@mmr This should read style… since it is new to you this could be confusing… presets are for the modules …you can save the settings of a module as a preset and that can be applied based on some criteria like lens or iso or whatever. Styles are made up of a group of modules applied to an image. At this point in time they cannot be auto applied but its easy enough to apply them to multiple images…
You can also do selective cut and paste so if you edit a key image in a sequence and then want to apply all or selected parts of that edit to a series you can use Shift Ctrl C to copy the edit and Shift Ctrl V to apply it, both will present you with a dialogue box to select individual components…by default things that you might not want to copy might be deselected but that is just a few select items and you can easily over ride that…
@Thomas_Do Great idea! Here’s a raw image, and a jpg of what I could get done in about a minute in Capture One to try to fix it. Since the kids are half in shadow, half in sunlight, there’s definitely an issue with a loss of contrast here in what I’ve done to “fix” things. Would be happy to improve on this result.
Hi Mark! I was in much the same boat when I started using darktable. I’m still (after a year or so) far from an expert… but I can usually get the results I want fairly quickly.
I like the result you got using Capture One, so tried to something similar.
I expect I took longer than you would in C1 though … still, one can easily duplicate a look from one image to a lot with only quick adjustments.
I also saved the settings I used (apart from the leveling and cropping) as a style, so if you want you can import the style from the right hand pane in lighttable view and try it on different images. example-for-mark.dtstyle (5.0 KB)
As mentioned already, you can set the dt defaults to scene-referred or display referred - my style might not work properly in display referred. It’s meant to be applied on the dt defaults.
And, also, you can apply the .xmp file of course… to exactly replicate this particular image.
_MMR2099.ARW.xmp (8.9 KB)
If it would be useful I can give a run through my workflow.
Final thought: have you looked at RawTherapee and its fork, ART? They’re also very good and might be more similar to C1 in terms of interface, but I don’t have much experience of them.
Hi Mark @mmr . Welcome to the forum. I say with respect that if you can get any program to do 1000 edits per hour that are keepers that is amazing. I feel DT is more of an artists tool for doing what I call hand crafted individual edits. However, if all your images are shot under the same condition such as a families studio shoot then you could create a style or simple use ctrl+shift+C to copy the edits from one image and then open another image and use ctrl+V to paste the edits. I use this method a lot when working through a series of shots.
If I was even going to consider 1000 shots per hour I would probably try Lightroom before DarkTable. I just can not imagine trying to do 1000 images in an hour in any program. I am impressed with both you and any program that you have achieved that with in the past. I hope you find the answers you are looking for. If you stick with DT I would bookmark the user guide darktable 4.0 user manual - darktable which I read often if I have a problem. Also this forum is great. Good luck.
One thousand images per hour isn’t possible: that’s 3.6s per image including transfer from the memory card (taking the workflow outlined in the first post, and the first step there means every image on the card is accessed at least once, the keepers probably twice).
That said, if there are groups of images under similar lighting, editing one and then copying the history stack to the others in the group does save a lot of time (and keeps the treatment homogenous within the group). And for my images, the ones with normal lighting take 20-30s each for “standard” editing.
Such a workflow does make me wonder if in-camera jpegs wouldn’t be a good alternative (after setting up the in-camera processing to your liking: contrast, sharpening, saturation).
@123sg oh wow, that’s so close to what I did! I’ll take a look at using the style there, that may be exactly what I need! (dumb q-- any pointer to how to use styles? I sat through the first 20 minutes of video 61 and it seemed like tips on photography in general, not how to use darktable. I may have a problem with patience)
@gaaned92 thanks for that-- on my monitor, the brighter areas are pretty washed out and very pastel. Is that what you see as well? What was the process you used to get there, was it automatic?
@Terry@rvietor just to be clear, I’m churning through 1k images/hour by first culling them out to figure out which images I’m bringing in to work on in the first place. I am not importing them at all, I’m just looking at the jpg to see if there’s any “there there”. From there, I’ll typically end up with 100 or so images, and then from there I go through a quick crop/color/perspective correction cycle. I processed 2k photos yesterday in 2 hours and ended up with 65 keepers. In-camera jpgs don’t work because highlights get blown, especially in the heat of the moment when shooting reflective white jerseys.
Why do I shoot like this? Even with events or street, I shoot bursts, because people blink, the angles aren’t right, etc etc-- slight changes can make or break a photo. The monetary cost of this approach, especially compared to film, is negligible, but the temporal cost viz image processing is not trivial.
To address the original title, darktable is not a replacement to Capture One. Nor it is a replacement to Lightroom, ART, rawtheeraphy, Affinity, or any other raw editor tool. Each tool has a workflow that you will need to learn and then decide if it fits with your use case.
@betazoid That will help, sure. I moved to doing 3-5 fps when shooting action to have a better chance of getting the shot. Ends up being about 1-2k shots per game, so hey. When I’m not shooting games, could be street or events, and then it’s just a case of processing faster than I shoot. Which is a good habit to be in anyway
Hey Mark, thanks for the reply
I see you’ve just replied to Boris, but I was going to recommend his short video - I just watched it and it’s quite similar to what I did on my version up above. And he’s an expert!
Only thing I might mention is he used a couple of presets in diffuse and sharpen which I think he created himself (I did one of those too) but you could get away with using local contrast and sharpen instead… it’s just that the diffuse and sharpen module kind of has it’s own learning curve
To use a style:
In lighttable view, find the ‘styles’ panel on the right. Click ‘Import’ and find the previously downloaded file, then click ok or whatever.
Your style is now ‘installed’ in dt.
(just edited mix up…)
To apply it in lighttable you can click on an image to select it, then in the same ‘styles’ panel, select your style then click apply.
In this panel you can also choose between ‘append’ or ‘overwrite’ to choose whether the style ingredients are applied on top of any previous work or whether they replace any previous work.
I think my style (assuming you wanted to use it!) should be ‘appended’ on the dt scene-referred defaults.
To apply a style in darkroom, there is a little icon just off the bottom left of your image, which brings up a list of available styles. Click one.
To create a style, work on your image in darkroom until it’s how you want, then in the ‘history’ panel on the left, at the lower right of the history stack, there’s another little ‘styles’ icon to let you save as much of your history as you want as a style…
Good luck! dt does have a real learning curve, but it’s usually not as hard as it seems at first. (said by someone who abandoned it in disgust when he first tried it but now loves it)
Thanks for the clarification. I am now unsure if you want to edit RAW or Jpg images in Darktable. Is it RAW files you want to process? Also, I suspect there may be better programs for culling, but others may want to come to the defense of DT for this and I am happy to stand corrected if I am wrong.
Not much to add. Perfect, clear, fast screencast. Very useful to any dt learner - and to people that use dt for long too but maybe not that frequently.
More such speed edits please!
One tiny suggestion, I think a “highlight mouse pointer” would increase visibility on smaller screens. I know, it’s a Windows link, but I am sure Linux has some tools for it too.
… still, one can easily duplicate a look from one image to a lot with only quick adjustments.
