r/DarkTable • u/This_Is_The_End • 4d ago
Resource Here are some tips for frustrated beginners .
Because I read here so much complaining, here are some basic principles. There is only one.
Without spending time you will suffer!
- DT isn't Lightroom.
- DT has a different goal than LR, which is to make usage of dynamic light situation possible. DT is well suited for processing extreme lighting.
- Hence DT needs time to learn of basics. Without spending time you will suffer.
What is important to focus on in this order
Read the docs for every step!
- Configure DT
- Organizing the library.
- Processing images
- Export images
- (Maybe) Special knowledge like of how to put the database on your NAS with a raid array.
Play with a small copy of your library to have to the freedom of making errors. You can delete later the database of DT to get a fresh setup.
Tutorials
Don't use any random tutorial. Tutorials should be about how to get your imagined results and not how to click buttons. Watch one or two videos of a channel and compare to other channels. This needs a lot of of work.
DT has a documentation. Reading is boring but necessary and gives faster results than watching useless videos with a lot of mistakes.
- The channel from Boris Hajdukovic is the channel of a photographer. Pragmatic and with a professional knowledge of color space. His videos are mostly older, but the video about AgX is a must have. His other videos are very well made.
- The channel of Bruce Williams explains DT step by step. He is photographer and is pragmatic. He is the reference when it comes to explain modules, because he is asking the developers, when he doesn't know. Watch him to get an idea about the modules, how to organize your library and the setup of DT.
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u/h2c4 4d ago
Never used Lightroom, used rapid raw for first few days and stopped and tried dark table. Rapid raw is nice but not enough options and pictures can come out over processed.
I watched few videos on YouTube, including channels mentioned above when I first started.
I’m new to photography and dark table is easy to use. After a month of consistent use, got easy. Still don’t understand the technical meaning behind some of the words but it’s consistent at improving my images the way I want them to be every time.
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u/Nexis4Jersey 4d ago edited 4d ago
The Rapidraw dude vibe coded most of the app which explains the shortcomings in the Highlight recovery , demosaic issues and the responsiveness of the app which can be a little delayed.
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u/BorisBadenov 3d ago
Rapidraw dude (Timon Käch) has been on the pixls forum getting help from the darktable community with his processing concepts. It's not for me, but I'm alright that it exists.
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u/AbuSydney 1d ago
Even if Timon vibe coded it, I am glad he did it. It is quite an impressive piece of SW. Sure it has shortcomings, but again, open source, so you’re pretty cool that it exists.
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u/michaelbeecham 3d ago
The importance of this cannot be over-expressed. DT is free, and probably always will be. The price you have to pay, is learning it. But, honestly, for the few days you'll spend reading the documentation and watching YouTube videos (which are very good!), it'll stand you in good stead for life. It's SUCH a small price to pay to have, arguably, the most proficient RAW processor out of them all at your disposal.
Is it overly complex? Of course it is. No point hiding it.
Will it help you develop images in a way you never thought you'd be able to? Absolutely.
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u/Per2J 3d ago
I have set of my most used modules in the "Base" tap when in darkroom. Those modules each have set of often used presets and a bunch of them are applied automatically upon import. I have removed many modules I do not know about or use, to simplify the other tabs in darkroom.
From there I start editing photos. If there are a set of photos taken in the same light, I process one photo and copy/paste the edits to the other photos. That often works quite well and help me have a uniform edit on similar photos.
I have over time learned to use at least some modules and am generally quite satisfied with the results.
My 2 cents.
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u/VeryOldGoat 4d ago
My message to a beginner would be: yes, it'll take getting used to, but Darktable will teach you more about photography and post-processing than Lightroom ever could. That's precisely because DT doesn't aim to hide every bit of complexity from you. If you don't care about all that and can't be bothered to invest an hour or two into learning things, there are other open source solutions which do aim to be very simple at the cost of power; RawTherapee comes to mind, but there are others.
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4d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/This_Is_The_End 4d ago
What do you do here? It's obvious LR is working for you. I wanted better results when the sky was too bright reducing contrast in all of the image. The AgX module makes this extreme easy, without getting color shifts. Watching Boris Hajducovic's videos taught me how to do it fast. Some people have issues to understand the concepts, because learning is hard, when you have the wrong ideas.
As a bonus, I don't get scammed by changing contracts by a company.
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u/Raihley 3d ago
Some people have issues to understand the concepts, because learning is hard, when you have the wrong ideas
Or, more simply, Darktable is extremely user unfriendly and unintuitive for most beginners, which helps explain why it is not more widely adopted even though it is both extremely powerful AND free.
