Hello everyone,
Wow, what a discussion, I’m not going to go over everything that has been said, I’ll humbly share my experience with Darktable.
On Linux I was using Bibble 4, and in parallel I started using Darktable from version 0.9.
What attracted me at that time was the modular system and the modules using the Lab color space. I always got results that met my expectations, until the day I replaced my Pentax K-5 with a K-1.
At that time, I tried several commercial and open source solutions and was confronted with the same problems as mentioned above. I was lost, and the arrival of the Sigmoid module solved my problem.
In the evolution of Darktable, the only mistake I’ve seen as a user was when a developer tried to impose a “marketing” strategy on Darktable.
I consider Darktable to be FREE (LIBRE) and open source software, and with that in mind, I’m free (libre) to choose the modules I want to use or not.
So for me, Darktable will never have too many modules, and I regret that some modules have been deprecated. They should be able to be reactivated, with the exception of modules that have been replaced, such as “crop and rotate”. FYI, I’ve turned them into styles.
My suggestion would be to implement a “tourist” guide for first-time users to help new photographers set up Darktable and suggest a processing style.
My second suggestion would be to implement a hybrid workflow by default: scene referenced before the tone mapper and display referenced after.
Greetings,
Christian