Hello again. I just want to show to all of you my progress so far using Darktable. Remember, I used to edit all my RAW photographs on Adobe Photoshop Lightroom, running on WIndows 10. Now I’m running Linux Mint 18 ‘Cinnamon’. So far so good.
First I’m going to show you the original picture:
Now this is after 1 hour and 40 minutes of editing in Darktable:
The truth is that I’m not happy with the results. I don’t know if I’m missing something or… I really don’t know. I was trying to create a more dramatic scene, darker… but each time I set the picture dark, It got grain all over… noisy.
Here is an example of what I was hoping to create at the end. This was edited by me using Adobe Lightroom and only took me 10 minutes maximum.
Any tips? I’m getting frustrated. I read the Darktable user manual and I’ve seen a lot of video tutorials on YouTube and… I think is not paying off. Any suggestions? I really don’t want to give up but I can’t avoid thinking going back to Adobe Lightroom again.
My humble belief is that you are trying to learn every slider in Darktable at once. I consider that quite impossible. From what you say that you want to achieve: start to concentrate, for instance, on base curve in Darktable.
Make a change – and at the same time – observe the histogram!
Do the ends of the histogram reach the far left and the far right? If not, make them do so.
Grab a point from the middle of the base-curve (which is a straight line when you start, right?) and drag it slightly towards the “South-East”. Observe what happens to the photo.
Take your time to try to master curves, they are very valuable.
I know that Paul writes about curves in Rawtherapee here, but it will give you the basics:
@s7habo Well done, Boris!
I think you have made a very good development of that cat according to Fernando’s wishes! I was quite close – but your cat eyes are much better than mine.
@Psyfurius: if you have not followed a Darktable history step-by-step (to see the changes one by one), here is what to do: Place your cat and Boris’ xmp in the same folder. Load cat. Expand the History flap in Darktable. You will notice 11 steps, from 10 to 0, right? Mouse click on step 0, then on step 1, and so on…
Can you make available the raw file from the Lightroom edit you did? (You can use a service like https://filebin.net/ to upload a large file). At least that will get us on the same page using the same image for comparison for us to assist you. (We have no idea how different your Lr edited image is from the one you are wanting to edit).
I’d hazard a guess that most edits people want to do to an image could probably be done with around 6-8 different settings. Don’t let all of the capabilities overwhelm you.
Here’s my quick bash at it. I wouldn’t usually make the darks this dark, and looking at it again I probably went too far. I was trying to get somewhere near the overall feel of your other image.
I agree curves is a good place to start. I leave ‘base curve’ with its default (Pentax-like in my case) and either have it on or off (sometimes it’s easier to turn it off and start from a flatter image), and then use the ‘curves’ module to make tonal adjustments.
@DavidOliver Wow! Nice work!
Just learned few new things about using some modules in darktable from that video. Especially equaliser, colour zones, colour correction and use of blend modes.
Thx!
[quote=“Claes, post:2, topic:2236”]
From what you say that you want to achieve: start to concentrate, for instance, on base curve in Darktable. Make a change – and at the same time – observe the histogram! * Grab a point from the middle of the base-curve (which is a straight line when you start, right?) and drag it slightly towards the “South-East”. Observe what happens to the photo.[/quote]
Thanks for your advice! and believe me… I do look the histogram all the time.
Here is the list of all the actives modules that I applied:
Hey! Thank you very much! That’s what I was trying to do in Darktable with mi picture. I though that Darktable couldn’t do it, but I was wrong. Also, I didn’t know that you can do a xmp file on Darktable. That’s awesome! I will load it and see what modules you used and I will see the history. Really, thank you!
Yes he did! and those eyes are a little trickier. What I did was activate the color balance module. I draw a mask around the eyes and then I pull the “blue” slider on “lift” a little to the left so it can get that green/yellow tone. Then I created a new instance of the color balance module and draw a mask around the black pupils and pulled to the left the “factor” slider on “lift” for contrast.
Thank you. I really didn’t know how it works. Now I do.
Thank you for your time and effort. It’s not what I wanted for this kind of picture. I was looking for something darker and strong to the eye. . . But everyone have their own taste and different workflows. I really appreciate your work and I’m going to check that xmp file!
@patdavid, no sorry. I just have the exported .jpg file. I deleted the RAW Lightroom file when I formatted my Hard Disk, before installing LInux.
Thank you very much for that cool video! I’m going to watch it closely and if I have a question on your workflow, I will ask you directly here in this thread. And, yes… I think you went too dark because the foreground branch now is too dark, but… I don’t really care. I know I’m going to learn a lot from your video and xmp file anyway. Thank you very much for this and for taking your time to record and upload that video. I know it can take much time.
Thank you everyone for your replies, recommendations and for taking your time to edit that picture. I’m very happy to be part of a community where everyone is willing to help. This motivates me even more and I’m going to practice more often in Darktable following your recommendations, xmp files and that cool video from @DavidOliver .
For all of you guys, here is the RAW .NEF picture so you can have fun too!
Having too much going on in Darktable isn’t a good way to do things. but a common pitfall nevertheless. In my first attempts the results were too artificial, strange, over the top or all of the above, although sometimes I think the default settings are a bit too strong (like the Shadows/Highlights module). You can easily feel this when you see the styles submitted to DTStyles and the amount of active modules some have.
Then I started to use less stuff, only one at the time and things started to go better, being more subtle in the settings I chose. Then I started creating my own film emulation presets (shameless self promotion here) the goal also was to master the base tools of Darktable: I deliberately used only Tone Curve (and Channel Mixer for B&W) and avoided all other color modules because I wanted to better understand LAB color that was confusing me at the time.
Is the site down?