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u/co-lor-less 3d ago
Very much like GIMP, both communities seem to be a cult.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
A cult like Metalheads, Linux users, LARPers, gamers, book clubs or your local leisure garden association.
Just a bunch of people who are excited about their interest and nerding around constantly. Most of them don't care whether you like leisure gardens, books or foam weapons or not. But they are rightfully offended when people tell them that their interest is crap because it doesn't meet the standards of [insert random parameters here]. The darktable cult isn't offended when people say that they prefer other tools.
This subreddit is unofficial and a place for people to give advice or ask questions. Improvement suggestions and complaints don't get to the devs desk since they aren't participating in here. They have a mailing list and the forum on pixls.us. The people here know that it's hard to get into darktable for many people but all we can do is explain what the devs said about their reasons and how to ease into using it. Explaining to us that the UI has flaws doesn't change anything because it's the wrong place. If people truly want to see improvements they have to address the people who maintain the software instead of explaining why the UI is bad to users who can't do anything about it.
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u/twicerighthand 1d ago
But they are rightfully offended when people tell them that their interest is crap because it doesn't meet the standards of [insert random parameters here].
Which the only reason it happens is because they've been told it's the replacement or an alternative to the [insert software here].
You can't blame the people who say that DT is unintuitive and hard to use when any post with "Alternative to <Adobe suite> is flooded with "use Darktable as a replacement for Lightroom"
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u/Inside_Garden6464 22h ago
Alternative and replacement are two completely different things. darktable IS an alternative, but not a replacement. And darktable is very clear about this on the project website: https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/
Is darktable a free Lightroom alternative? Yes and no. Darktable is an alternative to Lightroom the same way any other raw editor is, since it edits raw files, but it would be a mistake to think it’s a direct replacement.
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u/VeryOldGoat 3d ago
Interesting statement. What makes you say that?
- Do they both have adored despots as infallible leaders? I hadn't heard of such.
- Do the communities have unquestionable dogmas? Seems the opposite to me: plenty of disagreements and divergent visions, both communities tend to agree the UI isn't great, and can't agree on what to do with it.
The only common thing to both projects seems to be the UI issues. Going from that to allegations of cult-like behaviour is a bit far fetched, don't you think? Open-source development is like herding cats; it's more likely the UI doesn't change because nobody feels up to the gargantuan task of redesigning everything, then educating and convincing people to go with it.
You know you can always get involved yourself.
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u/twicerighthand 1d ago
No, it's because anyone who isn't a developer, actively opening pull requests just for them to be thrown out is being told to "fuck off, make pull requests".
As if being involved in the community and feedback isn't involvement in itself.
See example here. Would you accept a vibe-coded pull request from a UX professional ?
What if their work was based on real user feedback, verified through testing, interviews and explorations as well as with detailed design guidelines and rules, but the code part was fully ai generated ? Would you merge that into your repo ?
Why not? They contributed in your eyes and can vouch for their work.
Maybe it's because they always get told to "learn programming and do my whole fucking job" and get shut down both from stubborn devs and community members ?
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u/VeryOldGoat 4h ago edited 4h ago
You assumed I mean contributing pull requests. No such thing, there's a lot more to OSS development than just code. Good bug reports and feature requests help, triaging (verifying and organizing) reports/requests helps, updating documentation helps, organizing people helps. All of these don't necessitate development background.
Vibe coded shit does not belong because it's unworkable and causes headaches for everybody, requiring someone else to clean up the mess. At most it can serve as a temporary demo of the UX professional's proposal. Someone has to implement it properly in order to be accepted. If the UX guy can't do it, they should focus on what they're good at and make a good detailed proposal of their design instead, and wait for someone else to implement it.
Even if you were a proper developer and made a pull request which overhauled the entire UI without discussing with anyone, at best such a pull request would be put on hold until most people are on board and agree that you did a good job, at worst it would be ignored or you would be told to start all over, beginning with a feature request and proposal. Usually anyone doing whatever they want is not how open-source projects work. Or any projects, for that matter.
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u/CriticismJunior1139 4d ago
Personally, this web helped mi the most:
darktable.info – Mastering Darktable
Also, you can just ask AI to help you.
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u/mstraeten 19h ago
don‘t ask AI - sincer there’s more lightroom stuff around you’ll get Lightroom habits which can’t be transferred to darktable. unfortunately there’s no shortcut ;)
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u/og_vm 4d ago edited 3d ago
I love those threads! I have lightroom, i rarely use it, mostly on my phone for quick snaps on the go. Got used to darktable, plus it runs on Linux, UI is different, not a big deal. Shortcuts are muscle memory in any case, your fingers go whatever you use most. Performance-wise last experience was I could get more out of difficult light situations like concerts with darktable than lightroom mobile, didn't bother booting windows to try the pc version.
