Providing user support for darktable

Software darktable
1

Hi,

since darktable is now officially my full-time job, and because I’m use to poor time-scheduling resulting in me working too hard until exhaustion and becoming angry, I have decided to take drastic measures for my own health for 2020. Basically, user support is getting in the way of developping, and trying to do everything at once obviously doesn’t work.

On Wednesday and Saturday

Between noon and 10pm (UTC+1/Paris) I will be providing:

  • live support/hotline:
  • asynchronous support:
    • in English here,
    • in French on darktable.fr forum,
    • on the mailing list.

Please keep conversations public as long as they don’t contain personal information, so answers benefit everyone.

Edit: Wednesday seems to be too busy for most users, so due to the lack of interest, it will be reallocated to programming.

On Thursday

I will only write articles and record video tutorials. I won’t open emails, chats and forums.

On Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday

I will work on code (new features and bug fixes) and reserve communication for fellow developers.

On Sunday

I will disappear from the internets. Hit me if you are near Nancy and want to have beers somewhere.

In addition, since it has been requested a couple of times, I will be offering personal training on darktable editing through Skype video chat (for the screen sharing), for 25€/h (discounts possible if you are involved in libre software development or live in difficult situations/countries – to be discussed). This will be a great opportunity to get customized advice from someone who knows its sourcecode to bend darktable into your workflow and make the best out of it.

Thanks to everyone who supported me this year and the previous one. I’m still not up to my income goal on Liberapay, but people seem to be more generous this year, so I might have health insurance in 2020 \o/.

34 Likes
2

Aurélien, have you considered publishing a (hardcopy, paid) book on retouching / DT?

Based on watching your videos and reading your articles, you are a good educator. I’d buy it :slight_smile:

3

Thanks ! I have considered a lot of things, but writing a book takes an awful amount of time, and that’s not an option for now. Also, books on software suck because you have to rewrite them almost ever year.

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You are certainly not alone in your endeavors to support!

I hope that once we flesh out those new articles on the linear pipe, people will start to understand.

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5

Congrats on putting your health first. Cool to see what the week of a full-time FOSS developer looks like!

I have one small remark: Paris is UTC+1 :wink:

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Blood pressure?

7

Normal. It’s just that I’m supposed to bike 60 km painlessly, and lately, 40 km already start hurting.

Right, thanks !

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8

I would just like to send you my thanks for the fantastic work you done! I’m but an amateur that loves Darktable. Every year I give photo albums as christmas presents to my family. This year everyone was so happy with the result, and complimented me on how professional it looked. I believe one reasons is that I figured out how to use filmic for more pleasant skin-tones.

I donate to you now! Keep up the good work!

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That just made my day :slight_smile:

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10

Road cycling? Correct fit is quite important for painless rides. I can do 40-60 km fine, but after that all my body starts to hurt :slight_smile:

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It’s definitely a problem of not doing enough km each week :wink:

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About 30 years ago I also made ~40 to 60 km a day on my Koga Miyata…

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Pierre, great work you did and the difficulties you are facing are quite familiar to me. I am self employed too and started to write my own numerical solver many, many moons ago (the first usable version took a couple of years). It is open source, and users contributed with ideas and solutions over the years. If I would not have that code, the work, and ideas how to enhance my code (I already use OpenMP but OpenMPI is high on the list), I certainly would have joined one of the open source photography projects (and DT tops the list and for example dive into the CR3 files). Maybe in a few years time? Another option would be co-authoring documentation/books especially with hardcore math and physics in it - agreed that user guides are a bit tricky nowadays. I personally used to buy lots of O’Reilly books, the books by LaTeX specialists etc. as Stack Exchange is not the answer.

I like the personal training idea and might well do it in the not so distant future :- )

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Due to the lack of popularity of the Wednesday user support, I will reallocate it to developing, and keep only the Saturday for users.

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