[aardbat]

I am looking for software to start learning PP on. Darktable is free so I would like to use it if able. Has anyone tried both? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each? Thanks!

[amoringello]

Wow, looks cool. I may need to give it a try and see how it compares...
Normally I would say the big advantage to purchased pro software v.s. open source is speed. i.e. look at Photoshop v.s. GIMP or PaintShop Pro (used to be more open now trashed by a conglomerate). Regardless, Photoshop is incredible in the speed of its processing in most operations. (and horrible in a few)

Lightroom on the other hand is slow. Lightroom built on a scripted core that itself is not very efficient. So, there isn't anything much that can be done to make things any slower. It would be nice to see if an open source project could give it a run for its money.

[elliott]

I've been using Darktable for a while now, it is by far the best open source RAW developer available, way ahead of Rawtherapee and Rawstudio. I've been playing with GIT builds and it is nice to see how well the mask feature has been coming along, it will be great when it finally is released.

I don't know how well it compares to Lightroom though. I'm sure Lightroom does things Darktable doesn't and Darktable does things that Lightroom doesn't.

[aardbat]

Wow, looks cool. I may need to give it a try and see how it compares...
Normally I would say the big advantage to purchased pro software v.s. open source is speed. i.e. look at Photoshop v.s. GIMP or PaintShop Pro (used to be more open now trashed by a conglomerate). Regardless, Photoshop is incredible in the speed of its processing in most operations. (and horrible in a few)

Lightroom on the other hand is slow. Lightroom built on a scripted core that itself is not very efficient. So, there isn't anything much that can be done to make things any slower. It would be nice to see if an open source project could give it a run for its money.

Thanks elliott.

amoringello, I have not run into speed issues as I am a beginner user, and have no idea what Lightroom is capable of So far all I have done is played with contrast and exposure.

[Nick Siebers]

I haven't used LightRoom, but LightZone is a free program that can do quite a bit.

[jbinpg]

A multi-year user of darktable here. It doesn't lack much in image processing compared to Lightroom but it is behind in the image tagging and cataloging functions. Give it time and it will catch up.

Jack

[Moto Fotoe]

Its nice being one that prefers using linux for my day to day computing needs to have so many free or open source options available. There is Corel AfterShot Pro if you wanted to purchase commercial photo management software that actually runs in linux, mac or windows natively, but dark table is pretty nice! Also free... I have and still use digikam also from time to time. I like most it has face recognition that works decently for helping speed up my photo tagging needs.

Even if I wanted to use Lightroom there is no Linux version so I don't bother with it. I'm still learning Darktable and have been using it casually for the last 6 months, but I like it lots. The one thing I've noticed with my new K-3 and 18-135mm wr is there is no camera or lens profile for either in DT. Hasn't hampered me from working with the photos from the combo.

I've never heard of LightZone and from 1st impressions it looks like a slimmed down Darktable. I'm going to try it when I have a chance.

[gwing]

Wow, looks cool. I may need to give it a try and see how it compares...
Normally I would say the big advantage to purchased pro software v.s. open source is speed. i.e. look at Photoshop v.s. GIMP or PaintShop Pro (used to be more open now trashed by a conglomerate). Regardless, Photoshop is incredible in the speed of its processing in most operations. (and horrible in a few)

Lightroom on the other hand is slow. Lightroom built on a scripted core that itself is not very efficient. So, there isn't anything much that can be done to make things any slower. It would be nice to see if an open source project could give it a run for its money.

If speed is your thing you will just love darktable. It's written by folks fanatical about speed and response, everything is real time, mulithreaded and if you have a decent openCL capable graphics card darktable will offload it's processing to that and go even faster.

---------- Post added 04-25-2014 at 11:19 PM ----------

Its nice being one that prefers using linux for my day to day computing needs to have so many free or open source options available. There is Corel AfterShot Pro if you wanted to purchase commercial photo management software that actually runs in linux, mac or windows natively, but dark table is pretty nice! Also free... I have and still use digikam also from time to time. I like most it has face recognition that works decently for helping speed up my photo tagging needs.

Even if I wanted to use Lightroom there is no Linux version so I don't bother with it. I'm still learning Darktable and have been using it casually for the last 6 months, but I like it lots. The one thing I've noticed with my new K-3 and 18-135mm wr is there is no camera or lens profile for either in DT. Hasn't hampered me from working with the photos from the combo.