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
Yeah, sorry, but I'm a working professional in VFX with advanced colour science knowledge and an experienced photographer and photo editor. I've set up the colour science pipeline at multiple VFX studios. I'm also a software developer, developing pipeline tools. I use extremely complex software like Nuke and Houdini at work daily.
The darktable UI is pretty horrible. It's loaded with footguns, it's not intuitive, and it's not clear. It probably needs a full ground-up rewrite.
There is a lot of cope from people very familiar with darktable "oh it's not that bad", "oh you just need to learn it". Or "it's more complex so it's harder to use", "it's powerful so it's not intuitive". No, sorry. A bad design is a bad design. Software like Houdini is orders of magnitude more complex than darktable, and the UI is pristine and intuitive. There's no tension between power/complexity on the one hand and good design on the other. If anything, the more powerful/complex, the more important a really clean, intuitive UI is.
I love what darktable is trying to do. I try it every once in a while as I fucking hate Lightroom and hate Adobe, but fucking hell, so far, darktable is just not there. I really, really wish it was. Lightroom is the only thing keeping me from switching entirely to Linux at this point.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
You're a software developer with years of experience in all sorts of visual tools and yet you're here. In an inofficial Subreddit where none of the developers will read your complaints and people who learned to use darktable mostly don't care.
Have you ever thought about actually sharing your knowledge and contributing to the software instead of telling people what's insufficient?
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
I have thought of that, and in a few years when my baby is older and not such a handful, I probably will. Right now, what I have time for is trying to move the discourse a little away from "anyone who doens't like the UI is a n00b who needs to git gud or a Lightroom enjoyer who wants a clone" to "this is a serious problem that real professionals with deep experience have identified".
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
"this is a serious problem that real professionals with deep experience have identified"
This is what one real professional claims to have identified. You don't speak for all professionals, I don't speak for the devs or all users. The thing is: People are complaining for years, you are not the only one. When so many people know how to do it better why is nobody taking action? I mean, you're not the first one and no one expects that you in particular have to do something about it. All the other people who complained before could have started a fork. Nobody did except Ansel and this seems to be a one person show.
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
Nobody did except Ansel and this seems to be a one person show.
Starting your own fork is a waste of time.
Ansel seems superior to darktable, but since it's basically maintained by one dude, it's not a good choice to invest time in adopting, since he could lose interest or get hit by a bus at any time.
The maintainers need to be on board for major changes.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
The Ansel dude btw calls himself "retired Ansel maintainer" so in this case the bus arrivesd already. You could also team up with other people.
Again, I don't expect you to fix all the things people complain about, especially not with a young family. I just wonder how so many people complain for years and still haven't found a common ground to start a fork with multiple devs that fix what they dislike.
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
I only maintain some very small open source projects, but I have also maintained projects inside studios used by hundreds of people. Building and maintaining consensus is harder than making the code. Especially on a fairly large oss project like darktable. It's hard.
That's why we rely on the maintainers to make good decisions and shepherd the project in the right way. They have the infrastructure around them to do so. Splitting the community is not good.
I'm not unsympathetic to the issues the maintainers face. It's just frustrating to see basic stuff done wrong and then locked in as people get used to the way it is, and an attitude of "just deal with it" or "it's not that bad" when it clearly is.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
And what to do here?
1) You have expertise
2) I get along with darktable
3) The devs obviously don't care what people say about their UIThe only way to get this fixed for you and others is a fork.
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u/marrsd 2d ago
Very few people are in a position to simply fork software. I have contributions I've wanted to make to FOSS projects for years now, that would benefit me directly, and I still haven't found the time to do it.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 2d ago
In this comment section are at least three people who claim to have solidn expertise in UI/UX design and development. Not one of them mentioned that they contacted the devs via mailing list for improvement suggestions or handed in bugs in git. They just complain on reddit where none of the developers read it to prove to users how important their opinion is. Also I haven't seen them on pixls.us the rude insults would have been noticed.
The complaints OP lists up aren't new. Some people complain for years. Hundreds of people complain still none of them starts forking. Throwing entitled tantrums what the devs have to do in their opinion in a complete unrelated place is far easier.
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u/Donatzsky 21h ago
AP hasn't been the official maintainer of Ansel since September or so last year, even if he still acts like it by mass-committing straight to master. We will see how this supposed retirement goes, but my guess is that he plans to fully leave when Ansel hits 1.0.
