
Darktable 2.2.0 released - geppetto
http://www.darktable.org/2016/12/darktable-2-2-0-released/
======
geppetto
IMHO it's the best FOSS photo application out there. It's cross platform,
fast, stable and manages the whole photo workflow (RAW developing, photo
management, non destructive editing).

Thanks darktable folks!

~~~
uniclaude
Definitely agree!

I make a substantial part of my income (just enough to pay rent) selling
photography, and I recently dropped ps and lightroom in favor of Darktable.
The change didn't happen in a day, but Darktable is so good I don't think I'll
ever need to come back to Adobe. Notable plus, I can now spend most of my time
on Linux, no more need to use my Macbook for photo work.

The interface is not really good for smaller displays and resolutions (adobe
stuff was better on my 11 inch mba), but on anything with more than 1280 x 960
px, it's great.

Congratulations to the Darktable team for this 2.2 release!

~~~
pkaye
Any experience using RawTherapee also? Just an hobbyist myself and moving away
from the Mac platform so figuring out the best alternatives.

~~~
stevekemp
I don't make a living via photography, but I do receive income from taking
pictures of escorts, and pets. (Strange how you find your niche!)

I've been using RawTherapee, on Linux, for the past few years. For my needs of
marking images, doing post-processing, and mass-operations, it works
perfectly.

I'm always reluctant to allow a tool to manage the layout/tagging of my
images. So for that I have a strictly sorted hierarchy:

    
    
        ~/Images/
        ~/Images/2016
        ~/Images/2016/12/04-Hannah
        ~/Images/2016/12/12-Tiffany
    

Inside each "event"-folder I store:

    
    
        RAW/
        JPG/
        JPG/thumbs/
        Teasers/
        Teasers/thumbs/
    

Then I write out a meta-data file, ".meta", with detail such as:

    
    
        Location=Studio|MyPlace|Their Hotel|Whatever
        Contact-Details=+44...
        Tags=lingerie,nude,shillouette,monochrome
        ..
    

It works well, and allows me to find files years later via a simple `grep`.

------
alfanick
Can someone compare it to Adobe Lightroom? Is it truly usable, is it quick
enough?

I am stuck on classic dilemma "apple fucked up, what should I do", so I am
planning moving back to Linux, but Lightroom is the only application keeping
me back (however, I thought of OSX in VM on Linux for running just LR).

~~~
uniclaude
I was facing the same dilemma, and photo is a source of income to me. I made
the jump, use Linux and Darktable every day, and experienced no frustration at
all. I didn't try to run macOS in a vm though.

To answer your questions : it is quick, and I find it to be a very good
replacement for lightroom. To me, it's actually easier to extend than adobe
software, mostly because Lua is very simple and the documentation is crystal
clear.

The best advice I could give here would be to give yourself a good dozen of
hours of deliberate practice on Darktable, maybe more if you're into very
advanced editing, but no more than a week.

~~~
daurnimator
Fwiw lightroom is mainly written in lua

~~~
uniclaude
Just found the plugin doc thanks to your comment. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't
know that...

------
akeck
I use Darktable daily since switching from iPhotos/Photos. Re-organizing my
Darktable library has been difficult, though, because it purposely doesn't
manage files. This user's python script that updates file locations in the
SQLite catalogue has helped ([https://chrigl.de/posts/2011/12/28/moving-
around-darktable-m...](https://chrigl.de/posts/2011/12/28/moving-around-
darktable-managed-photos.html)).

------
archildress
I'm a huge fan - congrats on 2.2!

Here's a tutorial I wrote up on trying out Darktable recently:

[https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-get-
starte...](https://photography.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-get-started-with-
darktable-lightroom-alternative--cms-27702)

------
vr46
I am going to tentatively give this a go after ten years or so of Lightroom.
The major problem apart from learning a new application is of course dealing
with ten years of Lightroom catalogues and the metadata they contain. Further
updates as events unfold ;)

~~~
geppetto
Maybe that could work:

"Allow to import/export tags from Lightroom keyword files"

(Release notes)

~~~
vr46
Tags should be simple to transfer, but actual image corrections do not move
over. That's the real issue, a decade of corrections being lost :)

------
WhitneyLand
Would be nice to add state of the art AI for auto tagging people, places,
objects, etc.

