[BigMackCam]

A question for you Linux and Darktable users...

What are the benefits of using Linux with Darktable? I haven't used Linux since the early days, so I'm a little behind on that part. My current computer is about 2 weeks old, and there's a couple of things I'm going to add in the next few weeks. With this in mind, will it benefit me to use Linux? My primary use of this computer is my photography, I have two laptops for everything else.

I'm new to Darktable also. Although in just one day of using the Windows version, I've been able to find my way around a lot of it. I was a Lightroom user since version 1, but I will not do subscription, as many here have said also.

Tony - I think there's two parts to this answer...

Linux, as an operating system, is a complete alternative to Windows. The software is different - for example, Microsoft Office doesn't run under Linux, but there is a great alternative called LibreOffice that does most (perhaps all?) of the same stuff, and reads / writes MS Office files. There are various different flavours of Linux, and various different graphical user interfaces that work with them. The type of Linux OS and GUI front end you use radically changes the user experience. I'm using a standard install of the current major version of Linux Mint, which is based on both Debian and Ubuntu versions of Linux, with the Cinnamon front end which is based on GNOME 3. I find it to be a remarkably mature operating system and desktop experience, not dissimilar to my previous experience with Apple Mac (I'm sure current Mac users will reel in horror at me saying this, but it's a while since I used a Mac ). Compared to Windows 10, I find Linux Mint and typical everyday software to be noticeably faster. Different, and it takes a bit of getting used to - but, if your main use of a PC is an internet browser, office applications, and (more on this to follow) image processing, it offers all the same capability, just in a different way.

Darktable was designed from the ground up to run on Linux. There's a beta Windows version, sure, but the Linux versions are much better - more stable, fuller functionality, and (based on the last Windows release I tried), just much better overall. As an alternative to Lightroom, it has both advantages and disadvantages. Overall, I find Darktable more flexible, but slightly less capable in a few key areas, for image processing alone. It's a close run thing. Lightroom library management is much better, so if that's an important factor, you really need to look at additional Linux software to carry out that function. But it's out there - you just have to get used to the new workflow, which isn't necessarily so integrated and straightforward.

For committed Windows users, I think there's an argument for installing Linux and Darktable alongside. I now spend most of my time in Linux, and miss very little of my old Windows environment, but there are occasions where I jump back to it for a day or two. My aim, over the next year, is to ween myself off the things I like with Windows and go 100% Linux. I can't say whether that would work for you, but I believe in my case it's viable. Certainly, despite some minor limitations, I think Darktable is more than capable of becoming my day-to-day RAW processor

And now to your question... What are the benefits of Darktable under Linux? Well, it's a community-developed OS and community-developed RAW processor with no commercial aspirations. Both parts are completely free to install and use - and will remain that way. That includes updates, both for reliability and new functionality. The downside is that you might often find yourself as an unwitting beta tester on new releases - but you don't have to take those releases. The choice is yours...

[twilhelm]

Tony - I think there's two parts to this answer...

Linux, as an operating system, is a complete alternative to Windows. The software is different - for example, Microsoft Office doesn't run under Linux, but there is a great alternative called LibreOffice that does most (perhaps all?) of the same stuff, and reads / writes MS Office files. There are various different flavours of Linux, and various different graphical user interfaces that work with them. The type of Linux OS and GUI front end you use radically changes the user experience. I'm using a standard install of the current major version of Linux Mint, which is based on both Debian and Ubuntu versions of Linux, with the Cinnamon front end which is based on GNOME 3. I find it to be a remarkably mature operating system and desktop experience, not dissimilar to my previous experience with Apple Mac (I'm sure current Mac users will reel in horror at me saying this, but it's a while since I used a Mac ). Compared to Windows 10, I find Linux Mint and typical everyday software to be noticeably faster. Different, and it takes a bit of getting used to - but, if your main use of a PC is an internet browser, office applications, and (more on this to follow) image processing, it offers all the same capability, just in a different way.

Darktable was designed from the ground up to run on Linux. There's a beta Windows version, sure, but the Linux versions are much better - more stable, fuller functionality, and (based on the last Windows release I tried), just much better overall. As an alternative to Lightroom, it has both advantages and disadvantages. Overall, I find Darktable more flexible, but slightly less capable in a few key areas, for image processing alone. It's a close run thing. Lightroom library management is much better, so if that's an important factor, you really need to look at additional Linux software to carry out that function. But it's out there - you just have to get used to the new workflow, which isn't necessarily so integrated and straightforward.

