Why there are differences? Just because Darktable/RawTherapee are different software, and different decisions were made?
Should I be feared of the default settings in Darktable? What I mean is: will I have the ability to edit a photo to “the best state” with the default settings in Darktable?
RawTherapee has a configurable profile that is applied to RAW images the first time you open them. I think it is the built in ‘neutral’ profile out of the box, but it’s easy to tweak it yourself.
I haven’t used Darktable myself, but I would expect something similar. It is typical for raw images to look flat, like in your Darktable example, when first opened, as that gives you a clear sense of the basic capture prior to adding saturation etc.
My RawTherapee default looks more like that (flat) than your RT example (which looks more saturated). I don’t think you have anything to worry about, and I’d be inclined to tone down your RawTherapee default.
Load the neutral profile in RT and it will be closer to DT. DT keeps initial processing minimal and leaves it up to the user to make decisions and create presets/defaults that suit them…
I believe the default in RawTherapee is to have the “auto match tone curve” feature turned on, which applies a tone curve that is derived from the embedded jpeg, that’s why there is much more contrast and thus is more pleasing out of the box.
On the other hand, darktable tries to do as little as possible by default. You can set an initial style or tweak that to get you close to where you want to be.
No. Darktable tries to give you a relatively clean slate to edit from. You are encouraged to change the defaults to suite your needs.
Check the PlayRaw category. You’ll find results created using either software (and using others) that you’ll like a lot, and others, which you will like less. It’s not really the software, it’s the person. Just like with cameras.
Put this image in the playraw category and I am sure you will learn a lot about both programs. Also with DT if you turn off filmic and activate sigmoid you will see more colorfulness from the onset. This is not saying one is right and one is wrong it is just one of the many options available in DT. Filmic starts with dull colors that need to be lifted using the colorbalance rgb module made easy with presets for basic colorfulness. Sigmoid gives better colors straight out of the box, but filmic lets you get there as well.
If you are new to RT and DT then I’d recommend to take a look at ART first. This program was a fork of RT some time ago and now is its own raw processor. The goal was to simplify and streamline RT and then add new capabilities like Local Editing. The ART author Alberto is very active and helpful on these forums. ART is my favorite tool for raw processing since it allows to get good results without too much fuss.
Here is a new video describing how to set up and start using ART: https://discuss.pixls.us/t/im-so-impressed-with-art-v1-23-ive-done-a-video/45909
