simple script to automate any trip out to another
program (I've seen some for doing things like HDR editing, for instance).

------
LandR
I was worried when I moved to linux from Windows that I would miss Lightroom
but Dark Table easily replaced it!

It's fantastic and I now I prefer it to Lightroom (Although I haven't used the
latest version of Lightroom).

~~~
stevekemp
I tend to use [https://rawtherapee.com/](https://rawtherapee.com/) for
processing CR2 -> JPG images, and use my own filesystem for organization.

That said I shot a model this week and went back to trying to use Dark-table
to go over the results as quickly as possible, it was actually pretty
efficient to rate the images.

(In an hour-long shoot I'd taken about 500 images, and it was painless to look
at each RAW file and star the ones that I wanted to keep. I went through
everything and ranked about 50 as three-stars, then after a bit of thought and
coffee marked the 25 I was going to hand over to her as 5 stars which I could
then later process and edit with rawtherapee afterwards.)

~~~
karamanolev
> use my own filesystem for organization.

This got me interested. Care to elaborate?

~~~
stevekemp
I guess there are a lot of photo-managers that let you import your images, tag
them, find duplicates, etc. I don't want to touch anything like that - I want
to keep my images in a structure that makes sense to me.

Keeping my own structure is one reason why I don't use any software that won't
work "in-place". So I chose rawtherapee because I can point it at a directory
of raw images, get a set of JPGs out, and it won't try to move/file/organize
them behind my back.

Anyway my structure looks something like:

    
    
        /srv/
        /srv/images/
        /srv/images/2020
        /srv/images/2020/08/
        /srv/images/2020/08/05.Claire
        /srv/images/2020/08/05.Claire/RAW
        /srv/images/2020/08/05.Claire/JPG
        /srv/images/2020/08/05.Claire/Results
        /srv/images/2020/08/12.Sanna
        ..
    

Basically data-based, but I also create a ".info" directory beneath each per-
person tree which will have:

    
    
         location=Blah
         event=Random Shot|Birthday|Party|Event
         date=05.08.2020
         tags=model,claire,monochrome
         theme=pirate
         contact=phone-number|email|address
         ..
    

Then I have a shell-script that lets me search for all shoots which had a
specific location, tag, name, or similar.

~~~
cbsks
This is completely off topic, but you’ve triggered me with your date format of
05.08.2020. Why not 2020.08.05?? So much less ambiguity, plus then it will
match your directory structure!

~~~
liability
YYYY-MM-DD formatted date strings also sort better when sorted as text.

~~~
auxym
AKA ISO 8601

------
siver_john
I'm always glad to see this stuff move forward. I recently got back into
photography and was delighted to see the state of OSS software. However,
because I could never find a comparison between rawtherapee and darktable I
downloaded both to try each, and I just never could understand how darktable
really worked[1]. Rawtherapee just seemed instantly more intuitive. For those
that have used both, is there anything I'm missing between the two? And does
darktable just better mirror lightroom and therefore is better for Adobe
converts?

I hope I don't start any flamewars, this is a genuine question. And I remember
initially there was some statement that rawtherapee handled x-trans RAW files
better but some other people said that because they use the same software it
doesn't matter. I intended to write up a blog post on both of these at some
point for people in the future who have these questions, but time is what it
is I haven't had the time to sink into it to get an intimate understanding of
both (I still have a lot of photos I need to go back and process generally).

[1]Admittedly have not put in the work of going through guides or anything it
was just kind of fumbling around in the software.

edit: Didn't know asterisks italicized, though I should have... Replaces
asterisk with [1] instead...

~~~
brudgers
_instantly more intuitive_

For me, a photo editor is a tool I am likely to use for years...and indeed,
I've been using Darktable continuously and frequently for almost five years.
I'm still learning how to better use and discovering new things it can do.

This is not in any way saying it is better than RawTherapee...though it has
proven to be better _for me_ when I have used RawTherapee over the past five
years to see what it offers.

Mainly, for me it is Darktable gave me a workflow that let me work through a
few hundred just taken images in a few hours the first time I sat down to work
through a few hundred just taken images in a few hours and allowed me to
constantly improve that workflow over the years to shave hours off of the few
hours to fewer hours.

One of the big differentiators _for me_ was Darktable's support of GPU
hardware acceleration via OpenCL. Googling suggests RawTherapee has not added
it and LightRoom only got support in the last two or three years...at least
for operations in the pixel-pipeline.

Darktable doesn't really mirror Lightroom because as commercial software,
Lightroom exposes less of the underlying mechanisms to appeal to a wider
segment of the market. Darktable's UI is much more "mathy", e.g. the tab
showing the order of applied modules in the pixel pipeline (and the use of
"pixel pipeline" as an explanatory term and fundamental concept).

I don't find Darktable's interface intuitive, but it's very familiar at this
point and that's good enough or maybe even better.

------
robotmay
I recently got back into photography and I've been seriously impressed by
darktable. Its tooling is fantastic, and I was worried that I'd struggle now
that I'm 100% Linux.

The only downside is the workflow and interface. In my opinion every piece of
software on the market now has adopted the wrong workflow in separating photo
management from the edit screen, e.g. the light table/dark room split in
darktable. The film photography workflow doesn't make sense to me in a digital
world.

Apple got it spot-on with Aperture, and I will forever resent them for
abandoning it. Its interface and flow were basically perfect for me.
Everything being on one screen made it so quick to adjust lots of photos.
Everything since has gone the route of Lightroom and I find it really
annoying.

But, darktable is free and the tools are good. I can deal with it having the
wrong workflow. It has helped me get back into photography again.

