[Tony Belding]

I was just giving Darktable another spin on my Mac Pro. . . Once again I'm pondering making a jump to a Linux system, but a viable alternative to Lightroom would be necessary.

I can't seem to get past importing. The manual is no help at all, and the video I found on YouTube is just confusing. My attempts thus far have only resulted in Darktable cataloguing the files right wherever they happen to be, rather than copying-and-organizing them in its own storage area. What am I doing wrong? How do I configure this?

[wombat2go]

On linux, DT makes an SQL called "library.db" in ~/.config/darktable

I found it and the side cars too confusing and unnecessary for my small volume use,
so i now run DT with side-cars option un-checked (in > gears > core-options ) and use a script to disable the SQL and cold start DT for each photo.
When finished editing, I export the photo with my own path/ filename ( in light-table > export-selected) , the original being unchanged.

[house]

Darktable (rightly) doesn't organise the files but scans the files and builds a searchable database.

I use "rapid photo downloader" to transfer from scard to correct location in my hard drive. It's flexible and allows for basically any folder/filename system you could require.

[wombat2go]

One problem if DT is allowed to use its "film roll" mode is that
in light-table, it loads all files in the directory.
So in my case if there are 10 of 200 MB film scans, it tries to load them all !
That is one reason I disable the SQL data base, where it stores all its "film rolls"

[Tony Belding]

Darktable (rightly) doesn't organise the files but scans the files and builds a searchable database.

I use "rapid photo downloader" to transfer from scard to correct location in my hard drive. It's flexible and allows for basically any folder/filename system you could require.

There's nothing "rightly" about that. Organizing the files is one of the basic functions of Aperture and Lightroom. If Darktable doesn't do that, then it's not really a Lightroom alternative at all, and I guess I shouldn't even be looking at it.

[jbinpg]

If you take the time to tag your photos, then darktable can retrieve files from anywhere you wish to store them. But it is up to you how you do your file management.

[lightbox]

There's nothing "rightly" about that. Organizing the files is one of the basic functions of Aperture and Lightroom. If Darktable doesn't do that, then it's not really a Lightroom alternative at all, and I guess I shouldn't even be looking at it.

Not sure what you mean. I have Lightroom and I'm not seeing any automatic organization going on. During import I have to choose the source and destination paths, or I can choose a default one in settings for Auto Import. Either way the choice is mine and not Lightroom's.

[jbinpg]

BTW, you can open single files in darktable by right clicking an image file and using the "open with" dialog.

[wombat2go]

BTW, you can open single files in darktable by right clicking an image file and using the "open with" dialog.

Yes, it will open a single image that way and open it in the darkroom UI.
(linux)
However, it will put that image in the SQL, so if say 5 200 MB tiffs are opened successively in file manager "open with",
then successively it will attempt to open them all in the light table. Somtimes that causes DT to hang.

The only way I have found to stop that is to rename the library.db before darktable opens (using a script)

[house]

There's nothing "rightly" about that. Organizing the files is one of the basic functions of Aperture and Lightroom. If Darktable doesn't do that, then it's not really a Lightroom alternative at all, and I guess I shouldn't even be looking at it.

Raw development and photo organizing software used to have this terrible tendency of requiring a certain folder structure or a single "repository" of images. Sometimes this structure made no sense for normal file access using file managers or prevented having different jobs/subjects on different hard drives. IPhoto I'm looking at you...

Using Rapid photo downloader and Darktable I can use my preferred YYYY/MMDD_keyword/IMGP0001.DNG structure or any other of my liking and have it automatically applied when importing.

When accessing the files through Darktable i can tag and filter by all the metadata and bring up dynamic views of any selection of content irrespective of file layout. The decision to never write raw files was conceptually clean and sensible. Darktable used to import but couldn't quite compete with external software.

The difference of accessing camera import from inside the raw software or from a separate app should be non existent. The advantage of multiple tools is that you can compose you own workflow the Unix way. (not saying everything-and-the-kitchen-sink sofware like Darktable follows Unix philosophy but I take any small gifts in this direction gratefully)

[jbinpg]

Any large graphics program will work best with maximum RAM installed. I have 32gig which gives darktable enough headroom to handle most big image processing chores, especially since a lot of the grunt work can now be handled by the graphics card itself using opencl. However, I am not familiar with the Mac port of darktable so not sure if all these functions are available for that platform. I would suggest tweaking some of the memory options in the settings to see if you can finesse better performance from your machine.

[Tony Belding]

Not sure what you mean. I have Lightroom and I'm not seeing any automatic organization going on. During import I have to choose the source and destination paths, or I can choose a default one in settings for Auto Import. Either way the choice is mine and not Lightroom's.

uhhh. . . I think I may, at some time when I was setting up Lightroom, have told it where to keep its library folder on my computer. Ever since then it has been copying imported files into that folder and organizing them with sub-folders. I guess that must be "Auto Import".

And I haven't figured out how to make Darktable do that. That's my complaint.

Although, I think it's moot now. I've come to my senses, and I laughed, and laughed, and I dismissed all foolish notions of switching from Mac to Linux. It would be a huge amount of expense and time and work for dubious benefits.

[lightbox]

Although, I think it's moot now. I've come to my senses, and I laughed, and laughed, and I dismissed all foolish notions of switching from Mac to Linux. It would be a huge amount of expense and time and work for dubious benefits.

I don't have a horse in that race (regarding switching OSes); just was curious if Lightroom had some organization tools that I wasn't aware of.

[automorphism]

uhhh. . . I think I may, at some time when I was setting up Lightroom, have told it where to keep its library folder on my computer. Ever since then it has been copying imported files into that folder and organizing them with sub-folders. I guess that must be "Auto Import".

And I haven't figured out how to make Darktable do that. That's my complaint.

Although, I think it's moot now. I've come to my senses, and I laughed, and laughed, and I dismissed all foolish notions of switching from Mac to Linux. It would be a huge amount of expense and time and work for dubious benefits.

Darktable doesn't organize files in the same way Lightroom does. The copying from camera onto your computer you have to do yourself. So, if you want a library folder, the workflow is
1. Create folder on computer
2. Put folder of pictures into this library folder. I usually name them with a date like 2016-02-15-description.
3. Import folder with Darktable

Darktable probably will never support auto-cataloguing file management by default, as the developers have stated that this is a design choice. Alternatively you can use Rapid Photo downloader as mentioned earlier in this thread. If this is the only thing keeping you from trying out Darktable I suggest you try again. However, if there are other things like this that will just annoy you obviously you should just stick with what works.

[Tony Belding]

Darktable doesn't organize files in the same way Lightroom does. The copying from camera onto your computer you have to do yourself. So, if you want a library folder, the workflow is
1. Create folder on computer
2. Put folder of pictures into this library folder. I usually name them with a date like 2016-02-15-description.
3. Import folder with Darktable

So, basically it's back to the pre-Aperture era of flint knives and bear skins. No thanks.