For committed Windows users, I think there's an argument for installing Linux and Darktable alongside. I now spend most of my time in Linux, and miss very little of my old Windows environment, but there are occasions where I jump back to it for a day or two. My aim, over the next year, is to ween myself off the things I like with Windows and go 100% Linux. I can't say whether that would work for you, but I believe in my case it's viable. Certainly, despite some minor limitations, I think Darktable is more than capable of becoming my day-to-day RAW processor

And now to your question... What are the benefits of Darktable under Linux? Well, it's a community-developed OS and community-developed RAW processor with no commercial aspirations. Both parts are completely free to install and use - and will remain that way. That includes updates, both for reliability and new functionality. The downside is that you might often find yourself as an unwitting beta tester on new releases - but you don't have to take those releases. The choice is yours...

Thank you for answering my questions. Since I am on a new system, I'll do a Linux install this weekend when I'm off. The other two programs I've been using instead of the Adobe set is, Rawtherapee and Gimp. From what I've read, all three programs were originally written for Linux, and many have said they work better in their native OS.

I'm slowly developing a work-flow with the new programs and am very happy with my results.

[ThorSanchez]

Darktable was designed from the ground up to run on Linux. There's a beta Windows version, sure, but the Linux versions are much better - more stable, fuller functionality, and (based on the last Windows release I tried), just much better overall. As an alternative to Lightroom, it has both advantages and disadvantages. Overall, I find Darktable more flexible, but slightly less capable in a few key areas, for image processing alone. It's a close run thing. Lightroom library management is much better, so if that's an important factor, you really need to look at additional Linux software to carry out that function. But it's out there - you just have to get used to the new workflow, which isn't necessarily so integrated and straightforward.

For committed Windows users, I think there's an argument for installing Linux and Darktable alongside. I now spend most of my time in Linux, and miss very little of my old Windows environment, but there are occasions where I jump back to it for a day or two. My aim, over the next year, is to ween myself off the things I like with Windows and go 100% Linux. I can't say whether that would work for you, but I believe in my case it's viable. Certainly, despite some minor limitations, I think Darktable is more than capable of becoming my day-to-day RAW processor

Do you have any suggestions for tutorials or web pages that help ease the transition from Lightroom to Darktable? I now have a stable dual-boot system with both Win 7/Lightroom 6, and Xubuntu/Rapid Photo Downloader/Darktable. I've played around with Darktable and can get fairly satisfactory results, but probably because of experience with Lightroom I'm getting better results there.


Just an example, but I worked a series of pictures from my kids' soccer game and the Darktable results seemed flatter, and like too much clarity had been applied, and not enough saturation in the colors. But the modules are just different enough from Lightroom that it's not straightforward to fix that. My brain and muscles intuitively can tweak all that up in Lightroom in seconds, but I'm just not there in Darktable.


I think my plan is to slowly transition to Darktable so that I'll never have to buy into the Adobe subscription model. But as long as I'm getting better results with LR6 it'll be hard to give it up.

[BigMackCam]

Do you have any suggestions for tutorials or web pages that help ease the transition from Lightroom to Darktable? I now have a stable dual-boot system with both Win 7/Lightroom 6, and Xubuntu/Rapid Photo Downloader/Darktable. I've played around with Darktable and can get fairly satisfactory results, but probably because of experience with Lightroom I'm getting better results there.

The best thing to do is work through the Darktable documentation and try out each adjustment to see what the effects are. The documentation is actually very good indeed... It's well-written, relatively terse but informative. You'll quickly learn how everything works if you read through it and try things out as you go along.

Just an example, but I worked a series of pictures from my kids' soccer game and the Darktable results seemed flatter, and like too much clarity had been applied, and not enough saturation in the colors. But the modules are just different enough from Lightroom that it's not straightforward to fix that. My brain and muscles intuitively can tweak all that up in Lightroom in seconds, but I'm just not there in Darktable.

What you're noticing, I believe, is the difference in default processing between Lightroom and Darktable. When Lightroom opens a RAW image file, it seems to apply a fair bit of default processing in terms of colour, contrast, tone curve, noise reduction etc. Even though the sliders may all be set to zero, there's still that baseline level of processing that Adobe believes is beneficial as a starting point for our images. Darktable doesn't do this, or if it does, it's to a much lesser extent. This is immediately noticeable with colour and luminance noise, for example. The same high ISO image loaded into both programmes looks much noiser in Darktable than it does in Lightroom.