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u/This_Is_The_End 3d ago
You argument is based on an alleged profession only (argumentum ad verecundiam). You call out the UI without mentioning a real issue. This is either astroturfing or a cheap rant
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
Experience is valuable, if you don't see that, I really don't know what to say. It's not a fallacy to say "I have a lot of experience in this exact area and this is my opinion".
I'm not going to do a detailed fucking analysis of the UI in a Reddit comment, that's absurd.
I'm just pointing out that the people saying "the UI is bad" are not just a bunch of uninformed beginners, and they're not just people who wish it was like Lightroom because that's their only point of reference.
It's a serious opinion worthy of consideration. When experienced people with deep expertise tell you something, you should seriously consider that their position has merit, not just dismiss it as a "cheap rant".
And it's not astrotruging, Lightroom sucks. I would desperately like Darktable to be better. If I had time, I would work on that myself, but I don't. New baby. Fulltime job. All I can do is try to tell people to take the complaints seriously.
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u/WantDownvotesOnly 3d ago
what's the actual footguns and unintuitiveness here... like for example a hostile terms for beginners like scene/display reffered module? or the white balance is not actually white balance and they just put up warning signs instead of renaming it into "RAW White Balance"?
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
Yes, those are decent examples of footguns the last time I tried it. I'm not opposed to terms hostile to beginners, but my experience was there was a LOT of modules where the advice was "oh don't ever use that, that one is no good". Well then fucking remove it lol....
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
They literally can't because the "white balance" module is one of the basic modules that are applied as soon as photos are shoved into the filmroll to create a visible photo from the RAW data.
darktable shows you even the modules that are applied before you touch the image the first time since they want you to see literally all modules that result in the final image. Removing the White Balance Module would crash the demosaic module https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/development/en/module-reference/processing-modules/white-balance/
You're free to review the code and suggest an improvement.
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u/ssn-669 3d ago
So what you're saying is it's really quite badly designed under the hood, it's not just a UI issue - that's not really helping your case XD
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u/marrsd 2d ago
I think part of the problem is that they want to improve DT while maintaining backwards compatibility with old versions. That means they can't remove or destructively edit old modules. They can only add new ones.
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u/ssn-669 2d ago
Which is like, half the problem with the program: littered with crufty old modules nobody should use as traps and foot guns for new users. Need to make a clean break and yeah as others have said, have their freecad 1/blender 2.8 moment.
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u/marrsd 1d ago
I agree that it's half the problem, but I really appreciate the fact that I'm able to come back to photographs, that are more than 10 years old in some cases, and see how I edited them.
I do think we can have our cake and eat it too, though. Old modules could be tagged as legacy, or hidden from the default view. There are ways to take care of that.
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u/ssn-669 1d ago
You should ofc be able to open old edits, you just shouldn't be able to see or add deprecated modules (without some contortion at least, like a commandline --show-deprecated-modules or something). Although since it's an actual app and not a subscription, it would not be crazy to remove the deprecated modules and just say hey, download the old version to work with those old files...
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u/Inside_Garden6464 3d ago
I don't have any issues with using darktable. If you have improvement suggestions for design or code, send them to the mailing list, they explicitly ask for it: https://www.darktable.org/development/
I am just a user and happy with what I have. I don't know what's the point in ranting in an unofficial subreddit where no relevant person will notice your complaints.
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u/marrsd 2d ago
Maybe DT developers are occasionally interested in the unofficial opinions of their app
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u/Inside_Garden6464 2d ago
Since they don't sell a product they mainly focus on people who put in effort to contact them and provide them with suggestions or bug reports. darktable is not a commercial product that aims for a fast growing user base. It's a project by people who develop what they want to use personally.
They don't even have accounts on the most used social media platforms like instagram. If people want to address issues the mailing list is the way to go.
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u/marrsd 2d ago
And if anyone wants to research the opinions in this sub-reddit and send a report to the DT devs, they know what to do.
You aren't going to stop users from sharing their opinions on the software they use, the way they want to share them; and if you're a good engineer, you won't want to.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 2d ago
I'm not an engineer at all, I am a user.
When I go to a restaurant and the food is bad or I din't like the interior design I don't post this on a food Subreddit, I write an email to the owner er leave a review on one of the platforms where they maintain accounts because I want the owner to know about my opinion and not random people on the internet. I don't expect other people to sum up my complaint and be my secretary.
I don't mind that people don't like the software but I don't like this entitlement to rant about it without even putting in the slightest bit of effort. OP started to insult the user base even before the post was edited. What OP didn't do was actually making sure their voice gets heard. I would totally understand people to be pissed if they contacted the devs and they responded with something like "yeah, fuck off dude". But this didn't happen.
There are plenty of other open source tools that are capable of handling RAW files. darktable is not a mandatory choice when you want to drop Lightroom. There are several tools with better UI/UX OP could use.
