WIth old photos i had very strange settings, looks like they have been edited before with an old darktable version.
I thought if I remove all xmp-files with the file manager I could start from scratch, but this was not the case. With 1 photo I found a base curve in dt 5 after removing the xmp file.
Maybe I should have used the purge-script after removing the xmp-file?
settings are stored in the database(s) so you need to use the history reset function in lighttable if you want to start over.
Even if the edits were old, darktable should have been able to pick them up, and convert parameters to current model implementations, if needed.
Probably dt did what is possible. Combining a basecurve with a tone equalizer is at least for me difficult.
What I do now, is to rename the folder, execute
purge_non_existing_images.sh --purge
and then I rename the folder back to the old name and then I remove the xmp-files.
Could there be a problem, when migrating to a new pc? I copied the dng and xmp-files only, but not the database. I don’t care about things like ratings. I don’t use it
Could depend on the module order (display or scene-referred workflow).
The base curve is traditionally a display-referred tool, mapping the tonal range 0…1 to 0…1, only adjusting contrast.
The tone equalizer is scene -referred, mapping 0…infinity to 0…infinity. It’s best used with one of the tone mappers developed for the scene-referred workflow: filmic rgb or sigmoid. Those map 0…infinity to 0…1.