Hi everyone! I just signed up to be part of this site. I love photography and shoot with an m4/3s setup. I am trying to get into open source image software. It’s been kind of tough sticking to a workflow. So many programs to choose from and all are different than Lightroom that I use to use. I could use some advice on what I should start with.
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Hi & welcome! Perhaps you can tell us what you like and dislike about lightroom?
I hated that I had to pay a monthly rate every month for lightroom and kind of being locked in. What i did like was organization of darkroom and the ability to make catalogs for my thousands of photos. Editing was on but I think the biggest hurtle is just basic organization.
Welcome!
If you want a fairly quick and simple workflow, try Filmulator.
If you want access to seemingly every tool under the sun, try RawTherapee or Darktable.
The core modules of a scene-referred Darktable work flow is exposure, filmic, tone eq, color balance, local contrast, contrast eq.
I can’t help you much with organisation and catalogs.
So if you like organisation features of Lightroom, then perhaps darktable will appeal to you more.
In terms of image processing, both darktable and raw therapee or its sibling ART will give you good results. Each has pros and cons, and committing to one doesn’t mean you can’t also use the other – each will create its own separate sidecar file, and they can coexist together.
I’m not sure if my 2 cents is worth the full 2 cents at current rates, but the eureka moment for me when switching from Lightroom came when I stopped trying to think of my workflow in terms of a single program. Personally, I love digikam for managing my catalog; with (much) practice, it cured me of ever wanting to go back to Lightroom, full stop. I don’t use it for any kind of raw processing, and have it set to show embedded previews when viewing and tagging/flagging raw files.
Once I have the specific raw files selected and tagged that I want to process, I open the current folder with darktable or the ART fork of RawTherapee, both of which can read and sort by the color flags in the xmp sidecars that digikam wrote, both of which give me different results that I love, and both of which I can no longer live without.
Output jpegs go into a “processed” subfolder for the folder where the raw files are, and they are back in digikam for all sorts of batch resizing or web service batch uploading magic. I didn’t use to keep full sized processed jpegs with my raw files when I just used Lightroom, so that was another adjustment. It does mean I can use whatever multiple raw processors I want, and my output is easy to find within my collections.
Obviously this doesn’t work for everyone. I believe it speaks volumes that software like this can be used with different workflows in mind, whichever clicks for the particular user’s needs.
Oh, hey, and welcome! I love this community, and read a whole lot more than I post around here. The actual developers hang out here, and actively work out issues with users and swap ideas with each other’s software. It really is something to witness.
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