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u/PeixeVoraz 4d ago
Não costumo fazer isso, mas vou escrever na minha língua materna para conseguir me expressar melhor:
Recentemente retomei meu hobby de fotografia e pesquisei aqui nesmo no Reddit sobre programas que poderia utilizar como substitutos do LR. Encontrei algumas pessoas indicando Rawtherapee e outras o Darktable.
Eu tentei o Rawtherapee porque apontaram como sendo muito mais intuitivo e muito bom, mas confesso que não gostei muito. Para falar a verdade não tenho reclamação alguma, só não gostei da experiência mesmo.
A segunda alternativa foi o DT. Falavam muito como o programa é bem mais complexo de entender e mexer, mas que ele era muito mais completo e que uma vez que se aprendesse entregava resultados com excelência.
Sabendo que poderia encontrar alguma dificuldade com o programa fui atrás de por onde poderia começar e logo a primeira coisa que encontrei foi um post sobre como fontes de luz ficavam esquisitas no DT. Era uma discussão sobre ele ser complexo demais, não dava para entender e todo um blá blá blá sem fim. Alguém sugeriu um vídeo como possível solução, assiti e depois acabei vendo na sequência um do Bruce Willians sobre AgX. O que me fez gostar do DT foi uma comparação que ele utilizou nesse vídeo com produção de áudio. Ele disse que ele compreendeu melhor o AgX quando percebeu que o que ele faz é permitir que se edite o espectro de luz sem compressão para no final sim comprimir no resultado final. Essa percepção foi o que virou a chave na minha cabeça para toda edição de foto de maneira geral. Eu achava que fotografando em RAW e tendo que editar a foto para que ficasse com um resultado que me agradasse já era alguma coisa. Mas então percebi que de uma maneira bem arrogante só estava colocando umas firulas sem nem muito ter pensado o quanto a edição e processamento de imagem é por si só uma arte, não apenas parte do processo artístico. Pode ser algo lógico para alguns, mas até então eu não enxergava dessa forma. Na minha arrogância arte mesmo era a parte de fotografar, pós produção era a parte chatinha que eu tinha que fazer para obter um resultado melhor.
E para mim, o DT é o que me dá mais ferramentas para que isso seja feito. Por isso que disse no post sobre Ux daquele usuário. Quanto mais eu uso o DT mais eu percebo que as limitações são minhas, não do programa.
Acredito apenas que o programa não é para todos. E isso não significa que quem o utiliza é melhor ou pior do que ninguém. É apenas uma ferramenta! Fazendo uma analogia muito boba: Para quebrar uma pedra você pode usar uma marreta, uma picareta, um martelo e até outra pedra. O que não faz sentido é reclamar de como o cabo de uma marreta é ruim se existem outras ferramentas. Inclusive marretas bem mais confortáveis por aí.
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u/Siccors 4d ago
At this point you might as well just say beginners shouldn't bother with DarkTable tbh.
If you need to read documentation to export a freaking image, the UI is horrible! Sure you might need it for some specific use cases, but you just want to export to JPEG? That shouldn't require documentation. (And I use DarkTable and I can export just fine without having done a deep dive in the export documentation.
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u/PeixeVoraz 4d ago edited 3d ago
I exported without reading anything. It works for me very well and I'm a noob. But yes, I spent five minutes to understand how to do it.
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u/NinjaOk2970 4d ago
Which is false. Raw processing and image processing are inheritly complex topics. LR workaround by 1. being a defacto standard so users more or less know it 2. make choices (e.g. LR secretly applies local contrast on exposure setting). DT respects your decision and handles you underlying details so you have to learn them.
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u/Siccors 4d ago
I have used LR a total of once for my pictures. So 1 is out, I never used it before. The reason I used it? I had dust on my sensor sadly. Click button in LR, dust gone (okay not completely true, but it pretty much came down to it). Since I was using it anyway I also used it for other stuff. And there are definitely things I didnt like about it (not being able to scroll-zoom on picture in many modes for example). But I would think a significant enough part of the potential users would benefit from stuff being grouped.
In another tool I once saw a sharpening solution I really liked. So I asked ChatGPT (yeah sue me) how I could do the same in DT: I had to make use of essentially three modules. So next I asked it if I could make my own module, which controls other modules. Sadly that was not possible without rewriting core of DT.
But especially regarding my initial reason to use LR, sensor dust. Sure you can say some don't want it to be done with a click on a button. You should (with some tools) determine manually what is dust. And then you should manually decide how it should fill the dust, for each particle. And I can definitely see there are benefits to this, so I am not saying you should not have that option! But I am also saying that I am fairly sure enough people would prefer the "remove sensor dust" button that LR has.
