Interesting thread. For what it’s worth, although I definitely consider myself an dt user, I’ve never felt that RT is “inferior”. Just different! Darktable suits me - I like the way the pipeline is in clear view (so as to speak) in RT, and the fact that things like masking are available with all modules, and this kind of more workflow related things
. But I’ve no doubt that I could happily process my photos to my taste with RT as well! I have actually… because I’m used to dt it was a little fumbling. But that was due to me, not the software.
This is a great comment. I routinely pop in and check on RT and ART and as of late Ansel now that AP is quite active again. ART has elements of DT in its RT backbone and then many neat and clever modifications made by @agriggio to make it unique and useful. He is very active and responsive to feedback. If he has interest and sees merit in working on something he does and if not he is clear that it is not something that interests him. Also recently following Ansel… AP made tremendous speed improvements on the Guided Laplacian HLR. I never used it that much but if people do then looking at the his code would reveal how this was sped up and perhaps how other things could be sped up. He has also responded quickly to comments recently posted here and on the DT git wrt DT not calculating pixel values correctly when scaling images esp down scaling. He introduced a fix and exposed the final scaling module which DT apparently has but it is hidden. It can now be repositioned and allows for sharpening to be placed right after it when downscaling. This now does the calculations in linear rgb as it should be and not later in display space. These comments are before the DT devs for their review and so this may find its way into DT at some point… My point is there is so much to gain from sharing rather than tearing down another project so in the end it can be a win win for everyone…
A good comparison chart.
I would add gui differences, where in dt you can group modules by effect and see pipe order, whereas rt is just grouped by effect.
And one correction. Channel mixer in rt is most like color calibration in dt, not color balance rgb.
Hear, hear! A little love for ART. I like all the FOSS tools and try to remain reasonably up to date on each but I’ve been following (and regularly using) ART more lately. However I have to admit I lost traction on the dt WB / color calibration thread a long way back…
I really like this comment. I get put off when people feel the need to bag out one program (especially FOSS) while promoting another. These FOSS programs are all supplied free of charge by generous developers and if one program does not meet our needs then use another one. I usually see pros and cons in each program I try. For me the masks in DT have won me over for my needs, but I still have others such as RT installed and used when appropriate.
Absolutely. If it wasn’t for all these wonderful little toys — and everyone that’s involved in making them — there would be no camera in my camera bag and heck of a lot less joy in my life. And for that, I will always be eternally greatful.
For me in the beginning I would have easily chosen RT if it could edit the Details>Property>Details portion of every photo file (actually searching for a program that would is how I discovered DT & RT)… . DT’s very capable XMP database therefore makes DT the winner for me (masking is just a perfect bonus) - no other choice if I can’t find that specific photo with the lenticular cloud over the Catalina’s then how can I edit what I can’t find…
So your right love em both - can’t even think of hating one or the other!
Thank you @Thanatomanic for doing this and championing the notion that we should not be creating an “us vs. them” mentality. We should not see ourselves as Team RT or Team DT, etc. We’re all members of the F/LOSS community and supporters of the collaborative work being done to produce fantastic software.
I had read the other post that inspired this one, and I was very disappointed in some of the views being expressed there. Especially because the author of that post is a YouTuber with followers and a certain degree of clout. I would have hoped that someone who champions open-source imaging software would have spent more time learning darktable instead of criticizing it and making false assertions about it. But at least it was great to see a developer of RT sticking up for dt in that thread.
When I first moved over from Adobe, I tried RT, ART and darktable. I can categorically say that every single one of them had a learning curve. None of them felt particularly familiar to me at first, and all had their quirks (obviously ART and RT share quite a few similarities). I spent quite a long time with RT and ART, but eventually moved over to darktable when I decided I needed the DAM features. But I still follow the other projects and love many of their features. Ultimately, I believe each of them has benefited from the existence of the others.
There is absolutely nothing to be gained from fanboy-type behaviour that just tries to create a club mentality. I hate it in the equipment world where you get the full-frame vs crop sensor arguments, Sony vs Canon, etc., and I hate to see it here. This community should hold itself to a better standard (as most do, to be fair) and just be supportive of every project.
FWIW, I wouldn’t describe @Andy_Astbury1 as a “champion” of FOSS – nor as a detractor, for that matter (not that you said nor implied the latter). He’s been clear that he uses RT not because it’s free but rather because it’s capable and can do certain things better than LR. I’m not speaking for him, defending him nor condemning him. It’s just my impression he has a “right tool for the specific job” approach. Sometimes RT is that tool, sometimes it’s not.
rt’s “film-like” hue preservation approach is superior to anything in basecurve, as is rt’s “perceptual”
one of the aspects of darktable’s sigmoid that makes it so great vs. filmic and basecurve, in my opinion, is its adoption of rt’s “film-like” hue preservation approach, with some additional tweaks.
As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, I would love to lift some of the other capabilities in sigmoid and adapt them into RT’s tone curve implementation, but I’m not sure how to make it play nice with the UI/UX.
rt’s “film-like” mode, along with rt’s Exposure->DRC are, effectively, why I transittioned tools. (Well, that and AP’s behavior)
I really would not say that basecurve corresponds to AMTC… AMTC has no equivalent in darktable other than the fact that darktable has some presets that were made to roughly correspond to camera tone curve responses. I would definitely say that RT’s core “tone curves” module combines certain aspects of basecurve and sigmoid together.
Of the DT modules, I find myself using the LowPass and HighPass modules often. It would be great if RT also has some equivalent to these. In addition, I have already whined about it, the lack of Watermark module. There is a workaround with some scripts, but I like to see a preview of the watermark before I export the image. All I do is a simple copyright text in some corner of the image with some opacity/size setting.
I’ve been using DT for a decade or more probably, and lately touched vkdt, RT and ART. Vkdt IMHO has very promising processing pipe but unfortunately lacks usable UI this far: it takes too long to process a photo. I liked ART’s feature set more than RT’s one, and found that I can get better colors from ART comparing to DT, probably because of DCP vs. ICC input profiles. Yet I feel short of features with ART in comparison with DT, maybe because of much weaker experience. Now I’m using both…
