Converted to dt when Adobe went subscription, and uninstalled the very old version of Lightroom. While a very light hobby-user of it, I’ve gotten comfortable with it, even if I have a hard time remembering what module does what, and how to effectively use them.
Have spent a LOT of time organizing all the photos, and tagging them all in dt. Yea, I can find almost any subject at any quality level I want. All photos stored with a linked xmp.
But, I now have an opportunity to reinstall Lightroom CC for free. I do not intend to replace dt as my primary editor. But I would HATE it if by using Lightroom for experimental purposes it hurt my dt edits and tags.
Any tips or cautions so that the two can play well together and not have Lightroom “step” on anything? And vice versa - not having dt confused by an edit I did in Lightroom.
Not interested in passing edits back and forth between the two. Just a separate but equal “I wonder which modifications I like better?” situation.
I have LR6 perpetual licence installed on my computer. On very rare occasions I use LR for something like exposure blending or panorama stitching and LR doesn’t screw over my DT database. To be honest I find LR so boring, it is like driving an automatic hatchback and DT is like a Lamborghini that puts you in the driver seat.
I am glad that you have managed to use DT as an effective digital asset management (DAM) tool. I would be interested in finding out more about your approach as I concede LR was excellent at this and I have not obtained the same level of DAM capabilities in DT, but more from lack of effort on my part.
If you edit with Lightroom before you import in Darktable, Darktable will try to import Lightroom’s edits. This is usually relatively harmless (exposure adjustments etc.), but can change the import profile, which will screw with all subsequent edits. I wish this import functionality could be disabled.
On the plus side, you can configure Lightroom’s AI denoise and upscaling to output DNGs that Darktable can read (select the oldest possible DNG format). It’s a great denoising preprocessor then. Pano stitching should also be possible this way.
I did really like the DAM in Lightroom. Tried using dt and digikam in combination, but even that introduced differences.
Managed to get major tagging categories set up, with child subcategories:
The top level does not have any photos assigned, but the children do. But I can select “Animals” as a tag to filter on, and it will bring up all the photos in the subcategories. Or just select “Dogs” if desired. Then just a matter of assigning subcategory tags to all the desired photos. (days, and days). Mix and match as needed (tag a photo “Dogs” and “Macros”) Coupled with selecting by colors and stars, and I can find “Best Dog Photos”, or “Best Dog Macro Photos”, etc.
The big use for Lightroom will be iPhone raw (I hope!). Kind of a pain to use Adobe DNG Converter for those. Would be nice to have them seen directly, a light edit done, then export in a desirable format to dt for the real work.