I think the primary issue with the documentation is not so much the wording, but rather its over-reliance on words. What it needs, in my opinion, is more before and after examples showing what a particular module can do. Moreover, the nice thing about examples is they translate into any language.
Regards, Freddie.
Showing before/after works well for fairly simple modules (like exposure). But there you donât really need the visual example.
For complex modules, you get so many interactions between the sliders, that the user is better of experimenting with such a module. You can always reset the module to its default, or start with a duplicate you can delete after experimenting. And if you really want to protect your current edits, you can start from a duplicate.
Experimenting in darktable is safe, as it never modifies the input file.
I was a self-taught Unix systems administrator. I got there partly through leafing through the manual pages (nothing beats actual paper for that kind of learning) and picking up on the things that I could grasp, looked useful, or looked like they would be useful one day.
It so happened that, dropped in the deep end, I soon had to process a lot of records in text, with various changes, and or extract data therefrom. I wonât say I became an expert at âregular expressionsâ and the tools/utilities that used them, but I became competent.
What I will say is that I had no mathematical or computer-science background and, to this day, if you ask me to define regular expression I havenât a clue. No idea what the phrase means to mathematicians. But I could could (once) have demonstrated a few. Maybe, one day, Iâll be able to say the same about laplacians!
Much more recently, I began raw processing with rawtherapee. The main reason I switched to darktable was that (with sigmoid) the starting-point image was already close to acceptable. But another reason was that I found the documentation easier to read: rt seemed to expect me to be more of a colour scientist, and I am no colour scientist at all.
Most of dt falls into place fairly easily. Diffuse and sharpen is an extreme example of one module that doesnât. Maybe Iâll take Borisâs advice and use the presets, noting how they move the sliders. In the meantime, for us lesser mortals, there is a comparatively simple alternative called just Sharpen.
Technical/non-technical? Yes, I used to spend my days communicating with a Unix dumb terminal, but no, (especially now, 25 years later) I do not consider myself technical. But Iâm fine with darktable. Iâm glad that more learning is possible just as I am glad that there are depths that I do not need, right now, to plumb. Itâs all good.
By the way: what if I say that I want to service my own car, including diagnosing and fixing problems, but, please, I donât want to be technical? That would never work out.
There is a startâŚdoes it need to be updated and or added to ⌠might be a useful thing for people in this thread to look at and comment on for enhancementâŚ
https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.8/en/guides-tutorials/other-resources/
What a gem! I was so lucky to be introduced to computing by a Unix machine. It was love at first sight. As I came to meet other, more, ahem, consumer-friendly, OSs, I felt entirely different about them.
More to topic. Do we need to be pointed, by dt, to how-to-use-it resources? No we do not. This is the internet and we all of us know our way around it. If we didnât we wouldnât even be here. And this forum itself is one of our most valuable resources.
This very active discussion keeps going off-track but the underlying theme is that darktable can appear overly complex to new users.
Rewriting the manual would be awful task. Manuals never stand still, even a wiki approach would be difficult to maintain.
I donât suppose anyone really knows how popular darktable is or which modules are most commonly used.
Iâm always interested to hear what other peoples work sequence is. So perhaps a separate discussion on asking people to tell us their go-to and most used modules are. Perhaps limiting it to their best 6 or so. This would be a start for new users.
It was, yes
I think we probably capture the number of windows downloads but for Linux itâs harder. We would need some sort of embedded analytics upload to capture module usage, and I doubt weâd want to do that.
I am still hoping to get a serious answer to thisâŚ
Somewhere in my previous waffles was the answer âNo.â 
No.
If the user doesnât want to invest some time and effort, why should the developers?
The more as most have spent time and effort to learn the other raw editorâŚ
I think the key word there is âwishesâ. If someone is really not interested in learning any of the technicalities, despite being able to, then I really donât think itâs the right software for them. However, if the user is non-technical and struggles with technical language, I donât think we should be shutting the gates to them. I still think Darktable should be accessible, while admitting that a certain level of technical knowledge is required or at least beneficial. To make it accessible, tooltips and sections of the manual should use plain language where possible. Plain language does not dumb down the text; it merely avoids jargon and esoteric language whenever possible.
If we take the question one step further and say âIf the user is not interested in putting in any effort, should we continue to expend effort to appease them?â
Then I think the answer is a definite ânoâ. It is not commercial software where you pay and then expect a certain level of quality and support.
As someone reasonably active on the Darktable subreddit, I see a lot of lazy users who seemingly canât be bothered to read the manual or do any self-directed learning. They encounter an issue and immediately come running to the subreddit to ask someone to solve it for them. I often provide guidance on how to solve the issue along with some general information on the software and how to solve future issues. And then these users separate into two groups:
My point being that the two groups of users are not always obvious from the start, so Iâm happy to give help, but then either continue to help or give up helping based on the response. Iâm absolutely not interested in wasting my time on the second group of people. But the first group of people sometimes just need a little nudge in the right direction and insight into why this software and community is different to what they are used to.
