Since switching from Lightroom to Darktable I have noticed editing photos temporarily changes my perception of colours in the real world. Contrasts in hue and saturation jump out more to me. It’s fairly pleasent but only lasts about 10 minutes. I think my brain works harder to get the colours right in darktable compared to lightroom where I gave colours a lot less thought.
Anyone else experiencing this?
I am not experiencing this. It may be because DT makes you more part of the decision making process driving how your colors look rather than just being a passenger accepting what is given.
Color perception is not something fixed in our brains.
It is to a large degree a question of culture and learning – and likely also about priming.
F.ex. seems people with a large vocabulary of color nuances to be better to visually discern color nuances. This is, by the way, similar to e.g. that people with many words for various feelings are also better able to differentiate their inner states.
So, its easy to think in general that with a better reference framework available, the better we are to perceive/experience variations.
And perhaps that’s what happening to you. Working with dt raises awareness of what scales are there to perceive along. And that primes your senses for a while also after the editing session. But since this is not yet fully internalized with you, but rather requires some effort of you, you will after a while tire and the effect wear off.
I guess …
Colour/contrast awareness/perception is one thing. The other is that dt is a totally different, and dare I say superior, product that makes changes, well, differently. We should stop comparing software with a 1:1 mindset!
One big difference is design philosophy. Lr abstracts the controls/sliders to the max (i.e., its adjustments are interpreted), whereas dt does not and lets the user decide what is best (control/slider increments are what one would expect).