"darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them."
this post was submitted on 21 Dec 2024
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I like Darktable but found RawTherapee to be more usable. For me Darktable 4 was way too many clicks for what should be a one click - everywhere. But it is very powerful. Just the ui gave me headache
Personally, I'm grateful this tool exists.
I have used Adobe Lightroom 5 the one you could get on a disc, like, when owning things was actually possible. Adobe has systematically pissed me off over the last decade. Lightroom was great, non-destructive edits, import into year with sub directory sorted by months. Quick copy and apply edits. Lr5 was great.
I'm just a hobbyist photographer, I'm not doing pro level anything or charging anyone anything. I would love to use the student edition. I refuse to though, because it requires Adobe to upload them online, use them for ai training, it's not private. I take photos on a camera to NOT have them on the Internet.
To be honest I'd be upset if a photographer used any ai or cloud storage for my personal photos. Sadly, it's so baked in a photographer might not even know. Not everyone cares or is tech savvy(which is totally fine) it's not their fault the company is shady.
That was a first issue, second they won't support the version I have any longer, ok that's how software/hardware works, but it's a subscription model now and that sucks. I upload 6 months of photos at a clip, I didn't need a monthly sub. Because of that I'm tied to an old laptop that's on death's door to edit my pics.
Darktable provides everything I need that Lightroom did, sans a small bit of import magic to organize photos, and it's a little tricky to use but after about an hour, I understand how to get things going. Anything has a learning curve. With darktable I know my pics are mine, they are on my laptop, I won't be paying a subscription. That small amount of frustration is worth it to tell Adobe to piss off.
Anyone using this as their main program over Lightroom or Luminar? Would be interested to hear a pros and cons take
I use it over other tools, but I haven't used the proprietary tools so I can't provide a comparison.
I've tried to main it on a few occasions most recently on 4.1. It's immensely powerful and I really think it surpasses Lightroom on ability to create pleasing tones. I have it installed on my home and laptop photo editing setup and I do use it on occasion.
Uortunately, even as an Adobe hater, I still use Lightroom CC 99% of the time. Why? Because speed and cross-platform compatibility. CC is less powerful* but I can do all of my editing in 30 seconds per photo and I have roughly the same experience accross Mac, Linux, and Android.
Darktable is slow to update, you have to be methodical, and there are so many ways to do the same thing. I know the devs are trying to make the best tool possible and I think they've built a gem. But I'm not invested enough to learn best practices for my photo editing software. I want a tool which gives me the happy path to the basics.
*ai masking, ai noise reduction, and ai object deletion are insanely useful. I feel bad every time I use them... But I do. Darktable doesn't have these
Thanks, that’s an interesting overview. I guess it might be worth checking it out, but like you say, I like the simplicity of Lightroom CC and 85% of the time you only want 5% of the tools, auto correct and basic histogram adjustments.
The AI tools are honestly so useful though...
If anyone replies to this, please ping me so I see it, too. Thanks!
ping
Thanks!
Oh nice! I’m stoked about the background sidecar operations, that will speed things up considerably
Maybe check that link again. Something isn't working
Works for me, no idea what you're seeing or talking about