Much as I value Bruce Williams’ ‘Dad and Dave*’ darktable saga (which I do, highly), there is only so much that he can cover in each episode – there is a huge amount of work to do in producing these. Naturally then I turn to the online documentation and to the blog which accompanies each new release. And there I have a slight problem, which is somewhat compounded by the (very sensible) move to the use of Markdown to produce the official documentation, going forward.
The problem I have is knowing which of the blogs, and official documents, I should be following to get a complete, accurate and up to date (being 3.4) understanding of how a particular module, GUI function or other capability of darktable works and how it should be used, ideally. This problem arises from the on-going maturation of the product. So, some modules (for example) are definitively described in the 2.6 blog, some in the 3.0 blog and so on. And it is possible that the complete picture of a given functionality requires a reading of more than 1, if not all, blogs as that function has incrementally developed. At my age it is quite a challenge to read and retain all the information in all the blogs.
The fact that some modules/functions have been totally eliminated, some our now deprecated and others are to be deprecated, while yet are others are completely new adds to this difficulty.
What I would like – and what is an entirely unreasonable desire – is to see a sort of matrix showing which blogs need to be read to fully understand which modules/functions. This is unreasonable because of the amount of work to create the initial version, and then the ongoing effort required to keep it correct and current.
So how do others handle this challenge of information assimilation?
Understood only by antipodeans of a certain age with the obscure habit of listening to radio.
Mostly, I started with the manual to get the basic wrkflow (that was when the only option was basecurve). After that, browsing the manual and searching the web when I had a particular problem to solve.
For the new workflow with filmic, tone equaliser and now color calibration, @anon41087856’s articies and posts were enough to get me started, his videos helped to understand the use better.
So basically, the manual to start, then mostly problem-oriented, I I’m not even aiming at understanding all the modules, and all they can do.
Start with the new documentation which should be the reference (potentially have a look to the old one if a module is missing).
if the doc is not accurate, then it’s a bug that has to be reported
Blog posts nd articles are done at a certain point in time and rarely updated to the last versions, but are useful to explain the rational and algorithms behind a new module; don’t use those as recipes you’ll be able to immediately apply.
One thing that gets overlooked is that DT really shines when you understand the basics of digital editng…blend modes color theory etc etc…Sometimes I think people go at this the wrong way trying to find the DT module(s) that will address their desires and try to figure out how to use them without this basic understanding…I would say you will benefit almost as much watching tutorials on Gimp, Photoshop and other software that is used for this type of editing. Target information that attacks a problem or technique you wish to employ…then when you go to DT it really becomes quite easy to figure out how to make it do what you want…the blogs are great and the documentation is fine but understanding tone color sharpness and noise and what can impact these will really assist …so this is a long winded way of saying don’t necessarily get tunnel vision on DT…incorporate it in to a wider application tools and knowledge about how to edit digital images…one example for me is a channel called inAffinity…Dave is a retired Math teacher and he has an amazing set of videos using Affinity photo to explore digital editing techniques. These videos were very helpful for understanding things like the channel mixer a common element in many software editor or blending modes and some nuances on color theory beyond the basics…after watching a couple of video’s he made I went back to DT and actually got the channel mixer to work for me rather than moving sliders in a trial and error fashion hoping to land on a solutions…
Thanks I did not mean to be vague…I didn’t know if anyone would care it was just an example that came to mind…thanks for posting the link for @Matt_Maguire What I was getting at is when you can tie the basics to the terminology then it is easier to understand how you would select a tool to make a particulate edit…some simple videos like this one have little to do with the software ie Affinity but they demonstrate some basic color theory and explain things like tint, shade, tone etc in a really easy to digest way. Things like this are things you can take back to DT to use channel mixer, color LUT, color zones etc Just a thought rather than a matrix of DT blogs to learn DT… https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ufDoaRdNKz0&list=PL0YyTWKOid7HM7ngp1im8QlWKcvSCVy9R&index=2
Well I think your one liner is exactly what I was trying to fumble about and say…it is really good to get explanations from a variety of sources and a variety of tools as I think this really helps to get a good grasp on things…Dave being a teacher does a good job of explaining things for the most part in a nice visual way that hits home…and there are other out there for sure…
