Editing with an external control board

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This panel would be something to get going with DT.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/intechstudio/vsn1-the-visionary-controlling-tool?

Once upon a time I did a lot of CAD/CAM and used an external control board for visuals like rotating and zooming (good ol’ Silicone Graphics days). Once you get used to it, the speed boost is amazing. I do a lot of repeated tasks for 300ish images and it takes time to fling around with the mouse. A panel like the one above, shortcutting things like exposure, tone eq, sigmoid etc…

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that is a very long line of controllers like this. see e.g. loupedeck, there has been work on midi support in the past.

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Start with reading this in the manual:
https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.6/en/special-topics/midi-device-support/

Then do as darix indicated and search the forum for loupdeck and MIDI. As far as I remember the latest with substance on this topic has been the loupdeck settings from @hannoschwalm.

EDIT: You find the latter here: Midi Controller for Darktable - #103 by hannoschwalm

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Oooooh… Nice! It already exists, I’m digging already!

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also in the lighttable view you can copy paste stacks from one image to others.

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Dang that thing is pricy!

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Well, you might have a look at the Behringer X-touch mini, which works out of the box with darktable (at least under OpenSuse Tumbleweed). You just have to set up the short-cuts

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It is - but it’s worth every penny for dt usage.

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And can be had for £50

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to which device do you refer to?

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Sorry - loupdeck

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This kickstarter thing starts at $300 USD and goes up to almost $1000 USD… and its a kickstarter so they don’t even have to actually give you the hardware…

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I trust Behringher to still be around in six months

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I i meant the years-old loupedeck+, that was ~200€, sorry

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…and seven months later I ordered an X-touch mini. Time to figure out what functions are gonna end up on it.

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I’m waiting for Darktable 5.4 to change the settings on mine for use with AGX as I guess that may be my default tonemapper. I guess AGX is already in stable versions of DT.

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I don’t know really if AgX is in any release yet, I’m compiling myself since quite some time. Did a test and got stuck with the code version. :grinning:

But there are multiple mappings on the way. I do one that fits my way of working. @Christian-B and @Toast are doing their mappings. Maybe we should gather them in one place (lua?) so users can flip between and find one that fits their flow?

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I’ve made a tiny code change request to the project and with that code change I can map all sliders in all tabs on the X-touch. My mapping works without the code change but the sliders that can be controlled with GUI feedback is limited.

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I think these controllers are underrated. Thanks for working on them.

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20251024_005938(1)
20251024_005938(1)4000×1326 1.13 MB

I am now running nine modules, compress history and quick panel toggle. All modules with tabs are supported and all sliders in AgX for example are covered. There are also three AgX presets layed out. All buttons in layer B is unused so plenty of space to add more stuff to it.
I always do culling, add a preset to what is left and then quick fix one by one. With this config on the board I am so much faster than before.
10/10 I would give a five on a Yelp review!

As soon as my PR is (hopefully) merged anyone is welcome to test it out!