Hi, I’m a new user to Darktable and absolutely love the program. Not sure how to get in touch directly with the developers so am hoping they might see it here. It has fast become my favourite RAW editor, so if this comes across a little negative don’t take it the wrong way - the list of positives is far, its just that nothing needs to be said about them. Here’s a few questions and ideas after a couple weeks of use.
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When you toggle the white balance on and off it switches from the green dominant sensor to your current settings. It would be nice to have an option to toggle between your current adjustments, and the chosen preset (eg. camera). Perhaps one of the presets can be ‘custom’, so you can go back and forth between ‘custom’ and ‘camera’?
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It is very hard to drag the tiny sliders perfectly horizontal whilst looking at the image and not the sliders. This sometimes causes the wrong slider to start dragging. For instance in white balance I will be dragging the red channel across, then suddenly there will be a huge shift in green, as my dragging has gone down too far and hit that slider bar. THIS IS INFURIATING, and happens often, in every module. Can you please make it so that once a slider is being dragged, none of the others can be changed until you unclick the mouse? So only one slider can be changed at a time.
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I love the inclusion of a waveform monitor, but think it can be improved. Can there be more clearly defined lines showing the clipping point of whites and blacks? At the moment it is a grey background, with black lines all the way up. Perhaps white or colorued lines instead of black could signify the clipping points, so its easy to differentiate, and see when information has crossed it?
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The linear histogram in RawTherapee is WAY easier to read, for a few reasons. Firstly, the ability to show/hide RAW histogram is a great feature, as the RAW histogram is often more difficult to read than the other (information spread in more unusual places). (I don’t know what that other is - but in RT it moves with the adjustments, while the RAW histogram doesn’t). Secondly, the ability to turn the grey and yellow lines on and off in RT is a great feature, because they often just get in the way when looking for where information in each channel begins and ends. Thirdly, displaying the R,G,B channels as lines in RT, as opposed to blocks of colour, also makes them easier to read. Fourthly, and most important of all, it would be great if we could change the display size of the histogram box in Darktable, or at least make it bigger, for at the moment it is too tiny. With all of the above, as things stand I can hardly see the clipping points of each channel in the histogram, which largely negates its usefulness.
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Is there a way to save favourite modules? If I click on the menu in bottom right corner and selected a new subset such as ‘default’ or ‘no module’, all my favourites disappear. The only way to get them back is to add them one by one. Is there a way to save those favourites so I can get them back with one click only?
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There are a few things that would make it easier to navigate. For instance ‘Basic Adjustments’ has an exposure slider, as does the ‘exposure’ module. The ‘Basic Adjustments’ has a vibrance slider, as does the ‘Vibrance’ module. The ‘exposure’ module’ and ‘basic adjustments’ both seem to have a black point adjustment as well. Perhaps they work differently, but it would be much simpler to have them all in one place, so you don’t have to go back and forth trying to see if you’ve adjusted the black point in two different areas. ‘Tone Curve’ and ‘RGB Curves’ module also seem to work the same, so why can’t the RGB independent channels just be included in the ’Tone Curve’ module as LAB independent channels are? (I would suggest ‘Base Curve’ and ‘Tone Curve’ could also be combined, as they both essentially just adding a tonal curve, although I can see how they might serve two different purposes).
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On curves, it is annoying that I can’t just click on the line/curve and add a point. If I click it does nothing. I have to actually move the curve for a point to be added. But many times I just want to pin an area so I can move curves around it. To do that I just want to click on the line but not move it. Please add this functionality.
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A specific issue. Perhaps there is a way to rectify this already. Working with a RAW file I added a Highpass filter. I drew an elliptical mask around the subject. When I chose blend mode ‘normal’ it only effected the correct area inside the mask - but it is the unusable grey. When I chose blend mode ‘linear light’, or ‘overlay’, it is now a nice image, and the sharpening only effects the area inside the mask, yet somehow it completely messed with the background highlights outside the masked area. Why would that be? Also, when I blended in the L channel and tried to take it out of the highlights nothing happened. Yet that masking works in other modules. So what’s going on there? I don’t understand how the sharpening is not effecting the area outside the mask, but somehow the luminance outside the mask is being thrown off, and I don’t understand why it does it for some blend modes but not others.
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That reminds me, on the blend masking tool, it is quite annoying how to drag both sliders together one way I have to pull the bottom, but to drag them together the other I have to pull the top. Often I want to go back and forth, yet as soon as I try to move in the opposite direction they break apart and don’t move together. I suggest that one (say the bottom) should be ‘move together linked’ and the other (say the top) should be ‘move apart unlinked’.
Thanks very much for making such a great program, and I hope these suggestions may be given consideration.
it’ll be avail in dt 3.0.2 
