Hi,
I am relatively new to raw editing. I made pics with ProCamera on my iPhone RAW+JPG.
After importing I noticed that the jpg is far more vivid and a bit sharper than the dng.
I have two questions:
In LR (years ago) I remember I had a sort of macro with some base editing steps to do a first ‘upgrade’ of the dng. Is this possible in DT as well and which ‘knobs’ should I turn?
Where can I find info/knowledge on raw (dng) editing in DT?
Thx in advance for answering.
Still very new in DT. Years ago a LR 5.1 user untill Adobe started the abo fees.
The JPG has added sharpening and tweaked the chroma/saturation. It is possible to get a similar result in DT to closely replicate the JPG look if that is what you like. Maybe supply a DNG image as a Play raw with the jpg as sample.
BTW, I too abandoned Adobe at LR6 even though I was provided a free subscription to LR creative cloud. DT is way more fun to edit with.
Raw editing is just that editing raw sensor data. Its not a super jpg so you have to do a lot of work. LR would likely add a lot of the steps automatically thus again giving you an image not totally free of some pre processing. DT reveals everything and also by default doesn’t add massive amounts of grading or sharpening etc. Its sort of on you to come up with a recipe that suits your vision. If your vision is to try and match the jpg in many cases the step to take is just use the jpg. If on the other hand to want to explore or enhance what you got with the jpg you will have more room to make changes with the raw. The extent to which you can do that will only come with lots of experience and maybe also limited with raw image from the phone. Those small sensor raw files are often not great and not worth processing esp given how much processing now goes into the jpp or other processed outputs from phones…
To get a sense of the overall workflow this is one of the best videos for a beginner trying to use DT…
There are some camera styles (like presets in LR) that you can use, but they are very basic and getting a similar result on your own only takes a moment. Once you have some experience, it’s easy to create your own styles with whatever look you want.
I have put together all my recommendations for learning darktable here:
Lightroom does quite a bit by default and the only way to change a lot of it is by choosing a different raw profile (Adobe Standard, Vivid, Landscape etc.). While darktable does pretty much the minimum required to make the image presentable.