Which is actually very effective.
I only feel that way when I have a really nice subject.
In practice, it looks more like this with almost every raw file 
ā¦
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How do they work, though? Does darktable have some special support for them? Or if they use some generic interface, what is it?
ā
Ian
You can find Jens-Hannoās suggestions/files/manual here:
Ok, so MIDI is the magic word. Thanks.
thereās an example lua script for using xtouch mini controls in different modules: https://github.com/darktable-org/lua-scripts/blob/master/examples/x-touch.lua
at least a good starting point for own customisation
You could also experiment with the Initial workflow scriptā¦ It is slow to run through a large image set but you can just let it run. It sets a lot of key modules either running say for example auto pickers for exposure, filmic, tone eq mask range, rgb color balance fulcrums etcā¦ Crafting these settings and then maybe adding key sliders to the Quick Access panel might work for you also ā¦ you can experiment if it interests you.
Didnāt read every post here, but I think the quick access panel wasnāt mentioned yet?!
For my quick&dirty edits I really like to use just some selected modules in the quick access panel. Iām doing the edits like this:
- exposure, often with the picker on a face
- adjust tones with the equalizer (brighten shadows, dim highlights, contrast for midtones, ā¦)
- adjust colors via a āsaturationā curve with color zones (pop shadow colors, dim highlight colors)
- local contrast slider
- sharpen as needed with contrast equalizer
- attack luma noise with the lower curve in the contrast equalizer
As most of these are āgraphā modules, they provide a lot of flexibility to create a pleasing result.
For more challenging pictures, Iām falling back on the standard module panel.
Here is a view of my quick access panel.
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Just had to look up one post 
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Funny, I missed this bit some how
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I never thought of putting tone eq there, but can see now it comes with an amazing benefit- mask exposure compensation and curve control points in the same view! No more jumping back and forth between tabs til you get the histogram right. Beautiful.
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Yeah, I love that, too. 
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It would be really cool I think if the QA panel had a toggle at the top say for at least one or two more panels like this that you could configureā¦ You could assign one to each stage of your workflow and then add the custom bits from the modules that you wanted to create custom workflow panelsā¦ your own mini editing UIā¦
Maybe I misunderstand you ā you can switch between several presets. Each can have its own quick access panel.
No I realize you could do that and I guess you could hot key themā¦ but DT for me has this issue with long modules and lots of scrolling and extra features in the modulesā¦ They all have a role but in day to day editing you often have just a lot of precious space taking up by the structure of the moduleā¦ With QA you can pick and choose components from modules. You could do so to keep it all on one screen without scrolling. But even then if you add some of the graphs it gets back to more scrollingā¦ In conjunction with workflow what if there was a little 1,2,3,4 icon at the top (or arrow or any UI convention for that) of the QA panel and the just cycled through a second third and 4th QA panel hiding the previous oneā¦ That could allow for even more customizationā¦ This also assumes that you are only allowed one QA panelā¦In fact It would be nice to create a preset and basically get rid of all the module groups except the active modules and then allow instead of module groups multiple panels that act like the QA panelā¦ You could then craft a custom set of sliders and graphs etc for color tone or whatever you call your groups or workflow stepsā¦I dontā really think this would even be too hard but maybe that is my simple view of thingsā¦
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Iāve just put aside an X-Touch mini at my local DJ store and hope to pick it up this evening.
What made it a no-brainer for me was that:
- Iāve been given some money and told to choose myself a gift (always a nice thing - thanks, Mum!)
- I donāt have to wait until January for delivery via Amazon.
- It is also touted as a controller for X-Plane, which I have been enjoying of late. For those of you who enjoy gaming, X-Plane 12 is on sale on Steam at the moment, at least here in Australia.
Since I use Sigmoid as my go-to tone-mapper in darktable, Iāll be using the rotary encoders for Exposure and sigmoid primarily.
As for reducing the workload, I have discovered that days with many, many captures are best left for quite some time before the big cull. A few recent examples:
- I took several hundred exposures on a trip to Cairns (in Far North Queensland) in May - at a sanctuary containing exotic birds, and another with butterflies. Although some of the best I processed within a week or two, it is only this past weekend that I culled out the vast majority of the remainder. Especially with locations or subjects that are hard to revisit, it feels very final to delete hundreds of RAWS.
- Similarly, I went totally snap-happy using multiple memory cards and batteries on a whale-watching tour in July. The best 12 or so captures I processed within a few days, but culling the rest has not yet happened.
- I visited New Zealand in September and made a point of touring the Hobbiton Movie Set near Matamata. I had been there previously in 2015, but without a decent camera. Because it is a subject hard and expensive to revisit, I have only culled out the obvious rejects, and have processed some 40 or so favourites. A few hundred other raws are destined to be overwritten, but they have yet to be so explicitly designated.
My experience is that a month or three need to have passed before the degree of personal investment I feel in the captures has dissipated enough for me to make more objective, dispassionate decisions about what to keep and polish (diamonds, not turds, hopefully!) and what to consign to the void.
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I have more or less the same experience: immediate culling isnāt necessarily the best way to deal with a large series of images. In addition, I may want to keep a less than perfect picture of a less common species if itās the only one I have, or if the image shows interesting behaviour.
That does not mean that all kept pictures are processed, or processed beyond the basics. But deletion is final, so Iām in no hurry to delete images that are not clearly unusable, or obvious duplicates.
And, keeping images is not what makes dealing with a large number of images time consumingā¦
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You have given me the best justification for procrastinating I have ever seen, for which I thank you.
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Just did initial set up of the x-touch mini. Seems like it might be pretty useful. And thanks to the devs, itās super intuitive to set the Darktable buttons and sliders to MIDI inputs on the controller.
I have been extremely happy with mine, too; and the ability to use the rotary knobs to change the values much more than the sliders usually allow has given me greater confidence and more pleasing results. AND much quicker results with less wrist-impact.
One niggle I have discovered: there doesnāt seem to be a way to assign to a rotary encoder the equivalent of a mouse-wheel event: Iād Like to be able to use Ctrl-Shift-Mousewheel-scroll in culling mode, for example, assigning it to a rotary knob.
Iāve only programmed controls for the Darkroom so far, not the Lighttable. Iāve used eight rotary controls and eight buttons in each bank for the former. Iāve still got eight empty buttons for each bank but canāt immediately think of a use. I need to make some labels but have managed to do exposure and tonal changes in one bank and colours in the other. I wasnāt sure how best to use the controller with the Lighttable.
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