And just to dream: Multimaster database exists local, cloud, other machines,
etc. Optional auto cloud sync, or partial, or just proxies.

------
aorth
I use Darktable to do basic edits to RAW files from my Nikon D3100 and it's
incredibly satisfying to understand and adjust exposure, lens correction,
perspective, and a few other things. Darktable has module presets for many
cameras, which helps. I still don't understand levels, color correction, and
other more advanced modules, but there are many great videos on YouTube, and
my final JPEGs often end up looking better than the camera's (I shoot in
RAW+JPEG just in case).

------
mnutt
I'm looking into moving up from Photos.app to Darktable. One of the nice
features of Photos.app is that through iCloud I can run Photos.app on my MBP
which doesn't have space for my whole library and it will automatically pull
down and cache the parts of my library I'm using at the moment. Are there any
sort of storage hooks in Darktable that would allow for building something
like that with a homegrown photos server?

~~~
brudgers
If the storage is recognized at the operating system level then Darktable
should be fine with it. Because it maintains a database, Darktable doesn't
need a constant connection. On the other hand, it won't mount a network drive
all on its own since it doesn't expect to be running as root.

Or to put it another way, if there's a photo server on your network and the
machine running Darktable knows about it, then it shouldn't be a problem.

------
kislotnik
It's a pity most compare it to Lightroom, whereas there are more sound
competitors - take a look at RawTherapee, Capture One, ON1 Photo RAW or
SilkyPix.

All of them have ups and downs, Rawtherapee is fast bug buggy as hell and has
no adjustment layers, Capture One is marvellous but has political problems
with supporting files from the medium-format Pentax, ON1 Photo RAW is a
freshly released piece of software and it managed to crash on my images.

~~~
Veratyr
> It's a pity most compare it to Lightroom

I don't think I can agree that it's a pity. Lightroom is the standard for
photographers right now for pretty much everything but fashion photography
(Capture One) and perhaps architecture photography (DXO Optics Pro).
Everything, including the competitors you mentioned, is compared to Lightroom.

I think these applications (including DarkTable) __need __to be compared to
Lightroom because the point at which they 're competitive with Lightroom is
the point at which they become seriously viable to many photographers (the
kind that don't necessarily hang out on HN).

~~~
cookiecaper
It's a shame that most software can't seem to keep a focus. Lightroom became a
RAW development platform as well as a photo manager, etc. I'd really like just
a fast, inobtrusive, and performant photo manager to help index my photos. I
haven't found anything worthwhile yet.

I use DxO for all of my photography. Because Lightroom slows to a crawl on my
imports, I haven't really tried it for RAW development. I guess I should give
it a go. However, at this juncture I fully believe that DxO is miracle
software. I've gotten far better results with it than I have with anything
else. DxO can take a trash shot and make it 80% and it can take a good shot
and make it 500%. _Far_ more impressed with it than ufraw and the other RAW
development suites I've tinkered with in the past.

~~~
slantyyz
Let me chime in with another vote for DxO. The entry cost is reasonable for
the base version (discounted every year around Xmas) and it's not a
subscription model like Adobe.

The lens/sensor RAW optimizations are fantastic (provided your camera has a
bayer type sensor -- sorry, Fuji X users) and it can definitely make your
photos punch above their weight. Depending on what you do, it might be worth
spending more on the Elite edition -- most people don't need it, IMO. There
are paid upgrades yearly, but if you don't need the new features, you can
choose to skip a version (or two).

There are a couple of sister products, DxO Viewpoint for perspective fixes and
DxO Filmpack (filters). IMO, Filmpack isn't worth paying for, but if you do a
lot of architectural/wide angle work, Viewpoint is pretty good.

Also worth looking at is Affinity Photo - it's half the price of DxO. I bought
it as a cheap alternative to PS for PSD editing, but it does RAW processing
too.

~~~
Veratyr
I find that while most alternatives produce better quality output than
Lightroom, none come close to it when it comes to organising and managing your
photos.

I also find that when I process with Capture One Pro, I nearly always get
better results than when I use DXO, RawTherapee or Darktable. Maybe it's just
me but it is consistent.