To get Darktable images looking more like Lightroom, I'd suggest you start by flattening the base curve then adjusting it to a very gentle S shape, boosting the contrast and saturation a little to your taste, and adjusting exposure to a level you're happy with. Beyond that, it comes down to learning the individual tools within Darktable, per the documentation.

I think my plan is to slowly transition to Darktable so that I'll never have to buy into the Adobe subscription model. But as long as I'm getting better results with LR6 it'll be hard to give it up.

When I compare my Lightroom processing results now with my attempts from a couple of years ago, I'm astounded by how much I've improved. Like you, I find I can get better results more easily with Lightroom, but that's entirely because of the experience I've built up. I've only been using Darktable for a month, but in that short time I've already improved. A lot of things work in a very similar way to Lightroom - it just takes a little time to adjust

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Last edited by BigMackCam; 11-28-2017 at 11:01 AM.

[tuco]

... I'm using it since 1993...

My first Linux installation was around 1995. I used it for several years as my main desktop. But at the time there was no 48-bit editing support so I moved away from it and kept OpenBSD around on my firewall/router and radio to copper bridge. Today, I'm looking to getting back into Linux. It has certainly come a long way for sure.

[ThorSanchez]

What you're noticing, I believe, is the difference in default processing between Lightroom and Darktable. When Lightroom opens a RAW image file, it seems to apply a fair bit of default processing in terms of colour, contrast, tone curve, noise reduction etc. Even though the sliders may all be set to zero, there's still that baseline level of processing that Adobe believes is beneficial as a starting point for our images. Darktable doesn't do this, or if it does, it's to a much lesser extent. This is immediately noticeable with colour and luminance noise, for example. The same high ISO image loaded into both programmes looks much noiser in Darktable than it does in Lightroom.

To get Darktable images looking more like Lightroom, I'd suggest you start by flattening the base curve then adjusting it to a very gentle S shape, boosting the contrast and saturation a little to your taste, and adjusting exposure to a level you're happy with. Beyond that, it comes down to learning the individual tools within Darktable, per the documentation.

That's interesting, I'll play around with it, read more of the documentation, and see if that helps. Thanks.


The noise reduction component is really something that I've found a challenge. With Lightroom I tweak several sliders and usually get what I'm looking for, but Darktable... yea, not so much.

When I compare my Lightroom processing results now with my attempts from a couple of years ago, I'm astounded by how much I've improved. Like you, I find I can get better results more easily with Lightroom, but that's entirely because of the experience I've built up. I've only been using Darktable for a month, but in that short time I've already improved. A lot of things work in a very similar way to Lightroom - it just takes a little time to adjust

I'm guessing that if I started off with Darktable and then went to Lightroom there'd be a learning curve, too. Although maybe not so steep... but I'm just guessing.

[BigMackCam]

The noise reduction component is really something that I've found a challenge. With Lightroom I tweak several sliders and usually get what I'm looking for, but Darktable... yea, not so much.

There are a lot of different methods for noise reduction, and I'm still experimenting with them. I can get quite close to Lightroom standards on colour noise - not quite as good, but very close - while luminance noise is more challenging, but then luminance noise is actually a lot less imortant once you resize to your final export. Honestly, I find Lightroom's noise reduction to be easier and better - but when it comes down to what I actually need, for the sizes of reproduction I'm dealing with, I think Darktable is more than capable, and better than some of the paid competition. I'd like for Darktable to be as good as, or better than, Lightroom on everything. I don't think that's realistic, though, and some compromises are going to be inevitable. I'm prepared to make those compromises within reason.

One tip I'd give is, do *not* use the profiled denoise as a single-instance colour and luminance noise reduction tool. The results are poor, at best, especially on higher ISO images. It's better to use one instance of the tool for colour noise (although I believe I'm getting bettter results on an image-by-image basis with denoise bilateral), followed by a second instance for luminance noise. This is explained in the documentation, so work with it and try a few different options.

Another tip - make use of the "blend" capability in each of the tools, especially noise reduction, to apply the desired amount of effect to certain adjustments. This can work particularly well with luminance noise

[beachgardener]

The best thing to do is work through the Darktable documentation and try out each adjustment to see what the effects are.

