Could you clarify, both here and on your website, what kind of beginner you are targeting? Is it people new to photography, new to postprocessing, or Lightroom refugees?
Can we please end this thread / discussion? It is clear that a difference in approach does exist, as so often in this world. Nobody can / must claim that his / her point of view is the correct one. Hence I am not very interested in repeated discussions that this or that approach is flawed / not correct / ill advised.
I learned from this 162 posts long thread that darktable.info adopted an approach, they seem fit and that others think otherwise. One single post would have been enough. Let’s agree that we disagree and go on.
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A very wise wording and context !!!
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No. If you’re not interested, you don’t have to read it. Nobody is forcing you.
As a former university teacher I am very much interested in how we teach people, students. There is a debate going how, which is nice. However, I don’t see much progress or final conclusions. The goals are unclear, which makes the discussion rather inefficient
I don’t see it as a debate, but a conversation. Will we get somewhere? Maybe. Where? I don’t know. But we’re going.
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See darktable user manual - process and darktable user manual - Guides & Tutorials
Room for improvement? Yes. Difficult to setup a tutorial section? No…?
I want to highlight some things I’ve asked/said that I don’t think have been addressed and were probably just lost in the shuffle of conversation. I’d appreciate a clear and direct response to them.
I hope that someone answering some of the above will push this conversation towards some actionable end.
I would also like to add my two cents to the discussion.
Darktable.info describes itself as a “resource for the German-speaking community”…so that applies to me.
So far, I’ve found some information there and had things explained to me that
- were too unclear or too technical in the original help resources
- helped me find a workflow
- seem more structured than much of what I’ve found on the internet about Darktable
…so they’ve helped me.
Darktable is great, has many features such as parametric masks, good configurability of modules/interface/scripts, etc., but is often, at least for me, confusing/unstructured/sometimes illogical to work with.
Darktable is free and has a great community, which is what prompted me to try out the free versus paid software test.
But it also seems that much of it is designed for technicians/programmers/IT nerds and therefore requires a good explanation.
So when someone like Chris sets up a resource like Darktable.info, we should respect/appreciate it and not try to dismiss it.
Here’s to peaceful coexistence and many product improvements in Darktable… Printing from Windows, perhaps? 
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Glad you found it helpful. If you can only speak in broad strokes and not specific things, then those specific things will stay at darktable.info.
Neither do I/we, which is why I asked the question to find out if there are any possibilities.
After presentation of forum was on Reddit, I don’t quite understand why there should be a connection to pixls.us.?
And yes, one of the many points raised in the forum is PlayRaw. So that’s exactly one point we’ve taken on board. Even if there were more, what’s the problem? Our site is aimed at beginners and PlayRaw is a good idea. What exactly do you think the problem is?
We don’t kick anyone out, but why should it be a problem to redirect someone to pixls.us? No matter what is the reason.
On the darktable.info, we also refer to the manual, pixls.us (including PlayRaw), various YouTubers, etc.
We have tried to cover further questions from you and others on the following page.
Chris
The best thing in my mind going forward would be:
- understand why people are successful with the information on .info but not with what is in the manual in a pretty good amount of actionable detail
- you are of course welcome to contribute to dtdocs, its an open project and always has been. I have not observed that anyone contributing to .info had tried to contribute to dtdocs, though a few people said they tried but failed. I’d be interested to know what that failure mode was.
There doesn’t need to be any connection. You suggested collaboration, but I don’t understand how to collaborate when you’ve made a parallel community to what we have here.
You’ve suggested that we send beginners and new users to your forum. On first launch you said you just want to help new comers, but since then you’ve taken things we do here and duplicated. Some of them are things that don’t seem to have anything to do with new users.
Your insinuation that your forum is a “safe space” seems to insinuate that this is not a safe space, which I completely disagree with.
If we’re sending new users your way, but you don’t explicitly send them back here, then how does that benefit us? You’d just be building a community off of our back. What makes you think people will come back here after they’re not newbies?
So you want me to refer to things you’ve written down because you’ve anticipated and/or gotten this question before? That is ironic, to say the least.
Thank you for the suggestion and the idea. I will come back to this separately in due course.
Our intention is not to replace anything that already exists, whether it be pixls.us, reddit, Facebook or anything else. We want to offer people who would otherwise fall through the cracks because they feel uncomfortable elsewhere a place to belong.
At least for us, it was clear from the outset that we would not be competing with other forums/media, but rather filling a niche.
The feedback regarding the forum is similar. It ranges from “it’s cool that there’s an alternative” to “I prefer xyz”. All of that is fine.
The proposal was to send people to the website, not to the forum. I suspect there is a misunderstanding here.
We’ve already covered this point, and I can only repeat myself: there is no explicit or other reference to pixls.us. I/we have no influence on how something is understood; that is also very individual.
As already mentioned, the idea was to send beginners to the website and not to the forum. I hope the difference is clear, and that this was only a suggestion. Just an idea to talk about.
As has been written many times before, pixls.us is a great community. It is unique in many areas and very valuable in general. It is not perfect, but no one and no other project can claim to be.
Why exactly should that be ironic? Perhaps I’m missing some context here?
Chris
One of your issues was that you didn’t like being told to read some and and then linked off somewhere else, but that’s exactly what you’ve done.
I started writing down some thoughts on this issue specifically, since I did also try to look into doing some stuff on the docs but found it a little overwhelming to dive in. I’ll try to formulate that into something more solid soon.
