Beginner Workflow

[Tamas_Papp (Tamas K. Papp)]

@dnlyko

Would it not make sense to remove all the modules from the ‘workflow: beginner’ preset that are not found in the ‘workflow: scene-referred’ preset?

Not necessarily. I think the real issue is that it is hard to come up with a use case for the “beginner” preset; it is not significantly less overwhelming than eg the “scene-referred” one.

I agree that since 3.6/3.8 users should just start out with scene-referred for RAW images, especially from the quick access panel, and then explore.

@dnlyko

A prerequisite of dt should not be that one have a vast knowledge of RAW developing skills and vast amounts of time to invest in the learning curve.

“Vast” is a subjective term. Some background is inevitably necessary though. You can go very far with only the following five modules (in addition to those enabled by default):

• filmic rgb
• color balance rgb
• color calibration
• crop
• rotate and perspective
• exposure

Admittedly, the first three require some investment and experimentation, but the key to using darktable efficiently is learning about masks. You can find a lot nice videos here:

Editing moments with darktable

Since I use darktable almost every day, I decided to make a series with small episodes. Although this is not a tutorial, the idea behind it is to show people what you can do with darktable and encourage them to use it. If anyone is interested, you are very welcome to take a look. First episode: [Editing moments with darktable 2.6.1 Episode 1]