Improvement Suggestions

Software darktable
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@fdw I think there are a few differences between what you do and what darktable does.

I’d assume that if you’re being paid to do something that changes the objective of what you’re doing. It’s always awesome to hear someone getting a full-time, living wage from developing FOSS, and I wish that more people could claim this, but nobody has ever made a livable wage from developing darktable. Even Aurlien, who we pushed and pushed people to donate to, really only broached like 1,000 euros a month (if i remember correctly) and I say that’s a large under value for the work he did. Other than that, the project doesn’t even take donations.

I think that leads the project more towards developing a tool for the people who already use the tool, as it would be the community and the interactions with people who are already here and participating that drive the development.

When people ask if they can donate on social media, I say YES! But please donate your time, we don’t take money. In that way, you can influence development.

I am not certain this is a goal of dartktable. As above, I think we make a tool for the people who are already participating in the development of the tool.

I don’t see why this should be the case at all. Professional photographers often want speed of development. While you can have that with darktable, I don’t’ think that darktable is necessarily focused on that.

And I’ve seen plenty of terrible photographers over the last 20 or so years who are making plenty of money.

Personally, I’d rather hear from photographers who demand exacting control over their processing pipeline. I’d rather hear from artist who are trying to achieve a particular vision, rather than a “professional.”

I feel like photographers are the worst people to ask about workflows, as many just make up something that they think works for themselves and then tries to find software to fit it. :wink: Reading dpreview or reddit or the like, some of what those people describe as a “workflow” is just like… what. and also “why”

You are assuming that QWERTY affects my accuracy or speed, but in reality I’m just sort of a spaz.

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Iirc, the QWERTY layout (and similar) were developed (or kept) to reduce typing speed to something the mechanical typewriters could handle; typing too fast caused the “letter arms” to interfere with one another :wink:

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But that assumption is correct for my speed. I take my daily dosage of English challenges on https://www.thefreedictionary.com/, including the Wordhub, where you have 2 minutes to come up with as many words as possible. Then to have all the most used letters on the left hand, and for the most part not on the central row where fingers are at the outset, really is a slowdown – as was truly the purpose of the qwerty-layout.

EDIT: And that we still use QWERTY-layout when there is no reason for it anymore - rather to the contrary, I look upon as really a failure for mankind.

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It was designed specifically to reduce jamming AFAIK, so it tries to separate consecutive letters as far as possible on the keyboard.

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Indeed, we are not the same. My point was about making assumptions about your users :wink:

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I feel the same way about the imperial units system :smiley:
Lots of examples of inertia throughout human history, and often for financial reasons above all else.

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Yes, the imperial system …

All this is much about short time effects vs. long time effects – and there we, states and individuals alike – too easily go for short term benefits and eschew the cost and efforts today that will give us greater benefits tomorrow.

But there are some really praiseworthy examples of the opposite, though:

For all the strange old-fashioned traditions that the British normally cling on to, they shall have great kudos for switching to the metric system (- even though they still tend to drink pints).

And much can be said about the Swedes, (and living in a neighboring country we regularly – as neighbor countries in general tend to – do so in a jocular manner …), but another great example really is Sweden’s switch in 1967 from driving on the left side of the road.

For my own part, now that I’m retired and don’t need to mix my own private keyboard riding with that on the job, I’m planning to go for Dvorak next year – so that I can look down on all the other traditionalists …

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I agree with “for artists” but - even more - I believe darktable is "for photographers" and not “for programmers.” Let me explain:

Yes, every photographer is an artist, from a literal understanding of the word “photography.” And, in literal meaning at least, everyone who takes photographs is a photographer.

And yet…!

So many folks seem merely to want

which, as you point out @europlatus is a market that is filled with choices.

A photographer, in my opinion, is a completely different beast from a person who seeks minimal effort, maximal likes/follows (almost said “maximal exposure!” :wink: ) A photographer uses their equipment: both in capturing their image, (whether on light-sensitive coatings or on digital sensors), and in processing the capture (either in literal darkrooms, or in the virtual ones we use with software) in order to achieve as close as possible to their vision for the depiction of their subject.

darktable is an extremely powerful and comprehensive set of digital processing tools that can achieve almost everything that is desired. Some may quibble as to order of modules, colour spaces, or minutia of the interface design. To seek to use it and then be disappointed because it is not a matter of 3 clicks and export is because such use is akin to using a sledgehammer to crack a nut, or a space shuttle to get to the shop 500m down the road.