I've never heard of LightZone and from 1st impressions it looks like a slimmed down Darktable. I'm going to try it when I have a chance.

Lightzone is very nice. It was groundbreaking in its approach and usability when it came out but in the years it languished unloved darktable has leapt ahead in power and added in the selective area editing capabilities formerly unique to LZ in the open source world.

Today darktable is more capable but more confusing. LZ is great for someone who is new to post processing and not an image processing graduate yet it still has the power to produce compelling results from a simple and attractive interface.

[Moto Fotoe]

If speed is your thing you will just love darktable. It's written by folks fanatical about speed and response, everything is real time, mulithreaded and if you have a decent openCL capable graphics card darktable will offload it's processing to that and go even faster.

---------- Post added 04-25-2014 at 11:19 PM ----------



Lightzone is very nice. It was groundbreaking in its approach and usability when it came out but in the years it languished unloved darktable has leapt ahead in power and added in the selective area editing capabilities formerly unique to LZ in the open source world.

Today darktable is more capable but more confusing. LZ is great for someone who is new to post processing and not an image processing graduate yet it still has the power to produce compelling results from a simple and attractive interface.

Having used LightZone a bit more since learning of it I do like it, but DT is just mile ahead. DT is opensource LR for me. My only wish would be better support for Pentax PEF, but specifically the images coming out of the Pentax K-3! PEF and DNG. Due to some of the dependencies it and pretty much all linux photo programs use to read the raw file types. The PEF is totally unsupported, but will read the DNG just fine but excludes the embedded maker notes for the lens type used. My current work around for this is to shoot PEF in camera and then using Adobes current 8.4 raw convertor installed via wine to convert the PEF to DNG and somehow the file the converter produces actually contains the lens info that is read by DT.


Yes I can say I have noticed the improvement when I realized I could utilize Darktable and openCL with my GTX 760. Although the gui IMHO could use a bit more customizing options I don't find to confusing after using a bit to edit photos no more than Lightroom did the 1st few times I used it.

[gwing]

Having used LightZone a bit more since learning of it I do like it, but DT is just mile ahead. DT is opensource LR for me. My only wish would be better support for Pentax PEF, but specifically the images coming out of the Pentax K-3! PEF and DNG. Due to some of the dependencies it and pretty much all linux photo programs use to read the raw file types. The PEF is totally unsupported, but will read the DNG just fine but excludes the embedded maker notes for the lens type used. My current work around for this is to shoot PEF in camera and then using Adobes current 8.4 raw convertor installed via wine to convert the PEF to DNG and somehow the file the converter produces actually contains the lens info that is read by DT.


Yes I can say I have noticed the improvement when I realized I could utilize Darktable and openCL with my GTX 760. Although the gui IMHO could use a bit more customizing options I don't find to confusing after using a bit to edit photos no more than Lightroom did the 1st few times I used it.

Don't worry support for K3 PEFs is coming in darktable. Raw support in darktable comes from the RawSpeed project and we have already supplied Klaus PEFs from the K3 which he has in hand although darktable hasn't yet updated to his latest libraries. Personally I just take DNG in camera and haven't had mine set to PEFs for three years or so now even though dt handles PEFs from my kit but each to their own. As a stopgap I think some of the guys to whom the exif data is particularly interesting use exiftool or similar to read the DNG and rewrite non-standard field info into standard fields dt uses - and there was even some talk on the darktable forum of integrating that with darktable's LUA scripting engine so it is done automatically when an image is opened. That's about all I know as the extra lens detail doesn't personally interest me, my lenses are recognised even from the DNG file information so the lens aberration correction module can work properly and that's all I need.

[Moto Fotoe]

I actually did know about rawspeed because that's what Pascal told me over on the dt redmine when I inquired by the lens info issue I have. Maybe even on the Flickr darktable group and totally forgot. DoH!
Exiftool does read the lens info correctly from the K-3 DNG but I have not yet had the time to figure out how to use exiftool to fix the lens info so that rawspeed/darktable can read it.

Thanks for the info!

Now I wonder if Digikam uses rawspeed because it does not read the lens info either? hhmmm...

[Mikesul]

Has there been any new work on adapting Dark Table for Windows? I understand earlier versions were very unstable. It looks like such an interesting project.

[jbinpg]

I think I can safely say that the main developers of darktable have no interest in porting to windows. They are busy enough with what is on their plate now. That does not stop other enterprising coders doing it, though.

Jack