Do you think the gates are shut or that we are actively shutting them or are working to shut them?
In my eyes, the manual can (and should) only do so much. A while ago I agreed with @elstoc that it should be a minimal as possible so that it can be as maintainable as we can make it. Adding more and more words doesnât necessarily do more good (and minimalism is a core tenant of tech writing).
This is why there is community, so those who do not understand from the provided resources can probe further. This is why we have play raws so we can share and learn (but without the burden of keeping those things ever green, which is what must happen with the manual).
Exactly. There are dozens(maybe hundreds now) of Borisâ videos, more than 100 play raws, a ton of community talk in this forum etc.
I personally struggle with structured learning and reading manuals. Staying focused is a struggle and I learn much better by trial and error or just by doing it. Once you know a set of âgood modulesâ that can give everything you need, you are ready to go to town and experiment.
Videos are also fine since they can be skipped or sped forward, and reading the forum is also much more engaging. I donât see myself as a darktable pro but profficient enough to get what I want out of it.
If anything all darktable needs(dunno if it already has) is a âhome pageâ with directions to all the resources available to users.
None of the above. I was merely responding to the question âshould we continue to expend effort to appease them.â My opinion is that we should not shut the gates to non-technical people if they have a willingness to learn. But I donât believe anyone has shut any gates yet.
Right and a simple way to use a module is to use a strong preset and then just use the uniform blending to attenuate the effect if needed. So at the end you have a single slider to use to control the moduleâs effect.
Of course.
DorS has 11 (groups of) presets, thatâs 11 âafterâ images, just for that module. Contrast equaliser only has 6, so thatâs a bit easier.
Using presets and attenuating their effects would be a more general topic.
I should perhaps have noted in my post that it was aimed at the use of images in the manual.
If you really consider the manual a reference, Do you really want more than the minimum needed to get a user started? I mean, itâs easy enough to see what a module does, and remove/reset it if itâs not what you need.
The expectation, at least from me, is that you have dt open and are experimenting while reading the manual. It doesnât strike me as something to read casually, but to each their own.
There is a particular test image that I have often used and it has fine text, grid marks, a color chart, colorful yarn with fine threads, crayons, a portrait photo⌠etc etcâŚso its not a photograph or rather it is but one of a collection of discrete elements that can be used and played with to test any moduleâŚyou can do it visually, compare snapshots or blend in difference mode to see what you are changing. When I was trying to look at DorS this was one of the first things that i went to so that I could isolate and try to break it downâŚI have done the same in many other circumstances⌠Others have used similar approaches in their videosâŚit seems to me that if someone is not at least that curious to muck around a bit before sending out the SOS I think it might be a good indicator that they are not going to be the most happy working in DTâŚ
I recall now several people asking how do the sigmoid curve controls work what do they do⌠in simplest term I think I showed an example of a grey ramp in the waveform scope and then shot a little 20sec video moving the sliders. Using a color ramp you could even introduce the hue preservation and show how that changes it⌠not two or three posts later the same question was asked a few more times maybe in slightly different ways. So they didnât read or the visual wasnât helpfulâŚHopefully the comprehensive treatment by Boris in his last 3 videos should make it clear.
One way that I work around that is to invoke an instance of Color Balance RGB, which provides controls for exposure, tone and contrast and color all within a single module. Just for vignettes, CB RGB offers all sorts of interesting options that would be much more difficult or impossible with Exposure alone. I might still have a need to invoke local contrast, sharpening and other effects, but I found CB RGB covers a lot of my local adjustment needs.
Yes, completely agree. I identified this module as the most similar to Lightroomâs functionality years ago. Having been a past user of Lightroom, I know what people mean when they say they like the way Lr handles masking. Darktable canât quite match it with one module, but Color Balance RGB gets closest, and then using the raster mask feature, you can also add Local Contrast and other modules later in the pixelpipe to pretty much do everything that Lr does.
Edit: Could a raster mask be used in the Quick Access panel, so that a custom group of sliders and widgets be used with that one mask?
Yep, completely agree as well. I have some test images that I try every new module with. And the waveform is an invaluable tool for showing a traditional tone curve with gradient images, as Boris showed in his latest videos. Iâm still struggling to find a good test image for Diffuse or Sharpen though. What I think I want is an image that helps to show the effect of anisotropy and radius sizes. An image thatâs too busy tends to obscure the effects, but you also want an image with a range of edges and surfaces.