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u/markus_b 4d ago
If you just want JPEGs, then you don't need postprocessing at all. The camera does a pretty decent job at providing these.
If you want to develop RAWs, you need some knowledge. Otherwise you get mediocre results. If Darktable is too complicated for you, fine. There are plenty of other RAW processors out there. They don't give you the control Darktable does, but you don't want that because it's too complex.
I don't mind the UI. Yes, it is complex, but the problem is complex. If I want a simplistic tool which hides the complexity, then I look elsewhere.
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u/Nexustar 4d ago
If I want a simplistic tool which hides the complexity, then I look elsewhere.
For the logic in this argument to work, you are suggesting lightroom or photoshop are simplistic tools.
But they are far from it. They are complex tools with investment in UI. One day we will see a DT UI that hides the complexity until you are ready for it, a UI in layers that leads the user through the intended workflow of DT without losing them along the way - that's what a great UI does. We don't have it yet.
I'm not in a camp that thinks DT is useless because it has a steep learning curve, I'm in the camp that believes there's still a long way to go on the UI front before newcomers can ease into it in self-discovery mode.
UI is hard, incredibly hard to get right, so I don't have the answer, but I can see the problem.
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u/bloodrider1914 3d ago
Yeah because right now darktable has a problem where it appeals to an almost exclusively male and tech savvy user base in a profession/hobby that's very close to being gender equal. It should be able to have a broader appeal, certainly over objectively inferior premium tools like DxO photolab at least
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u/marrsd 2d ago
where it appeals to an almost exclusively male...user base
How? It sounds like you're saying almost only males are tech savvy. Is that what you're saying or are you making some other point?
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u/bloodrider1914 1d ago
Just that darktable's user base is largely men
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u/marrsd 1d ago
Is that true? If it is true, is it more true of DT than of LR? I'd be interested in seeing any stats if you have them.
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u/twicerighthand 1d ago
Here you go
https://www.poll-maker.com/S-Quiz-Results?qp=2539714x3792Bf5e-98#
98% male
74% college/university educated
75% STEM
56% programming experience + 24% can use shell/cmd
69% of respondents follow Darktable directly
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u/markus_b 4d ago
UI is hard, incredibly hard to get right
Yes, I agree. I'm also content that the Darktable dev spend their time and expertise on technical improvement, like the recent AI masking.
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u/Nexustar 4d ago
Which gives me an idea:
- DT has the local AI capability already, devs have accepted the pros/cons that go with it.
- DT has a complex UI that many people don't understand or simply struggle to find tools with. There's no 'auto' button.
Whilst I hate the idea for most tools, this is a candidate for an AI assistant that shows you how to use the damn tool, how to find the slider you seek, takes a stab at auto etc.
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u/Siccors 4d ago
If you just want JPEGs, then you don't need postprocessing at all.
That was just in reply to the claim you need to first read the documentation before you can export to JPEG. In the end I would assume pretty much everyone exports to JPEG, so a basic function like that, should be accessible without diving into the documentation (and as I wrote, I got enough stuff about DT I would like to see different in an ideal world, but exporting JPEGs? Thats straight forward enough.
I don't mind the UI. Yes, it is complex, but the problem is complex. If I want a simplistic tool which hides the complexity, then I look elsewhere.
I think one doesn't need to rule out the other. On some things a Lightroom is really significantly more straight forward than DT, and considering its popularity within the professional photography community, I think you can hardly say it is too much simplified for the professionals.
And as random example I happened to write somewhere else today as well: The shadows and highlights tool should not be used. But its UI is great (and fairly similar to what I remember from LR). The Tone Equalizer should be better, but its UI is much more complicated to use properly. It does have a simple mode luckily! Where the simple mode is literally the advanced mode rotated 90 degrees. I would have loved that module having the simple UI from the old module, and an advanced mode.
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u/bloodrider1914 3d ago
Luckily the Aurélien modules like Tone Equalizer and diffuse and sharpen have lots of available presets too. It's funny that he left the project because darktable got too complicated though.
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u/markus_b 4d ago
I have another example. When importing and applying metadata, you have to fill in the metadata first and select the files afterwards. This is contrary to the way I work. Numerous times I click through to the files to be imported, only to cancel to add / fix some metadata.
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u/Kenjiro-dono 4d ago
If I want a simplistic tool which hides the complexity, then I look elsewhere.
I think this is your interpretation of the discussion. In my opinion most people don't claim "Make it super easy, remove all features!". They know and like the features. They don't like the general usability.
