I got jealous of the RawTherapee users having all the fun... so I thought we needed a thread where we can share knowledge and - why not? - pictures.
I'll start by mentioning the basic startup article:
Getting started with the Darktable photography workflow application | Opensource.com
Then there's also the parametric masks, a great feature that I haven't used much yet but is one of the main reasons I moved to Darktable:
The other main reason being the ability to do spot removals, something a lot of other programs don't do, and Darktable does extremely well IMHO:
But what keeps me is the quality of the raw conversion. Not having used Lightroom before, I believe the image quality is likely on par with that program which most people use.
Finally, I have to mention the styles page that is also very helpful. Find it here:
dtstyle.net - a darktable styles repository
I have used and highly recommend the following styles:
- 01_NWAL_Basics_settings - wanicophotos
This is the perfect starting point to any picture. In fact, if all you do is do a batch conversion of RAWs to JPEGs using just this preset, most if not all of your pictures will look better than what the Pentax JPEG engine can do (I have K-S1, K50 and K10D - newer Pentax cameras will have improved JPEG engines so this statement might not apply to them).
- ALL the styles marked "t3mujinpack". These are film emulations but are not just that. They emulate the strengths of these films but none of the weaknesses IMHO, so no grain, no reduced dynamic range like you would see in more "accurate" emulations.
- For black and white, there's one called "B&W with a twist (less sharpen)" that I think is fantastic, but I'm no B&W connoisseur. The t3mujinpack Acros emulation is very nice as well. For a warm B&W style, the "Mirco Kassisch" is my favorite. This one (and the B&W with a twist, mentioned earlier) make good use of the split toning module, which is such a powerful tool within Darktable and one I have also been using to make my color pictures look a bit more "vintage".
For people used to the Xtrans emulations in RawTherapee (I used them a lot after I found them), they are available for Darktable here:
dt styles for arangast's "New Fujifilm XTrans film simulations" - darktable - discuss.pixls.us
Don't use the ones in the dtstyle.net page! The ones in the pixls.us page work much better. Also, only apply them on RAW files, as they don't look right when applied to JPEGs. Use t3mujinpack styles if you want to have the film look applied to JPEGs.
I have recently uploaded a few styles to the dtstyle.net page, as well. They can be found closer to the top and are the ones with my name on them (Christian).
In summary, what I like about Darktable is that it can be as deep or as simple as you'd like. There's some quirks but nothing that keeps me from making this my program of choice.
Here's an image that had basically nothing but my "Landscape Sunny Day Pop" style applied, and then it was cropped to 16:9.
Share your Darktable experiences and pictures!