salty hn post (split from Ai masking post)

Sounds neat!

But where are you reading this:

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If you follow the OP’s link to Reddit, that’s indeed what people on Reddit say. The Darktable subreddit is a strange crowd…

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Certainly many people would like ai masking or even bemoan its lack of existence I’m DT, but outright leaving darktable because of not having ai masking is something I have not read, not even on reddit.

Closest I found was this

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Sad thread, almost everyone is complaining about darktable in every top comment.

Also, misinformed people continue to perpetuate nonsense that’s no longer true like “Darktable should have a beginner module that has all the basics a user needs to edit a photo.”, when in fact that has already been implemented for quite a while with the improved default quick access panel.

I’d say darktable’s biggest hurdle is in educating its users, even though there are plenty of resources available. Maybe it should spam users with a notice to read the docs or watch a couple of instructional videos.

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Its users, or its “reviewers”?

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I’d say both. I’ve read some scathing reviews of Darktable that were written by people who couldn’t be bothered to learn the program and wouldn’t make the effort to reach out for help. And then there’s some who just go out for cheap laughs by demonstrating their own ignorance of its workflow. It’s a pretty pathetic way to get a few YouTube followers.

Maybe among DT’s users there’s a marketing/advertising professional who could think through a basic strategy, given the inevitable restraints of open source.

This was pretty disappointing recent vid, marking down Darktable because it didn’t recognise files from recentish cameras. Understand why it would be the case, though I also get how for many people that would be the end of it.

I guess people got used to Apple’s three bullet-point set up guides, and saying here’s the “one big reason” to use our stuff.

And YouTube is more like journal entries than journalism.

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This is a good point, although I wonder if these youtubers are a bit out of touch. I would warrant 90% or more of users do not have a camera released in the last year or two, and I’d warrant even pros keep their high end camera for at least one or two generations if not more, especially nowadays with such small incremental upgrades.

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It’s so easy to add support yourself (speaking as the gut who added support for the Nikons D810 and Z9) anyway.

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Back when I was using commercial raw development software, I discarded DxO Photo Lab because it couldn’t open my phone DNG raws. Later on, I discarded their DxO Pure Raw preprocessor for tge same reason. If the software doesn’t support your cameras, it’s useless to you.

From a commercial point of view, it is inconceivable that you could just add that camera support yourself. Sad as it is to see this disappointing review, it is a reasonable viewpoint. At least they took OSS alternatives seriously.

Agree

I should not have clicked this. There’s so much bad vibes on this thread, and I cannot understand why. I mean, nobody is forced to use darktable afaik, therefore, I guess, the people that complain in harsh words do like darktable in principle and try to force the project to implement their needs somehow. But why with this bad attitude? For years now I am advocating for machine learning masks in darktable (or mask import as a first step), and in parallel I am running a workflow that involves export from darktable → using rembg for masking → back into darktable for finishing the edit, which is for sure not the best workflow. But does this make me insult people that spend their free time to improve my beloved raw editor? I hope not.

I know I am preaching to the choir, and I know it’s the internet, but I can understand if the devs’ motivation goes down rapidly after reading threads such as the one on hacker news. That makes me sad.

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Darktable, like many FOSS projects, has a few particularities compared to the standard “commercial” software:

  • very small development groups
  • no commercial motivation (10% users more or less gives exactly 0 change to the balance sheet)
  • so no need to cater to user wishes (from a commercial point of view)
  • no access to equipment data as soon as the manufacturer wants you to sign an NDA, and even less so if that access has to be paid for.

A lot of the critics seem to forget one or more of those points… That’s not something a link to a manual is going to change (you may even have to explain what a manual is, in some cases…)

As for those that claim you don’t need to learn your tools to make art, there’s a reason art schools spend a lot of time on the technical aspects of the job… Again something that’s not specific to darktable, but a more general issue. Some of that attitude might also explain why science is attracting less students?

More specifically regarding AI: while there may be enough engines available as open source, those engines need training on (a lot of) data. Those data are very often not open source, or just not available (again not a problem specific to darktable or even to photography).

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I think there’s a strange commercialist misconception that a free product is automatically worthless. We know that if you’re not paying for a product, you are the product. Darktable thus causes a severe emotional disconnect. A feeling of unease, that there must be something wrong with it, otherwise this would cost money. And this expresses as the confused malignant criticism in the HN thread.

Sunk cost probably pays into this as well. If you payed money for something and end up disliking it, you made a bad purchasing decision. It feels like your bad feelings are your own fault, not the product’s fault. Not so with free software: if you don’t like it, it’s obviously because it’s garbage.

This expresses in other ways, too. As a maintainer of various open source packages, most of my user interactions are through bug reports. Best case, these are polite and impersonal. Worst case, tgey are angry and accusatory. In stark contrast, when I released my first commercial software, new buyers thanked me! They sang the praises of my software. It was bewildering! Even the bug reports were universally prefixed with “I love your product, but…”.

I try to be cognizant of this in general. If I get angry something, I like to ask myself, is this because it’s bad? Or just that it doesn’t fit my purpose? Because the appropriate emotional response to these two cases is quite different. But retraining a commercialist brain is not easy…

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Yes and no. If people that always complain and demand goodies for free threaten to leave dt, it can only make the “community” better. Please don’t make any effort to make these people “stay”. They will never contribute anything positive, vibe or otherwise.

Now other people may pay attention to these “reviewers” and be convinced by them that dt is not worth trying. That is sad, obviously. If more of them could be “saved” that would be nice, for them. They may not be the most useful to the community if their understanding is so limited that they can’t recognise useful information and the same limitations may make dt too complex a tool for them to master. For a lot of people the commercial offerings, with their support and focus on everybody really is the better choice.

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I have personally found Reddit a really negative forum on nearly any topic and I avoid it more than even Facebook.

Personally I am in the fortunate position of teaching camera classes and in the classes I demonstrate and promote DT as my #1 editing program. Many of my students go onto to learn DT with me. DT is the only program I now teach. Every program needs educators to promote its use, but for some reason too many people get hung up on commercial programs.

I also look at AI as artificial photos rather than hand crafted edits by the photographer, but maybe that is just my personal limitation on the subject of AI. AI also seems the buzz word of this time and it encroaches on so much of our life. I have looked at the latest music videos of my favourite artists only to discover I have just watch a fans generated AI video and song. Hmm…

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Hi,

I’m curious about your workflow with rembg. Are you willing to spend some words on this? Maybe in an own thread?

Thanks…

This was the comment I found the most ridiculous:

“Darktable has so thoroughly sucked the fun out of digital photography for me”

I don’t know about anyone else, but if I’m not enjoying something purely optional, I stop doing it.
Either this person has fun sucked out of them extremely quickly, or they’ve used the software for a long time under a state of frustration. Who does that to themselves? If Darktable is not the software for you, move on and find something you do like. Continuing with it until you lose your passion for the hobby is some weird form of masochism…

Edit: And if the person is a professional, they are still not forced to use the software. They can buy the “best-in-class” software (whatever that is) as a business expense.

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DT has rejuvenated photography for me after a few years of thinking of slowly abandoning the hobby. Sure, the UI is a little clunky, but you can customize the workflow to make it easier to use.

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