First dabble into Darktable

Hello,

New member here. I have downloaded Darktable a few days ago and im consuming all available tutorials to become able enough to finally ditch Adobe Lightroom. Started out with a few challenging RAW’s. What do you think and what would you have done to it. Or what would you have done differently?

Thanks!

Wouter


_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (20.0 KB)
_DSC9808.NEF (26.9 MB)

This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.

Edit:
Im absolutely loving Darktable so far btw! Apart from the crashes i sometimes experience… Still trying to figure out where those come from.

10 Likes

Rawtherapee 5.11 + Gimp 2.10.34

2 Likes

Welcome…


_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (11.6 KB)

6 Likes

Thanks for the edit! You seem to be able to get alot more detail out of the file. Did you apply additional local contrast?

I downloaded your .xmp file. But I soon realized that i have no clue how to make Darktable use it. I moved it to the folder and renamed my original one, but Darktable seems to overwrite the new one… Does anyone know how to do this?

My proposal with Darktable.

_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (16.3 KB)

5 Likes

In the lighttable view just create a duplicate and then use the load history stack (sidecar) onto that duplicate…

image

image

3 Likes

Welcome to the forum!

From Lighttable, history stack / load sidecar file…

2 Likes

_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (12.6 KB)

4 Likes

An attempt with DT 5

_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (13.8 KB)

4 Likes

I obviously need to step up my sharpening game. Time for some tutorials.

Thanks for the edits so far. Very interesting to see what modules you are using and in what order!

1 Like


_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (13.3 KB)

2 Likes

To compare the image with various XMP’s its possible also to rename them DSC9808_01.NEF.xmp, DSC9808_02.NEF.xmp, etc. Then you import again and they show up as duplicates of the original image.

1 Like

You can always try searching the manual. The ‘search engine’ is not too sophisticated, and sometimes information about a feature is spread out (for example, there is no information about loading a sidecar file at darktable user manual - sidecar files), but it’s worth a shot:


(darktable user manual - darktable)

(I’ve sent a PR to include this info, so the next user may find it more easily.)

1 Like


_DSC9808_01.NEF.xmp (19.2 KB)

5 Likes

It’s a really nice image to start with. Thanks for posting it.


_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (11.6 KB)

7 Likes


_DSC9808 (1).NEF.xmp (19,7 KB)

9 Likes

_DSC9808.NEF.xmp (15.4 KB)

4 Likes

Too experimental?


_DSC9808 (1)_01.NEF.xmp (23,9 KB)

7 Likes

Amazing how much detail you guys are getting out of the file, even heavily cropped… its only 24mp

I actually found on this one that with the modules that I used I exported it with high quality reprocessing set to no in the export settings. This is often a closer match to DT’s default center preview. In DT the default preview is a downsampled version of your image for performance. There is often not much difference when viewing at 100% or if you don’t scale the image but I was exporting it to an HD (1920x1080) export and when I enabled the HQ preview the image was softer…you will find the some modules esp diffuse or sharpen which is very powerful for sharpening or maybe local contrast or dehaze can present quite a different result if you look at them especially when zoomed out to full screen and then toggle the HQ preview on and off. The image might get darker or brighter and the local contrast/sharpness can appear to change. This mode is very resource intensive but uses the full image data and not the downsampled one…ironically it can actually make the image appear softer even though given the name you might expect it to be sharper in “HQ” and this is just the difference as certain things can be amplified when using the downsampled image including contrast but then so can artifacts…you need to experiment but keep it in mind when editing that there are nuances to the preview that you see and the exported result depending on this mode and the modules used in your edits…

2 Likes