While darktable can replace Lightroom in one’s workflow in many ways, it also changes that workflow. “Ligtroom replacement” is misleading, unjust and untrue as a general definition of darktable.
I did not check, but I doubt that Lightroom is, on it’s home page, described as a “proprietary, quite expensive, in some aspects less capable darktable replacement”.
The whole concept is different and, I believe, some slightly anarchic spirit from the times of stinky developers and users - when misspelling the program as Darktable often lead to energetic reactions - should stay as a reminder, that this program might be “professional”, but it is not commercial. And will always have a fine stock of complicated, redundant and even silly tools available.
It should just continue to say that it is not a replacement but an alternative means, option, approach (pick one or a better one) for processing or developing raw files or something to that effect, stessing the alternative and not replacement aspect as noted the word can often lead to a sense that it is just some sort of copy or knock-off…
It is odd, though. Capture One and DxO Photo Lab and ON1 etc don’t feel they need that disclaimer. If anything, they market their products as Lightroom alternatives.
But there’s something about Darktable being free, that to some people implies “cheap copy” instead of “serious alternative”.
This already invalidates your whole proposal for me, as it shows you have no idea how darktable works
(I’m also missing a detailed financial and personnel plan for implementing these changes, but feel free to fork darktable and go to work on it. Oh, wait:
Hi @Tyler_Maestro welcome to the community. I just read you post… and do you use darktable at all and/or did you read the output from your LLM query to make sure it made sense, or did you just post it straight away here?
At any rate, the reply is generally the same: get more involved if you want to see these changes. Ideas are good, but action is greater. Many of the improvements in your list do not seem like you need to be a developer at all (tool tips, text rendering, contrast levels). Far and away, this list is too broad and leaves too much to do for the person implementing. If you want better tool tips, then write them! (Write them yourself please, we don’t need more AI crap).
Hi @Tyler_Maestro. Welcome to the forum. I hope you are using and enjoying DT. My suggestion to you would be rather than bombarding the developers with an extensive list of what improvements you feel are needed is to identify individual issues that you are having a problem with. When I have done this I have often been informed that the solution or option already exists. If it doesn’t exist then the community of users can discuss if the proposed amendment is needed. But then it depends upon a generous volunteer developer to implement the change and that means it must become a priority for them. Some of my suggestions have been adopted by the developers and others have been dismissed respectfully as undesirable or impractical. Also be careful presuming what is a ‘quick win’ for the developers to implement. What can seem simple to us end users requires extensive coding and ongoing maintenance.
Enjoy your DT journey. The rewards are worth the high learning curve of mastering a very different program.
That’s a bad start. Spend more time on this community and you’ll find that the people here are overall very friendly and knowledgeable. But you won’t get a positive response from an AI-generated laundry list of ideas.
If you use the software, what do like about it? If you see an area for improvement, what would be your number-one suggestion? Feel free to start a proper discussion. Plenty of people here will gladly chat about it if it’s genuine.
This post makes it seem like you’ve never used DT, but rather tested AI with poor results. It’s just a very general theory of building applications that has little to do with the current version of the software.
ok, you‘re able to write a prompt and get a result. Next step ist to head over to the darktable manual and learn about the core concepts. Then you can do a second shot and refine the prompt, so it’s not generic stuff, that’s not really new but takes into account the design principles and scope of darktable.
Or better: after learning the core concepts try using darktable the darktable way and find out why the implementation ist as it was done…
The developers aren’t idiots that doesn’t know how to build a capable raw editor …
It’s also not smart if you want to become part of a community: once your name gets connected with “posts rubbish”, your other posts are regarded with that bias…
Tangental question: Has there been any discussion (at the appropriate pixls.us level) of how to manage potential cURL type AI interactions here on the forums? If so, is there any guidance for normal users? If the answer to either question is no, then ignore this post. I do not want this to derail any productive discussions being had here!
Edit : I am sure there are people I should be @ 'ing with this question, but I am not really aware of who.
As a very long-time darktable user (since the 1.x times, I think 1.4 or 1.6), I feel like darktable as a fundamental philosophy sort-of built into it that you need a bit of theory or understanding of how it works to really take advantage of it. And I think it’s actually a good thing, because it fills a niche and allows you to do things to your photo that no other photo editor allows you to do in a bare-metal sort of way.
That is why I disagree with the OP in many respects. Drawn masks for example are pretty easy to use once you get to know them, and the brush works well. The vector points of the brush are quite useful for adjusting it.
And in my opinion, having multiple tone mappers such as Sigmoid, Filmic (and perhaps eventually AgX), is a huge strength of darktable as in other editors you just have to accept whatever sort of tone mapper or Raw to display-referred conversion that build in themselves and you have no control over that. Of course, there could be a few changes that might make sense, like merging WB and color calibration.
In my opinion, the way darktable works, although it seems confusing at first, is actually very consistent in its approach. I don’t think it should be changed or made “easier” by hiding anything, or making the interface more Lightroom like, because the very strength of darktable is its philosophy.
And I know some people criticize open source, but I think the very reason why darktable can exist and be so unique and powerful is precisely because it doesn’t need to be a commercial product. In fact, I think darktable is one of the very rare programs where open source actually made it superior than if it was a commercial program, because it doesn’t need to target those who want an easy solution.
I really do think darktable is great, and I think very little should be changed with regard to the sort of suggestions the OP (and many other beginners make).
Yes, exactly this. I’d describe that philosophy as “stay relatively close to the underlying algorithm, expose control to the user.”
There is always a trade off between easy of use and power, and darktable is decidedly tipped towards power, and it’d be a shame I’d that were compromised.