~~~
m0zg
> Apple got it spot-on with Aperture, and I will forever resent them for
> abandoning it. Its interface and flow were basically perfect for me.

Same here. I don't even care how much it costs, I'd pay dearly to get a
supported and updated version of Aperture. Whoever worked on its UI is worth
their weight in gold and then some.

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fishywang
The submit url should be changed to
[https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-321-released/](https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-321-released/),
which is the actual url to the changes related to 3.2.1?

~~~
podiki
And here is a blog post going into the changes too:
[https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-3-2/](https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-3-2/)

------
jillesvangurp
Darktable is one of those OSS gems that deserves more attention than it
usually gets. It's usually positioned as an alternative to Adobe Lightroom.
However, I think it's fair to say that there's very little left in Lightroom
that Darktable doesn't offer at least three or four alternatives for. This is
not like The Gimp vs Photoshop but more the other way around. IMHO, around the
2.0 release, it more than caught up in features. Since then, UI polish, a
crazy amount of features, etc. have widened the gap in terms of features and
utility. There are quite a few features unique to Darktable that Lightroom
simply does not have and that people would normally use things like the Gimp
or photoshop for. Masking alone (which works on pretty much any of the dozens
of modules) just unlocks a ton of creative possibilities.

Disclaimer, I'm not a Lightroom user and have used Darktable exclusively for
the last five years or so. I actually use the mac builds, which is hardly
ideal given that OpenCL support on Apple is not great. Darktable definitely
has lots of rough edges that make it less than ideal for some less experienced
users to switch over to. While the UI has improved with this release, it is
still quite complex. Many of the modules are not for the faint of heart and
have steep learning curves. Simpler to use alternatives are available (there
are usually multiple ways to do things in Darktable); some of which are
explicitly intended for novice users. Most of the complex ones are awesome
once you figure them out.

The highlight in this release for me is the improved integration between the
exposure and filmic module. Both existed in previous versions and they were
always intended to be used together. However, in the new version they finally
replace the base curve as the default way to do tone mapping. The new default
scene referred mode is basically about these two modules being turned on by
default and the base curve no longer being used by default. I noticed already
with 3.0 where I manually configured my defaults to do the same that this
reduced the amount of work I had to do. Usually, I do some minor tweaks to the
grey point with the exposure module and then finish the job in filmic. In 3.2,
these seem to do a better job out of the box than in 3.0; even for
(deliberately) under exposed photos. If it is too dark, you simply add a few
stops in the exposure module and filmic dynamically updates the black and
whitepoints. So instead of blowing out your highlights, it actually brightens
the grey-point while compressing blacks and whites in a way that makes sense.
Unlike the base curve, this is dynamic and unrelated to pre defined camera
profiles for what would constitute a good base curve for a camera that you get
with the old basecurve module. I never really got usable results with that.

I ended up deleting my settings and presets to get the new defaults in 3.2. If
you upgrade from an older version and want to benefit from the new & improved
defaults, you may want to do the same. I noticed when upgrading an old 2.x
version on my Father's laptop that doing this may also be needed if it fails
to start because of changes in its internal db (he was still on 2.4).
Unfortunately it did not fail gracefully and I had to drop to the command line
and rm -rf the old files. Stuff like this is exactly the kind of rough edges
that make this product still a bit of a hard sell for less experienced users.

~~~
mycernerapi
Fully agree with this view The variety of ways you can achieve your desired
results is truly amazing. I also found Bruce Williams' tutorials very helpful
[https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u](https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u)

~~~
jillesvangurp
Yes absolutely; his channel is great. I'd also recommend watching Aurelien
Pierre's elaborate introduction to Filmic. He's the main developer of that
module and one of the core developers of Darktable.

A lot of thought went into the last few releases and it shows.

------
privong
Good news, it's a great program.

It might be better to use the URL about the release:
[https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-321-released/](https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-321-released/)
(rather than the "news" page)

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ketzu
Back in the day I bought a lightroom license because there was no stable
version of darktable for windows. I should probably reevaluate that decision
these days. (That was pre lightroom cloud. Also I can't find my lightroom key
anymore and will not switch to a cloud solution.)

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hatsunearu
New dt users: be sure to read this:
[https://pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-
modul...](https://pixls.us/articles/darktable-3-rgb-or-lab-which-modules-
help/)

------
jagger27
Does anyone know if Darktable supports Fujifilm film simulation profiles like
CaptureOne?

~~~
Derbasti
Have a look at these: [https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-
profiles/](https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-profiles/)