Programmers?
These days I code a little; my first degree was Computer Science, and I coded quite a lot then, but that is more than 30 years in the past. I am confident that there is no need to have ever coded to understand what darktable is doing.

Mathematicians
On the other hand, the concept of the pipeline of transformations including masking and blending is quite advanced, mathematically-speaking. Moreover some modules (I’m talking especially but not exclusively Diffuse or Sharpen) are so advanced mathematically as to seem magic: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic

My musing and rambling leads me to this conclusion: though understanding the way in which the tools in the darktable toolbox work is indeed a tough assignment for those like me without advanced math skills, we plodders can become adept in using those tools, especially if we have guidance from those who can teach us the tools’ capabilities. And so we are prepared to invest in learning and practice, in order to hone our craft and become better (or at least more skilled) photographers.

Thanks
I am indescribably grateful for the FOSS community in general and darktable developers in particular for a toolbox full of what I will never master, yet presume to use and which allows me to process my captures.

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Some will say that Photographers uses their equipment … in order to achieve … their vision.

Following some workshops with a highly regarded photographic artist, the worst scolding we got was that our images were just mere “depictions” …
But I agree that dt is an excellent artist’s tool – and I agree with your sentiments and thanks.

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For me, my vision is one that I often (almost always?) cannot achieve, either due to the limitations of the tools, or my limited skills in the use of the equipment or the tools. So whilst I can frequently get pleasing results, I am also forced to compromise: for instance (tools): between better noise reduction or greater loss of fine detail; again (equipment) between greater depth of field and greater diffraction distortion.

My vision is an idealistic rendition - I’m a perfectionist who has to learn to compromise! :wink:

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And then there may be some solace in that most of the world’s most acclaimed photos are not “perfect” in several respects.

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… especially as the person who requested major changes may just abandon the software at a whim.

Some users do not even respond to questions in issues that they vehemently argued were crucial a week ago.

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would it be possible to have selection by focus , there is already a focus analyser button that seems to work fairly accurately ,could be useful for masking a sharp subject from a blurred background ?
also clearer wider colours on on sliders e.g. rgb primaries green hue ,yellow and cyan look very similar , but maybe thats just me

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You can refine the selection by detail level, but only for raw images.

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My opinion on the topic:

First of all, my biggest concern about this topic is that modules will be removed simply because there are modules that do similar things or because some people believe they are no longer up-to-date.

I decided to use darktable many years ago, starting with version 2.4. Back then, I tested several candidates (including LR) and found darktable to be the best program for me.

When I hear today that Darktable has a poor user interface, I can’t understand why:

  • The operating concept is very consistent. Things like presets and masks work the same way everywhere in the program.
  • The sliders are very well thought out. They can be adjusted very finely or coarsely in several ways. Values ​​outside the range are also possible where appropriate.
  • The ability to assign shortcuts speeds things up considerably.

I could now list many more things I really like about darktable, but that would make this text very long. And this is about improving darktable - not because it’s bad, but because there are some things that aren’t ideal, especially for beginners.

For me, Darktable started to become difficult with version 3.0.0 and the scene-based workflow. Before that, everything seemed simple and logical to me.

I generally understood what it was all about. But some points simply seemed illogical to me from that perspective:

  • Why do you have to increase the exposure right from the start? The exposure module was previously used to correct mistakes made during photography.
  • Why does the image appear so unfinished right from the start? Why do I have to set up filmic first? And why should I increase the local contrast for all images?

