I haven’t looked at Darktable for a long time but concluded that for raw file development and surprisingly work on jpg’s RT is better and has got even better over the years I have been using it. From memory Darktables masking is essentially luminosity based. That can only do so much. RT probably uses the same technique in places but it’s hidden from the user. It’s not going to be that easy for a new user to make full use of all of it’s capabilities. DT is probably much the same.
In terms of packages a lot depends on how far you want to go with post processing. I sometimes spend a lot of time on a forum that is nearly 100% photoshop. If some one want’s to get into the sort of things that the more capable people on there do I feel that neither package on it’s own is suitable. Adding the GIMP for selective and layer work can help a lot with that aspect. It also surprising what simple layers and mask generated by brushes can do to shots and it’s not that hard to do. Usual advice to people doing that sort of thing for the first time is to be bold. Personally I feel the main problem with the GIMP is learning to use it. There are plenty of specific tutorials about but one area isn’t covered very well - layer modes. Tutorials will sometimes show them being used but I feel one that takes each of them and gives an idea of how they are intended to be used would be far more useful.
Personally I think Fotoxx is worth a look too. Open a decent raw file with it and it will give an image that can be worked on. If not right click it and edit it in RT first and then return to Fotoxx. There are a number of video’s on how to use it and the doc’s are pretty extensive. Linux only though. I found it via a review that also mention how lucky we Linux people are to have it available.
Your memory has failed you. darktable supports many more things to use as parametric masks than just luminosity, and it has done so right from the start when these masking features were introduced. Nowadays darktable also features powerful drawn masks that can be combined with the parametric ones.
My main takeaway from these types of questions (and answers) is that I’m seriously dropping the ball on community outreach and tutorials.
I wonder if a series of short posts looking at specific things might help raise awareness of capabilities better. For instance, masking in each, or demosaicing, etc… If anything it might give a nice understanding of current capabilities (and we can revisit as necessary to stay current).
Disclaimer: I have always used RawTherapee even though I consider myself a beginner since it is an incredibly powerful software …
Since I am a Windows user and Darktable does not work on this platform I can only tell the differences based on some video tutorials I have watched on YouTube in the long past.
However, by taking a look on Gighub, I have noticed that Darktable is going to fill this gap in the future and will be available on Windows as well
From what I have gathered, just out of curiosity, Darktable is much more similar to Lightroom, compared to RawTherapee, in that it is more feature complete.
For instance, with Darktable you have:
clone tool to remove “spots”. With RawTherapee this feature has been worked on in the past but never finalized for end-users so far.
you can easily modify all your shortcuts (I recall it was a Google of Summer student who added this feature in the long past);
you can tether your camera (through GPhoto I suppose) ;
you can GEOtag your pictures (with GPS Exif data) ;
you can easily watermark your images ;
Darktable even uses some modern technologies such as OpenCL and Lua scripting .
This being said with RawTherapee you have pretty much all these abovementioned features by simply adding to your workflow : Digikam
Of course, RawTherapee also sports some unique features: e.g. the pixel-shift module to handle RAW Pentax files.
BTW, as already mentioned in this thread, there is a new kid on the block: PhotoFlow
Thanks to his layers structure, it is already a very promising open source package.
I’ve always found F/OSS tools to be lacking decent tutorials, text or video. I am by no means an expert user in darktable but I’ve made a few videos and they get surprisingly positive responses. I think new users would benefit greatly from a few more people making screen recordings of their workflow and posting them. No need for elaborate lectures, just thinking out loud as you work is usually enough. No need to edit, add intos or outros, or add music. etc.
Record, chat, share.
Give it a try and you might be surprised at the response!
In my experience, RT can sharpen much better than DT! But maybe I just don’t know how to set the modules correctly in DT. If it should be here the appropriate place, I could gladly upload a raw file and the two sidecars of RT and DT.