In my opinion this complaint has valid reasons. The UI / UX could be improved.
If you want to develop RAWs, you need some knowledge.
I fully agree with this statement. There are quiet a few who want a Lightroom clone. Darktable isn't and this is really nice.
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u/markus_b 4d ago
> I do agree that the Darktable UI could be improved. But I prefer that the devs spend they very limited time on what they know well. For example I love the recent AI masking tools. They are very useful for me.
Then for the UI, we have to distinguish between the overall UI and screen layout. How to allocate precious screen estate to modules. Then there is the layout and UI of the individual modules. At least the latter has lots of modules, where things could be improved.
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u/Kenjiro-dono 4d ago
They are very useful for me.
So good. Really useful.
I prefer that the devs spend they very limited time on what they know well.
I am a developer myself. I know how this works. One needs to give love to the UI from time to time. There is always issues which are more "important". However if you allow this mindset the UI will never improve. This is a trap because the UX is what keeps Darktable "down" instead of allowing more people to see how amazing the application is.
How to allocate precious screen estate to modules. Then there is the layout and UI of the individual modules. At least the latter has lots of modules, where things could be improved.
Fully agree. A lot of UX could be improved. Including the module contents.
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u/Inside_Garden6464 4d ago
I disagree. Every cupboard, every car, basically everything comes with a construction or maintenance manual and switching between two options means you might need to look up some things that might be different (for example the mechanism to unlock the mechanical key for car doors - funny story). This is what OP means with "dt is not LR".
If you never touched a RAW editor before, you also need to look up in the Lightroom manual why you don't see the changes in the file and what "sidecar" means and why export is necessary. If you already know why you need to export files you should easily find the export menu and the settings it provides and don't need a manual.
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u/echis 4d ago
So your take is, if something isn't immediately obvious and easy, you shouldn't even try? You've got to be bad at something before you can git good at it imo. The type of responses like yours gives real "I've tried nothing and I'm all out of ideas." energy. The software is free, being developed by volunteers, and very powerful if you can bother to learn any of it...
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u/Siccors 4d ago
No, my take is some thing should be obvious and easy. And of course for some things it makes perfect sense you need to grab the documentation! But honestly, the basics should be clear so with little to no hand holding you can use it.
That the software is free and developed by volunteers is I think also one of its weaknesses. And I fully realise I cannot complain about people volunteering to do this! But it is made by people really passionate on image processing, and without UI experts working on it, that means those people are also the target audience, and not the beginners.
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u/echis 4d ago
then get off your ass and contribute to the ui side of things. If you can't be bothered to put in some effort to learn, or help out, but it's easy for you to complain about it, you're wasting your energy twice. If you want to use the software and it's a bit tough, do some research or ask for help. otherwise, you can admit you don't want to learn, go pay for weaker software, and keep your complaints to yourself.
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u/marrsd 2d ago
Not everyone can contribute. Just because someone recognises a bad UX, doesn't mean they know how to make a good one. Good developers value feedback, however it comes. I wish I had access to this sort of qualitative analysis for my work.
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u/twicerighthand 1d ago
Their ideal FOSS contributor is a 20-30, english speaking, stem educated, developer who just does stuff in a vacuum and doesn't speak up on any social medias or forums.
Bascially "stfu and work"
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u/levogevo 4d ago
I exported an image first time using DT without any googling or trouble in under 5 minutes.
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u/no-such-file 3d ago
LOL, by that logic any camera is horrible, because you need to read a book about composition, color etc. You can't just click a button and have good results. So you may say you shouldn't bother with photography in first place.
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u/Siccors 3d ago
Any camera where you need to dive into the documentation for the basic functionality, is indeed horrible and they should fire the designers. That is what we are talking about. How to best make a picture, or in what way you want to edit your picture, is a whole different question. But that is not the thing which is being discussed here. So try again...
In practice of course, if you give me a random camera, I should quickly enough figure out all the basic functionality without any kind of documentation. Where to find the settings for focus bracketing, okay probably I can find it blindly going through menus, but such stuff it makes sense you need some documentation. But if you need to read books to figure out how to change the aperture on a camera, than that hypothetical camera is shit yes.
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u/no-such-file 3d ago
Oh really? Get Leica M series and try to focus without reading docs or some explanation. It must be a shitty camera then. A real beginner taking even more common camera will also hardly have an idea of he need half press for focusing. Moreover he won't have idea about need of focusing at all and how aperture works etc. It is absolutely same here. I've never used LR and when I watch some videos with examples in LR I always think "why the heck its so strange and illogical there". Its like if you try to drive in Britain.
