Disable arrow key module controls?

Software darktable
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I’m trying to speed up my workflow as I have a lot of photos to edit this week. Due to lighting issues, I have to use several modules to adjust midtones, saturation, exposure, etc. on any given image. When I’m finished I want to move on to the next photo but the arrow keys are active as controls on the last used module and I have to move the mouse way down, double-click on the next image, then move the mouse back instead of just using the arrow key. Or close the module, arrow key, then open the module again. Either way, lots of extra steps. Essentially, I’m just trying to minimize the actions per photo as they add up over ~3000 photos.

Is there any way to set up the shortcuts so that the arrow keys (or maybe another simple keypress) only control the next/previous photo action, without going into each module and changing its behavior? I thought I remembered a global action, but I can’t find it so it may have been my imagination.

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Space and backspace are the default shortcuts for this. You can hold down H to see all active shortcuts, by the way.

2 Likes
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OK, that is weird - I tried those and they didn’t do anything. Checking the defaults I see that they were both disabled - I have no idea why. Re-enabling them fixed that. Good enough!

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Sorted. :slight_smile:

But if you are comfortable using the arrow keys, all you have to do is click somewhere away from the module. eg in the image space.

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I know, and that’s what I was doing - but more actions. I’ve actually got it down to where I can edit a photo in less than 30 seconds with about 3 key presses and maybe 6 clicks. Between this and heavily abusing the Color Balance RGB module :grin: I have a fast and effective workflow. Neither Lightroom nor ON1 could do what I needed, so easily.

3 Likes
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Wow, that’s fast. I guess the prerequisite is knowing exactly what you want and exactly how to achieve it.

I have an elderly Roccat Kone mouse. Your thread made me wonder if I could make it do previous/next with “shift”- left/right. And guess what: it does it already! Must have set them up to the arrow keys in the past. But I have to boot an older Linux to run the configuration program. But anyway, my export, next routine is “xx space” which is fast and easy. and an optional CTRL-C fits easily. Much quicker than the default CTRL-e for export

But thanks for prompting me to look into this

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I did about 2300 photos at a tournament last weekend, which is a lot for 6 games - but in order to not spend a month processing them I want my workflow to be efficient. After a few tests to make sure I was getting the right ‘look’ for the photos, my process is essentially straighten, crop, adjust saturation/brilliance, next photo. With one hand on the keyboard and the other on the mouse, dt is fast!

Of course, sometimes I can skip a photo or three because it missed focus or the composition is poor, and sometimes I need to tweak highlights or add NR, but the average time is quite fast. ON1 got to the point where it was taking seconds just to go to the next photo, and it had a crop bug which wasted even more time, so I had to quit the program every so often and make it clear its cache. Dumb, for a program that costs ~$100 per year, even if it was still better than LR.

The best part about dt (and remember, I’m still only about 6 months old as a regular user) is that once I got the hang of it, I could completely change my workflow in an hour or so and just get on with the work.

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This is my workflow-improvement so far. Unlike you, I am only dealing with 50-100 pics from one event at a time, but I am much slower at processing, so workflow-improvement always matters. As you have said (I think), when working on many pictures, seconds count.

1: destructive cull. Fails of all sorts, no-goods and not-good-enoughs, simply deleted. Quick view of jpegs with a script to delete now-orphan raw files.

  1. import into darktable.

For me, an even is usually a concert. 3-5 people mostly. I realised that going through them in simple time order is really wasteful, because I have to mental-reset for each person. So I group by person. I use the colour tags for that, because it is enough.

Most recent refinement of this is grouping by composition, eg taken from left, right or straight. Reading something on the forum about Groups, I got the idea to use Groups for this, and then display ordered by group in lighttable.

Then I do a soft cull, by star rating. I import at 4-star and simply demote lesser pics.

Then I only process the 4-star, Which are nicely grouped into similar images, which are nicely grouped for me to stay with the same feel, and increase the likelihood of being able to CTRL-C one pic and CTRL-V as the starting point for the next.

(I also use a basic style as a starting-point for every picture, which as well as applying some presets, also gives me turned-off modules with presets, ready to go, in my favourites tab.

It’s always good to learn from others, even in totally totally different genres.