Making the switch from Lightroom

Software darktable
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darktable is a tough one for switching to and from in my opinion. It is just too different from the other software. Perhaps RawTherapee and the edit module of digiKam might look and behave more LR alike. Again that is just my opinion

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But, on the other hand, after some adaptation, darktable is well designed and user friendly, and limits the need to use other tools for retouching. Again, that is just …

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I’ve done that more than 3 years ago. For this I have done:

  • while editing my Lr picture I’ve been using dt for some of them. this was to learn how dt works and don’t be too “lost” when switching.

  • then I’ve created a Lr → dt module (integrated in dt) to recover some data (all keywords and some edits like crop, curve,…), see Importing Lightroom Development | darktable

Don’t be too expecting of the auto-import from Lr, it is not perfect but I found that it saves me 80% of the work on each image I have needed to recover in darktable. that’s is when I need to print or export an old picture the conversion save me quite some time.

At the start I think I’ve been editing 20% slower, with the time I think I’m now editing in darktable at the same speed I’ve used to do in Lightroom as the tool has progressed a lot and some editing not possible in Lightroom are now possible in darktable.

All in all I would never ever go back to the lock-in Adobe policy.

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Don’t get it wrong. Diffetent does not mean bad. Darktable is my primary RAW developing software. I did try Lightroom but I found that 1+ Gb monster too heavy and too resource hungry for what I need. Plus it is so proprietary (you don’t really own your work) plus it is $100+ / year license fee which does not make sense for my purpose (managing family pictures archive).

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Great, thanks. I am coming to realize that I just need to jump right in. I’ll plan on archiving all my ‘keeper’ photos.

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Could you elaborate more on your Lr → dt module? How does this differ from the auto-import?

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Sure, nothing special. Just import the picture where the .xmp from Lightroom exists and it will import whatever in this .xmp. Note that this only happens the first time, that is when there is no .xmp from darktable.

A Lr xmp is named “.xmp” a darktable xmp is named “..xmp”.

Hope this helps!

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Thanks!
Yeah this is basically what I’m planning. As well, I’ll try to preserve my existing collections via tagging and make archives of any keep photos.

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Hi Pascal, I’ve tried to import LR nef images + xmp and I’m progressing (tags and basic treatements are ok). I still have an issue with the dt “metadata” like title, description, creator(, publisher) and rights while for jpg images these attributes are imported properly.
Are these data normally considered in your LR import module ?
Is there any tip or anything I should look at ?

thanks
Philippe

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No the metadata are not imported. To do that one would need to improve the Lr import module.

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Thanks for the quick answer.
I’ll try to dive into the repository to see if I’m able to help … any advice is welcome !

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I think this is the code:

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Hi Tobias,
I’ve forked master dt and started a new branch LR Import add metadata and modified the file lightroom.c.
I’m unsure of what I did (I’m not a C programmer) and I’m not able to build and test.
But the changes are straight forward and I think this could be not too long to review for somebody who knows.
Is the next step to make a new pull request ?
Thanks

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Sorry, I can’t help her. I’m not a C programmer either. Perhaps @houz or @LebedevRI can help here. They are both darktable developers.

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I’m not familiar with the git process (pull request, …) and I don’t want to make a mistake.
But I guess the best way is to make a pull request and let people check and accept or not the proposal of change. Is that correct ?

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Yes, I think so.

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Thanks. Changes made.

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Hi Pascal, making some change on the code with traces it seems the code is run twice. Am I wrong ? Is that intentional ?

  /* Lr 7.0 CC (nodes) */
  snprintf(expr, sizeof(expr), "//%s:*", names[i]);
  _handle_xpath(dev, doc, imgid, xpathCtx, (const xmlChar *)expr, &data);

  /* Lr up to 6.0 (attributes) */
  snprintf(expr, sizeof(expr), "//@%s:*", names[i]);
  _handle_xpath(dev, doc, imgid, xpathCtx, (const xmlChar *)expr, &data);
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Yes, IIRC a first time when importing from lighttable (getting title, starts…) and a second time with dev data.

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Edit (rewrite): I’d forgotten this point. Does that means that as long as the image has not been opened in development, dev data are not retrieved ?