I know you keep saying it’s not your intention, but it will create consequences which I outlined previously. The more platforms there are for people to engage, the more cracks there are for people to fall through. There are already people who only engage on Facebook, who only engage on Reddit, who only engage here (hi, it’s me!). Each platform for engagement creates another island where the community at large is split.
I’m only referring to the forum part of the .info website, not the website as a whole. I, too, would like to a see a more beginner-friendly way to engage with darktable and the community, and there are definitely ways to do that right here where there already is a solid community with a lot of historical knowledge.
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Sorry, but I still don’t understand what exactly you’re referring to? I don’t see the connection.
I understand the fear of fragmentation. However, our choice to use Flarum as our forum software was made specifically to address issues that are hard to solve otherwise. It’s not about being “better”, but about fitting a specific purpose that goes beyond standard discussions.
Here is why we chose this structure:
1. True Native Multilingualism:
Flarum allows us to handle multiple languages seamlessly via a plugin.
- When creating a post, a user selects the language (currently DE, EN, NL, FR).
- Viewers can filter the entire forum to see only their language, or all languages.
- This allows us to host non-English speakers on the same platform without segregating them into hidden sub-forums or external Facebook groups. We are trying to bridge the language islands, not create new ones.
2. Curation and “The Content Engine”:
We use the forum as a staging area for the website content. We have a specific tag structure under “Docs”: Draft → Review → Publish.
- This allows us to collaboratively write, critique, and polish articles before they go onto the main site.
- It prevents valuable information from being buried in a continuous stream of chat (a common issue on Facebook/Reddit).
- It allows us to “harvest” good forum discussions and turn them into permanent documentation with the author’s permission.
3. A Home for the “Homeless”:
While “pixls.us” is fantastic for the core community, there are users who would also like to communicate in their own language. No one is prohibiting this on pixls.us, but there is no explicit technical implementation for it. If you remember the early days of darktable.info, my goal was to build a German community.
And Facebook/Reddit lack the structural tools (such as our specific tagging system) to build a knowledge base.
We are simply trying to offer a structured, multilingual home for those users, with a workflow to turn their questions into lasting answers.
Chris
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First sentence going to darktable.info:
Darktable is powerful. We make it understandable.
Isn’t this a bit harsh for the project? I read this as, well Darktable is mostly impossible to grasp, too complex and impossible to use… But with us things will become understandable. No? I see this as really negative for the project. I’m not saying it is an easy software, but ununderstandable no!
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@Pascal_Obry
I can understand your point of view; it might sound harsh at first moment, especially without further context.
It might also sound like criticism of DT at first, but that is not our goal, nor is it intended as such.
Some background on this: You constantly read on the internet or hear in YouTube videos that DT is too difficult for beginners, the hurdle is too high, etc. It is also something we hear ourselves, for example in a comment from today:
“I have never had so many understanding problems with graphics software, and I have tried and used LR, DXO, Affinity, Neo Luminar, and a few others. Since friends of mine feel the same way about DT and have given up on it, I would like to continue and understand DT.”
Is this also our opinion at darktable.info? No. In our opinion, darktable is not harder than other programs; in many areas, it is even easier or has functions and aids that other programs do not have.
So where does the perceived problem come from that Darktable is so “hard” for beginners? In my opinion (it took me four attempts to get into DT), it is hard if you start DT without prior knowledge or a tutorial/guide. Why exactly, etc., could be elaborated on at length, but I don’t think it matters here.
Other programs are easier simply because there are fewer possibilities, or only one way to do things.
This is different in DT and for good reasons, which I won’t go into extra detail about now (though we do explain them in several places on the site).
Does this make Darktable “worse” software? Certainly not. Especially once you have worked your way into it a bit, you don’t want any other software anymore or feel massively restricted elsewhere.
The first article I wrote about Darktable was for my wife. She switched to Linux some time ago, so I had also written and published some articles on using Linux on the internet.
With the help of the page I created for her, my wife understood the basics of Darktable in about 30 minutes and has been getting along well with DT ever since. That article still exists almost 1:1 on the site: Quick Start - Mastering DT 5.4: Workflow, Shortcuts, Themes & AgX
How does all this fit together now, and what is the connection to the statement on the homepage?
Darktable is hard at the beginning if you don’t have a common thread (“roter Faden”) to understand the basic functions.
Is this a problem with Darktable? I don’t think so; as already written, there are good reasons for it.
Darktable is actually quite easy once you understand a few basics. However, in my opinion, this is where the problem lies: in the search for the information one “needs,” there are hurdles that have nothing to do with DT itself. It is the combination of the infinite amount of information available on DT and one’s own level of knowledge to evaluate a source as helpful. At this point, it can become frustrating for DT beginners. Here too, the reasons are manifold; examples would be outdated content (YouTube) or instructions that are too technical (for beginners).
At this point, at the latest, we want to “catch” the users, hence the “bold” statement on the homepage. Even better, we would prefer people come to our site before having those (perceived) bad experiences.
Perhaps one more note: our texts are not set in stone. So if you have a suggestion on how we can design this better / more sensibly, then I, and the rest of the team, are always open to it.
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I perceived a number of subtle digs at the project throughout the pages. Its one of a few things that doesn’t sit well with me about this site.
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It‘s just clickbait. Not different to several YouTube videos where noobs compares darktable to other raw editors - without even having a basic understanding of darktables capabilities …
So is it helpful to have further darktable related stuff out there in the world - maybe, maybe not.
Is it necessary to send newcomers there if they found their way to pixls.us - no, because here‘s the place where even the developers hangs around. Nothing can beat first hand information …
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