Then a few new modules were added that had a lot of controls that I didn’t really understand:

  • tone equalizer: Why do I need a mask here?
  • color calibration: What’s better about this than the previous white balance? And why was the channel mixer integrated into this module?
  • color balance RGB: Many, many controls. I read the really detailed description in the manual and barely understood anything.
    Then I simply tried out the controls and thought, WOW, what a great module. For me, it’s one of the best in darktable.
  • diffuse and sharpen: I don’t understand the controls here either. A long and good video by Boris explains them in detail. But I’ve forgotten how it works again. The presets are completely sufficient for me.

I’m not writing this to get answers to these questions or to define these modules as in need of improvement. My goal is to illustrate the difficulties I had back then that a beginner might also have today.

Other modules, such as the color equalizer, are very easy to understand and make sense to me.

So what would be the solution? For me, it doesn’t involve drastically changing Darktable. Let’s take diffuse or sharpen as an example. The module isn’t that easy to understand. But the presets deliver good results. Even if the results are good, the module can be difficult.
So I’m working with the presets. At some point, I’ll revisit the module and figure out how it works. Until then, the presets are enough for me.

If such a module existed in LR, it would probably have the controls for denoise, lens deblur, local contrast, and sharpness, and would thus provide precisely these presets.

Someone in this thread compared darktable to a toolbox. I’d describe it more like a construction kit. I remember things like that from my childhood (Lego, Fischertechnik - in Germany).
Some kids opened these boxes and just started building the most amazing things with them. Others weren’t able to. For them, there were instructions that described step by step how to assemble a model.

I think that’s the right approach. The darktable manual essentially only describes the individual components. How they come together as a whole is missing. But that’s a good thing, because
others are taking over the “construction instructions” with their online videos. Here, I get the impression that there are many videos on complex editing. That’s very good, but not for beginners.

“Construction instructions” are needed for the first steps that describe the simplest things. Once they understand these, people realize that darktable isn’t that difficult for simple things and will be able to tackle even the more complex ones.
When I look at neighboring threads, I get the impression that a lot is happening here.

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This hasn’t happened and the project works hard to preserve old edits, so I don’t think there is any worry there.

That isn’t true. A basic workflow is outlined here: darktable user manual - process

And we don’t want to spend hundreds of pages discussing every possible workflow, that is left up to the user.

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no developer thinks about removing modules. Outdated and no longer supported modules are marked as deprecated so cannot be activated for new edits but are fully supported for existing edits where they were used.
This kind of reasoning about simplifying darktable to meet adobe refugees dreams for a clone at no cost is fruitless. Whoever requires a free darktable based Lighroom is free to fork darktable and simplify stuff - it’s not the first attempt to design something “bloat-free”.
But don’t underestimate the effort to do this … it’s quite less effort required to get used to the darktable way

because all those image processing algorithms aren’t optimal for arbitrary values. so to get best results you need to provide proper input data. You don’t have to - but then you can’t blame darktable to give inferior results.

you can define styles that uses proper initial values for your camera and your usual photographic habits. Thats the way to go - and thats better than a generic one size fits it all approach. You don’t need to use fimic, you can also use sigmoid which several users prefers over filmic. And the amount of increased local contrast is a quite personal preference you can define as automatic presets.

if you ask this, then you don’t need it :wink:

try to remember why you don’t just use the “green” rectangle" setting on your camera. How much time did you spent to find out, which settings are best for different photography situations…

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I shoot sports, at night, under flickering lights. So my images are never white balanced correctly SOOC. Using white balance it’s impossible (at least for me) to get consistent color across images. Even if you get white to be white, other colors are off because of the flickering. Color calibration changed all that and I can correctly white balance images and get consistent color across a set of images.

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It’s not my intention to change Darktable (as I also wrote further down).

In my opinion, Darktable has everything it needs. But many people repeatedly portray it as difficult and therefore dismiss it from the outset.

You can leave out the difficult parts for now and still work well with it.

Yes, that’s a good point. It’s important to realize that good results require knowledge and work.

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Yes, that’s true. The workflow is also described here, but from a very technical perspective.

That’s not a criticism on my part, and I don’t think the darktable team should be doing that either.

Let me compare it to database software. It comes with a technical description that shows the syntax of each SQL statement. From the vendor’s perspective, everything is documented.

But to actually learn how to write SQL statements, you need further description, which is then provided by another source.

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