If we rely on users creating presets to make it simple and fast to obtain OK results from dt processing, one needs to take into account how far in their learning curve (reading of the manual) new users could be expected to come, before they start to create presets. I’m afraid that most will have finally concluded that other SW give better results before they are in a position to appreciate what really can be (easily) obtained in dt …
They have been changed many many times over the last handful of releases. Unless you can provide some specific feedback, then I’m not sure how it can improve.
Well the reviewer didn’t seem to read the manual at all, so…
Based upon the thinking that new users, who have no relation to legacy features of dt, should be steered directly towards a scene referred approach, one ought in my mind to do the following:
Preferences dialog box should open on the General tab where one selects language which is quite fundamental to some users, (and as they, being new users, anyhow don’t understand very much of other tabs / settings …).
Could we also make dt open Preferences automatically upon first run of the program after installation – since new users normally don’t know where (language) settings are found?
On the Preferences-processing tab I believe “auto-apply chromatic adaption” ought to be set out-of-the-box to “modern” rather than “legacy”.
For a new user of dt, (who may possibly have percieved that one of the advantages with dt is the use of a scene-referred approach, and which are told it to be “the future of dt”), there now exists a perceptual confusion in the modules panel’s preset list between the alternatives “workflow: beginner” and “workflow: scene-referred” – and likely also with the now default “modules: default” – that ought to be resolved. Out-of-the-box configuration of dt’s UI should rather be based upon a scene-referred workflow whatever one may call this configuration. (Wouldn’t it be better to rather rename (and make) the current “workflow: scene-referred” as “default”, and name the alternatives “display-referred” or "legacy [somewhat] …?) New users shouldn’t in any case need to find and open the preset list at all to get along nicely.
Personally I don’t think there now is a need for a reduced Beginner preset besides the Quick Access Panel and the module set-up currently named “workflow: scene-referred”. The latter is not so big a set of modules as to be really confusing, ordered as it is nicely and logically under a structure of tabs/categories with understandable names.
(If there’s a need for something more than this configuration for new users who have no legacy issues, it might perhaps be for a module set taylored for non-raw files (jpegs), where compression is already performed, and named accordingly(?) – or possibly for a module set for users of weak PC’s where one leave out the resource hungry Diffuse or Sharpen module.)
Diffuse or Sharpen module (that you mention for core dt operations) is now hidden from view in new installations, and one has to search for it. Because of its usability it should rather be directly accessible in the modules panel, and any concerns about it beeing too demanding for some PC’s should be handled otherwise (e.g. by warnings of some kind).
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What about a splash screen displayed under installation or upon first use that briefly clarifies main thinking behind the design of dt and hence what users can expect of the program – and what the program expects of its users …?
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