Started doing just that, thanks for the inspiration, to get stuck in

[ThorSanchez]

There are a lot of different methods for noise reduction, and I'm still experimenting with them. I can get quite close to Lightroom standards on colour noise - not quite as good, but very close - while luminance noise is more challenging, but then luminance noise is actually a lot less imortant once you resize to your final export. Honestly, I find Lightroom's noise reduction to be easier and better - but when it comes down to what I actually need, for the sizes of reproduction I'm dealing with, I think Darktable is more than capable, and better than some of the paid competition. I'd like for Darktable to be as good as, or better than, Lightroom on everything. I don't think that's realistic, though, and some compromises are going to be inevitable. I'm prepared to make those compromises within reason.

One tip I'd give is, do *not* use the profiled denoise as a single-instance colour and luminance noise reduction tool. The results are poor, at best, especially on higher ISO images. It's better to use one instance of the tool for colour noise (although I believe I'm getting bettter results on an image-by-image basis with denoise bilateral), followed by a second instance for luminance noise. This is explained in the documentation, so work with it and try a few different options.

Another tip - make use of the "blend" capability in each of the tools, especially noise reduction, to apply the desired amount of effect to certain adjustments. This can work particularly well with luminance noise

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to try the two-instance approach to see if it works better, and also look into the blend capability.


Have you tried RawTherapee? I haven't even downloaded it, but it seems to have its advocates and it's a native Linux application. I was thinking about trying it out just for its pixel shift support (I haven't really used pixel shift in part because I don't have software that supports it - I never even installed the Pentax/Silkypix utility). But in the back of my head I'm a little reluctant to have two new programs under Linux, one of which I need to push through the learning curve, the other which I'd be even farther down the slope.

[automorphism]

It is true that denoising takes a little getting use to on darktable compared to Lightroom. However, after experimenting with it a bit, I find it pretty easy to use. Here are some tips that might be helpful:

1. In "profiled denoise" experiment with non-local means vs. wavelets. You might have to turn down the strength for wavelets because it has a stronger effect than non-local means
2. For colour noise (chroma noise), the "denoise (non-local means)" module works very well. Keep the luma noise turned off here
3. Advanced: for that "smooth" look that sometimes doesn't work with the denoise module, the trick is to actually use the equalizer rather than the denoise module.

More on the equalizer module: the equalizer is a more advanced tool, but it allows you to have a very-finely grained control over the contrast of your images. If you drag around the top part of the curve (where the little circles are), you can increase or decrease the contrast ranging from coarse contrast (like the usual contrast you're used to) to sharpness. But, if you drag up the bottom of the curve near the right of the graph, then you can control the amount of fine smoothing that occurs. What this means in practice is that you can smooth out the noise in your images with a lot of control.

If you master denoising with the equalizer, you can get incredible results. (However, even if you don't want to use the equalizer, you can still get pretty good results with the other modules.)

darktable also has masks, so if you're shooting a lot of nature with a lot of green, you can apply stronger denoising to the greener pixels with the parametric mask. For some reason it seems to me that green shows noise particularly well. This applys to nature shots like birds where the background is a little out of focus and green.

[twilhelm]

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have to try the two-instance approach to see if it works better, and also look into the blend capability.


Have you tried RawTherapee? I haven't even downloaded it, but it seems to have its advocates and it's a native Linux application. I was thinking about trying it out just for its pixel shift support (I haven't really used pixel shift in part because I don't have software that supports it - I never even installed the Pentax/Silkypix utility). But in the back of my head I'm a little reluctant to have two new programs under Linux, one of which I need to push through the learning curve, the other which I'd be even farther down the slope.

I've been using Rawtherapee for a couple of months now. I don't have a camera at the moment that has pixel shift capability, but from what I've read, Rawtherapee is possibly the best program for working with your pixel shift images.

Right now I like Rawtherapee for my digital images, especially from my K5, but also from my K3. I have presets which make editing quick and painless. On the other hand, Darktable seems to work better with my scanned film images. Although I've only been using it for a couple of weeks, I've already got presets for different films I use, because of the consistency of the final scanned images I know pretty close what the grain will be like and how much smoothing (denoise) I need beforehand.

