As ”collection filters” is a pretty new module, I wonder if this anecdote of @bastibe is from before its introduction … However, darktable’s DAM is for sure not perfect, but way more than just usable. I have 70k pictures in, and it serves me well regarding their organization. Of course, there’s always something to improve, but the development pace is high, so it improves tremendously with every new release.
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It might not be the perfect solution or even viable one, but I read that IMatch users run it using Parallels or Bootcamp. Also they run Windows on the Mac in a VirtualBox which is supposed to work very well.
Surely not? I just can’t imagine that this would ever happen… And, yes, people round here wear wide-brimmed hats - nobody wants to be shit upon by those wretched flying pigs.
Yeah, me too. This is a pity as iMatch seems to be technically very attractive.
As you are referring to someone else’s opinions, it’d be interesting to hear their observations laid out. Could you post a link to the video in question?
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Simply put, watching that unfold made me reconsider my loyalty to the project that I’ve been supportive of since day one (however little that might mean).
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I would have to agree. In fact, the functionality of the (yes, imperfect) DAM keeps me using darktable, no matter how much I dally with other software.
The Map module I find particularly helpful - if I go to or am planning to go to a location I have shot in previously, I will review my previous captures there and plan accordingly, be it for subject matter, lighting conditions, or whatever. This is why geotagging my images - preferably at capture - and having locations by polygons is so useful to me.
Why do I classify with tags, by date, and especially - by location? Part of it is undoubtedly being nerdy: as I am on the autism spectrum, classifying and ordering activities are part of my DNA (ok, my connectome, more precisely-stated).
Yet this means that I can go back and find things. So I rebutt the premise of the thread: “DAM in dt is … awful” - it is patently functional and helpful, albeit imperfect.
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For my two cents worth: One of Lightrooms great strengths is its DAM capabilities, however this comes at the cost of needing to pay a continuous subscription. I thought I had avoided this by buying a perpetual LR6 license, but not so as new cameras, new lens, and new file formats are not supported. So LR became dam useless as time went on unless I wanted to pay a subscription for the rest of my life.
I started using darktable not for its DAM capabilities, but instead for its mind blowing RAW editing capabilities. However, over the last couple of years I have become more aware of it DAM capabilities. I am not sure if the developers have invested more coding time into this or I just became more aware of what it could do. I now use it to import pictures into dated folders on my storage drives. It also has ability to filter images and add tags (keywords). It is probably not as versatile and intuitive as Lightroom, but it suits my needs. Yes I do believe the developers of darktable could learn a bit from Lightrooms DAM capabilities, but these are volunteers who prioritize their time to what they see as most important, so no complaints from me.
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in foss functionality is relating on the number of developers spending effort on it.
In darktable most developer effort is spent on the raw processing functionality.
Unless further developers with a strong interest in its DAM functionality joins the team no one can expect similar results as a commercial product where a whole bunch of developers are motivated with plenty of dollars to do stuff they might not have a personal interest in.
So there’s no point in arguing about it. So if someone finds it aweful or awesome - both is ok …
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IMO - dt DAM fits all my needs or I reduced/changed my dam workflow.
And IMO one of weaknesses is documentation.
For exmple it uses $(variables) and %%names%% (here should be single percent sign). It is very usefull but it is not obvious knowledge how to use this.
E.G. You can display all files in all subfolders if You put %%foldername%% in some place where path to folder is displayed (-> %%tenerifehiking%%). You can put even part of folder name and it works too (->%%tenerife%%).
But You should be aware this feature exist and how to use it.
I am very grateful to the volunteer developers for this program anyway.
I suppose one argument for a more LR-like DAM might be to encourage more professional photographers to use DT. But, realistically, it probably wouldn’t make much of a difference. There are network effects operating in Adobe’s favour, as well as marketing dollars, a subscription cost is tax deductible and payment provides a sense of security for pro users. Personally, I find the DAM capabilities of DT good enough and were part of the reason I started using it. Thanks to the devs
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Note that not all professional photographers need a complex DAM setup either. Eg if someone photographs events, or makes portraits, each can be organized into its folder, culled, rated, and then retouched as required by the customer, and then archived or deleted the job is paid for.
This is pretty much what a hobbyist who takes travel photos or similar would need BTW.
Large organizations like newspapers which employ photographers may need a sophisticated DAM, eg to find a picture of some person or event they have in their archives. There are commercial solutions for this, costing thousands of dollars in subscription fees. This is not something that FOSS should target IMO, as media needs a lot of storage space and whoever uses a cloud-based DAM would need to pay for that anyway.
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I looked for a while yesterday for DAM software that might work better for me, and I found some commercial products that are or can be free. A couple of them are even Open Source. They are all too big for my needs, though, usually requiring a database (such as MariaDB) for operability.
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Almost the only dam feature I use is star ratings for culling, everything else is just folder structure. And not that much of that… Not perfect but I can easily find anything by event. The only problems arise when looking for a certain shot with no event or date reference. I have tried tagging and so on but have pretty much zero enthusiasm to do it properly 
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It’s such a nightmare… I still do it but only 100% for stuff that goes out. Coverage varies a bit for second selections that never went out and such. The annoying thing is that it’s usually those I’m interested in quickly finding afterwards. It’s super useful to be able to bring up photos of say a person over time. Also those that people haven’t seen. Same goes for some non human subjects/categores that I sometimes need to a new selection for. It’s the only reason to want an amazing AI imho.
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Why not place all the same event photos in a folder which has the name of the event. My file structure looks like this. .
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Exactly. We are a lazy bunch. Unless we get paid for it. 
Most just need to find that picture someone needs … again.
For me a combination of structured folders, unique filenames, ratings and a few targeted tags here and there are enough. The rest is a script that dumps metadata into textfiles every now and then and a custom grep script to iterate through those. I can find pretty much anything in a minute or two - and since I rarely need that it always involves looking at all the images in a folder. Overall it is way faster to tag “uncle bob” only once or twice per folder and then search for the other pics he is in than to try to tag them all.
I very much live by the openstreetmap mantra - if something is tagged it has to be right, but not everything will be tagged.
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Yes, for me DAM is essential for a photographer. I find the one in DT good, although some annoying bugs slow down things. Like if I select a folder (i work exclusively by folder) and delete all files in it. In that case, the current folder return to the root of the tree : rather inconvenient. An alternative I could propose is to return to the parent folder instead (or up until we find a DT folder). But otherwise, i like the DAM in DT.
No good reason not to, just not how I do it…
This how I name my folders, each folder is basically one dump of a memory card:
The two letters after the date indicate which camera was used, then basically keywords after the that. Inside each folder I have a folder named ‘processed’ where all the images with 2+ stars get exported to.
Not recommending this to anyone BTW just sharing… 
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Monaco is a sovereign state (not italian or french) 
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