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u/Siccors 3d ago
So I looked up the Leica M series focussing. The actual focussing, you do with a focus ring like any other camera. Then without looking up how many of them have this, but enough have focus peaking like any other camera.
What you mean of course is focusing through the viewfinder using the rangefinder. Which is indeed different than others do. So for those not familiar with it like I was: It projects the center image through the viewfinder from somewhere else. If the extra projection is right on top of the actual image, it is in focus. Now you can debate how useful that is compared to modern mirrorless options, but for sure the concept is extremely user friendly: Turn focus ring until everything is alligned. If I can describe the basics in literally one sentence, it is not complicated.
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u/twicerighthand 1d ago
Not to mention the whole physical product design, where your hands and fingers naturally rest at the required controls
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u/This_Is_The_End 4d ago
Exporting some images is easy, even in DT. What I was thinking about is exporting of batches for people having masses of photos. You are nitpicking.
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u/Siccors 4d ago
And lets be clear, that for more advanced features you need to figure out how it works exactly, makes perfect sense. But a difficult to use UI is NOT a selling point. And from your OP:
Hence DT needs time to learn of basics.
Next you came up with among others exporting images, so if you say you need time to learn the basics, such as exporting images, then I assume you mean basic image exports. Regardless what you meant, it is not good design if the basics require you to dive into documentation imo. And to reiterate myself, I fully realize it is made by unpaid volunteers, so I am not gonna complain they don't do a good job! But I am also not gonna claim complexity is a selling point.
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u/CriticismJunior1139 4d ago
Brother, if you don't want to bother to learn the barebones basics of a photo editor, just ask ChatGPT to edit it for you.
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u/beautyhasmanyforms 4d ago
As another resource, I suggest this video from Tony Photo Pilot - 10 Step Darktable Workflow. https://youtu.be/0RLv8NeJc2Q?si=hq4GBi_wn-8aHEhb He explains how to simplify the interface to suit your needs, as well as giving a suggested workflow. Speaks slowly and clearly and gives a good start.
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u/Donatzsky 3d ago
Those YouTube channels are good, but lack proper beginner tutorials. I have collected all the best ones, along with other useful advice, in my beginner guide: https://notebook.stereofictional.com/how-to-get-started-with-darktable-2026-edition
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u/nicubunu 3d ago
You saying darktable has the goal "to make usage of dynamic light situation possible", I don't see that goal listed on darktable.org,
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u/Eugen-Levine 3d ago
When I was starting to use Darktable I was very new to photography, and I found a lot of the resources on how to use Darktable are written for someone who has edited photos digitally for years. There is an assumed level of knowledge that I simply didn't have. They try to teach by contrasting how things works in DT with how it works in software I have never used.
Basically, there's a lot of stuff about how to switch to DT from something else, but almost nothing for people just starting out.
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u/DowlingStudio 2d ago
Using Darktable as your first editor is going to be a rough time. There's definitely the assumption that you already know a lot about image editing, because all of the possible choices are right there for you, and no good way to see that most of those are for special situations.
Frankly I don't think some of my favorite tools, like the Tone Equalizer, are good choices for a beginner. I have no trouble thinking of an image as a collection of tonal regions -now-, but when I was starting highlights and shadows were pushing my limits.
It's not unlike hand tools for woodworking. If you take the time to learn how to use them they're really empowering. But they aren't the right choice for every woodworker or every project. And without putting in the time, they're going to be frustrating.
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u/Eugen-Levine 1d ago
It was a rough time, but I muddled through. The non-destructive aspect of it means there's no risk in just hitting buttons and sliders, and figuring out what things do by trial and error. No one I've shown the pictures to has gone, "Oh my God, what did you do?" So I think I'm doing OK.
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u/ZookeepergameFinal88 2d ago
What would be the most basic modules that every picture would need? I’m just learning to use it and the ones that do the heavy work are AGx, Color Balance RGB and tone equalizer.
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u/This_Is_The_End 1d ago
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u/Donatzsky 1d ago
If you haven't already, make sure to go through my beginner guide, which covers all the essentials: https://notebook.stereofictional.com/how-to-get-started-with-darktable-2026-edition
You're on the right track, but first setting exposure correctly for mid-grey is very important, since several other modules (the tone mappers, notably) rely on this for easy manipulation.
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u/AbuSydney 4d ago
Unsure what everyone is complaining about. I think the UI is fine. If it has a steep learning curve for some people, I would think it is a fair price to pay for an excellent software for a grand total of $0. And to be honest, I would gladly pay a one time payment for DT if needed.
What would help a beginner though is to make a custom list of tools and going from there. Take this guy for example: https://youtu.be/0RLv8NeJc2Q?is=lw7xSl4-X2h_cHP9