From what i saw and what i tried, I think for good results you may find these tools often insufficient and requiring more time to fix issues with selections than do it manually.
Compared to the darktable, when you can in same tool adjust the mask behavior, there is nothing comparable in those tools.
Also darktable offers convenient features like exporting mask together with the result file, so you don’t have re-do them in bitmap editor too. But you can use the superior masking ability of darktable also for further processing.
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It depends on what you’re trying to do. I have zero interest in AI-generated art but for sharpening, denoising, smart object removal / replacement it’s become clear that AI-driven tools are very powerful. It’s absolutely a mixed bag but there’s no avoiding the power and potential of AI.
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It looks like you don’t know Krita yet, which i find way more pleasant to use than Gimp, and it has adjustment layers, and don’t know ART neither, a simplified version of RT with a very different masking feature, including drawn mask with feathered pencil.
Anyway, their AI stuff is a real breakthrough. And of course you’re absolutely free to choose the tools that suits you, even paid ones.
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I went from Windows to Linux to Mac and then back to Linux but with having a Windows VM. There’s no perfect OS or bit of software is there? I’ll keep trying to find it though. 
I think I’m going to buy DXO PureRaw. Have been testing it, creating a tiff to finish off in GIMP/Krita/DT and think it gives me the missing piece that I was after for some images.
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Also, thanks for this interesting thread with such civil comments! It is a pleasure to read.
I just wanted to add my personal approach to easy-to-use:
For many years I was shooting raw-only. I thought it was the only “real” way to do it. But then I started using the Fuji-Film-Simulations (some years after buying the camera). And believe it or not I absolutely love it. Basically for two reasons: first - it is a lot less work (as great as the results with filmic can be, it always takes some tinkering to get it perfect and working with colors is not my strength) and second - it makes my photos look so much more “consistent” (in search for a better word). I would not be able to create similar looking photos and groups of photos from raw pictures compared to the jpegs from my camera.
So, although I now shoot raw + jpeg the majority of photos that I keep in my preferred pictures folder are sooc jpegs with minimal adjustments in dt (linux).
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think it gives me the missing piece that I was after for some images
Me, being inquisitive: what would that missing piece be?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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Mostly the noise reduction. I’ve got quite a lot of high iso wildlife shots and this does a good job with them. It does a better job than I can do with anything I’ve tried.
It’s something I’ve been exploring, but found that VirtualBox (under Linux Mint 21) would only give me SVGA graphics. I think that may be why my Topaz demo was resulting in faces that looked Instagram-filter plastic.
May I enquire your VM setup/configuration?
More to Forum topic, I’ve started to use Darktable. It goes straight to an easier starting-point than RT (I find so far) and it’s denoise seems quite fast and good (I speak as a total beginner with little experience of raw in any package)
I’m going to follow the DT path and see where it leads me.
But I may also set up a Windows-inclusive system to try out that other stuff.
I used to use VirtualBox and it was always glitchy. Just before getting a new PC a video popped up from a Linux channel that I watch on installing Windows 11 on a VM. It was VMware the free version that he recommends because it uses some of your graphics card.
I’ve been using that since and it runs really smooth. Using the free version of Capture One for example it runs like it’s on bare metal.
Here’s the video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SDrbNgM6gXk
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It’s just such a shame that VMware only supports super old kernels. Getting it to run on a recent distro is a PITA.
I didn’t realise it was a pain. Maybe the AUR folks have put in the work so it works well on Arch? There were a couple of things that I had to do which are explained in the video but it was no problem.
I also had no problem with Tumbleweed. Used to have a VM with Topaz Denoise AI until a few weeks ago, there wasn’t any hassle at all to get it working.
Maybe I should give one of them rolling releases another chance. Back a few years ago, I found tumbleweed rather annoying (reinstalled literally thousands of latex related packages every few days, was measurably rather significant slower than Ubuntu).
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Thanks very much for the VM suggestion and points made.
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Also KVM/qemu can be used if you have 2 gpus and is already in your distro. You can give one gpu to VM and have guest/host both with hw acceleration.
@Silvio_Grosso I like your very fair comparison of RT and DT. There are such great features in both. It would be great if the programs could borrow more from each other, but I presume that is a coder’s nightmare. For me the drawn and parametric masks of DT and the multiple instances of modules is what made me become a devoted DT user. However, you have very clearly and succinctly pointed out some weaknesses in DT that I would like to see addressed one day.
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I guess I have one GPU, and it is not a fancy card at all.
I have tried to set up Qemu, but hot one of those error-message brick walls where even the internet doesn’t seem to have an answer.
Whilst I was once a Unix systems manager, I have forgotten a great deal since finishing work, but more-so, I don’t have the interest and attention span for the whole thing of spending hours on a techie challenge, including learning background/underlying stuff. And what I do have gets used up on the image-processing software!
I see. There are cases when it’s just few clicks in the gui. But with some hw the bios blocks the card and almost nothing will help.
It’s an issue with defining/creating storage space storage. Don’t want to sidetrack this thread!
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