My workflow seems to be this right now: Rawtherapee for digital, with a possible transfer to Gimp. Darktable for scanned film (haven't seen a need to go further in Gimp here). And IrfanView for re-sizing and printing needs.

In the past I would have used Adobe, Camera Raw, Lightroom and Photoshop. I'm finding with what I'm using now, everything is faster and smoother, and I'm getting the final results I want.

[derekkite]

That's interesting, I'll play around with it, read more of the documentation, and see if that helps. Thanks.


The noise reduction component is really something that I've found a challenge. With Lightroom I tweak several sliders and usually get what I'm looking for, but Darktable... yea, not so much.



I'm guessing that if I started off with Darktable and then went to Lightroom there'd be a learning curve, too. Although maybe not so steep... but I'm just guessing.

Here is a style that you can start with.

Sharpening:
radius 2
amount 717
threshold 500

Denoise 1 (profiled)
wavelet
strength .750
blend uniformly
blend mode color
opacity 100%

Denoise
Non Local means
patch size 1
strength .500
uniformly
lightness
opacity 100%

contrast brightness saturation
contrast .10
brightness .0
saturation .20
blend off

a touch of black in exposure
base curve pentax like

Start with this.

Adjust to taste and save a a style and apply it.

[ThorSanchez]

Here is a style that you can start with.

Sharpening:
radius 2
amount 717
threshold 500

Denoise 1 (profiled)
wavelet
strength .750
blend uniformly
blend mode color
opacity 100%

Denoise
Non Local means
patch size 1
strength .500
uniformly
lightness
opacity 100%

contrast brightness saturation
contrast .10
brightness .0
saturation .20
blend off

a touch of black in exposure
base curve pentax like

Start with this.

Adjust to taste and save a a style and apply it.

I finally got a chance to play with those settings, and my initial impressions are very good. Thanks.

Related topic... I have an ancient Acer netbook I've brought back to useful life with Linux. I use it for travel to backup photos to an external drive. It only has a 32 bit Atom processor, though. So Darktable throws up dire warnings about not really quite working. I'd like to use the machine for limited RAW conversion and edits and posting while traveling. I'm trying out Shotwell. Anyone have experience with that?

[ThorSanchez]

Here is a style that you can start with.

Sharpening:
radius 2
amount 717
threshold 500

Denoise 1 (profiled)
wavelet
strength .750
blend uniformly
blend mode color
opacity 100%

Denoise
Non Local means
patch size 1
strength .500
uniformly
lightness
opacity 100%

contrast brightness saturation
contrast .10
brightness .0
saturation .20
blend off

a touch of black in exposure
base curve pentax like

Start with this.

Adjust to taste and save a a style and apply it.

In the past several months I've been bouncing back and forth from Linux/Darktable to Windows/Lightroom. But to tell the truth I'm still doing most of my work in Lightroom. Good example was a couple weekends ago. Took some shots of my kids playing indoor soccer, TAv let the ISO float all the way up to 12800 sometimes. Imported images into Darktable and, wow, the color noise was overwhelming. Even after using the preset based on your post here it was unusable.


Instead of trying to fix it in Darktable I booted windows and within 10 or 15 minutes I had reasonable (if still noisy) images with Lightroom and Nik tools. Feels a little like cheating but, hey, it worked.

[BigMackCam]

In the past several months I've been bouncing back and forth from Linux/Darktable to Windows/Lightroom. But to tell the truth I'm still doing most of my work in Lightroom. Good example was a couple weekends ago. Took some shots of my kids playing indoor soccer, TAv let the ISO float all the way up to 12800 sometimes. Imported images into Darktable and, wow, the color noise was overwhelming. Even after using the preset based on your post here it was unusable.


Instead of trying to fix it in Darktable I booted windows and within 10 or 15 minutes I had reasonable (if still noisy) images with Lightroom and Nik tools. Feels a little like cheating but, hey, it worked.

I agree, Darktable isn't great at really high ISO noise reduction, and it's one reason that I haven't fully switched from Lightroom 6 just yet. Having said that, I was playing around with some indoor shots last night, taken with my Hasselblad HV at ISO 12,800 and higher, and managed to get very good results using a combination of "RAW denoise" plus two instances of "denoise (non-local means)" - one for colour, and one for luminance. Not quite as good as Lightroom, but not far off, and more than good enough for 25 - 50% reproduction.