Cross-processing - recommended workflow?

Software
1

There are four pieces of software that impress me very much (here in alphabetical order):

  • Darktable
  • G’mic
  • RawTherapee
  • The Gimp

(In case your special favourite is not included in the list, don’t get disappointed, it’s probably just because I have not discovered it yet.)

Now and then I would like to use both RT and DT on the same image. To take an example: I have an X-Trans Matrix camera (a Fuji X-T1) and from what I have seen so far, DT makes a much better job reducing high ISO noise than RT does. On the other hand, using RT I can handle, say, contrasts much better.

What would be the most practical way to make DT and RT co-operate?

2

You can, at the very least, produce a high bit depth tiff from darktable, then open it with rawtherapee.

I don’t think you can apply edits from both programs on one image using the same pipeline.

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3

I don’t now if rawtherapee supports EXR files, but if it does I would use EXR and not TIFF as export format from darktable.

I would do:

  1. Do your processing in darktable
  2. Export as exr or tiff
  3. Import in rawtherapee and dou your work
  4. Save as a new file
  5. If you like to have this new file in darktable import it and group it with the original

We have a Lua script for darktable that does this with GIMP instead of rawtherapee:

Perhaps you can rewrite it to use rawtherapee.

3 Likes
4

Export from dt as 16-bit uncompressed TIFF into RT.

5

Sorry to hijack the thread…
I didn’t know about the “edit with GIMP” script. I just tried it on Ubuntu 16.04 but it doesn’t launch GIMP. I’m not much of a coder so I do not where to look to fix it. Any ideas? DT version 2.0.4 and GIMP version 2.8.

6

I’ve used RT a fair bit, just started exploring DT. Curious as to why start in Darktable then export to RT, as opposed to the other way around?

My current workflow starts from raw import to RT, then further steps in gmic, or python (cv2, numpy, etc) as desired…

7

You can start darkable from within a console with various debugging options.
Try darktable -d lua for debugging LUA scripts.

I guess it is related to an API change. coroutine.yield has been replace by darktable.control.execute. There is another script which should ensure compatibility: https://github.com/darktable-org/lua-scripts/blob/master/official/yield.lua
So you do not need to change the gimp.lua script.

8

Thanks! That did the trick! Love it!