~~~
cookiecaper
I gave Capture One Pro a try due to this comment. There are definitely things
to like about it. It is much faster than DxO at everything I tried and appears
to include some very convenient features, like an effect clipboard that makes
it easy to pick and choose which alterations should be copied between images
instead of being forced to use the all-or-nothing approach of DxO's "Copy
Correction Settings" / "Apply Correction Settings".

However, IMO DxO's output is leaps and bounds better. I'm sure it's due to the
profile of the image, and specifically DxO's PRIME noise filtering since this
was a handheld shot at nighttime, meaning high ISO (3200). The noise filtering
from DxO is _hugely_ superior to that from Capture One. Without PRIME (i.e.,
marking "high quality" noise filtration instead of PRIME), the noise filtering
is at least in the same ballpark, but DxO maintains a very sizable lead with
far less color damage. I did try to set the filtering configuration settings
to similar quantities, though the options are a little different in each
program.

I may make a blog post with images on this subject soon.

~~~
Veratyr
Ah yeah, I definitely found that in the past, especially with noisy sensors.

Since getting a full frame camera though, I find noise isn't nearly as much of
a problem and Capture One's noise reduction is fine. Certainly not as good as
DxO but I don't do much low light shooting.

------
polskibus
Can anyone compare DarkTable to RawTherapee ?

[http://rawtherapee.com/](http://rawtherapee.com/)

~~~
LinuxFreedom
RT has no real workflow, more a set of tools that you might apply somehow, GUI
reflects that, seems unorganized. DT seems to have more advanced algorithms
and tools. Both are excellent. Does not hurt to have both in your toolbelt.

~~~
pvdebbe
RT has more controls for finetuning (some of which is very necessary for
Fujifilm RAF files still) while DT has never crashed on me. CLUT support is
nice, I play with it when I happen to develop from raw data.

I should probably participate in DT's tracker and try to get the few
shortcomings fixed... that should do for a new year's resolution: more
participation in OS communities. :)

~~~
geppetto
Can you expand on that? I'm a Fuji and Darktable user. What am I missing?

~~~
pvdebbe
The pixel readout is frankly poor on both apps: false color here and there.
Probably both apps use the same library behind the scenes. On RT I can crank
up the demosaic algorithms to reduce the effect. DT has no similar filter
available.

DT also used to not do a good job on lens corrections (I have an X100T).
Perhaps this new version does better since there was a mention in the
changelog about lens data.

The best pictures are still the SOOC JPEGs -- too bad if I want to adjust the
shadows or highlights.

~~~
Lio
On the X100 you can at least convert the raw files to jpeg on camera.

I generally just stick to a couple of jpeg presets.

------
acjohnson55
I'm not too familiar with Darktable, but one of my biggest Lightroom
complaints is that it's not readily usable with generic cloud storage
providers. Does Darktable have a good answer for this? I'd very much like to
be liberated from buying ever larger hard disks.

~~~
wtallis
As far as I can tell, file management is mostly beyond the scope of Darktable.
You point it at a folder of photos, it stores the metadata in that same
folder, and you export the edited photos somewhere else (another folder, or
upload to services like flickr). Darktable doesn't do anything to take
ownership of the original photos: no renaming or relocating.

------
djsumdog
I tried Darktable but the lack of basic undo functionality kept me on
Lightroom. Looks like this release has basic undo functionality. I'll give
this one another try.

~~~
privong
> I tried Darktable but the lack of basic undo functionality kept me on
> Lightroom. Looks like this release has basic undo functionality. I'll give
> this one another try.

It's had undo functionality (on an individual-image basis) for a long time,
albeit perhaps not in an obvious fashion. In the "darkroom" view, on the left
sidebar there's a "History" widget. If you click on earlier numbers, it
reverts the image to those, undoing whatever previous edits you've done.

------
baq
does it have a lens profile database? these are tedious to do manually.

~~~
trop
It uses lensfun. See [http://www.darktable.org/2015/02/on-lens-detection-and-
corre...](http://www.darktable.org/2015/02/on-lens-detection-and-correction/)
and
[http://www.darktable.org/usermanual/ch03s04s04.html.php#lens...](http://www.darktable.org/usermanual/ch03s04s04.html.php#lens_correction).

