I’m growing more and more impressed with its capabilities the more I use it! Wrapping my head around its approach to masking, and its “scene referred pipeline” took some time, but now that I’m getting the hang of it, I think I can say I genuinely prefer it to Lightroom.

Combined with digiKam, which is excellent for photo collection management, I’m a very happy photographer :)

  • @variantsEnglish
    1•14 days ago

    I am trying to make the switch from lightroom to darktable but I cant figure out the import process, I go to add to library and I select the top most directory and clicked on recursive mode but the add to library button is greyed out, not sure what to do, are we supposed to only open one photo at a time?

    edit: nvm after finding the right spot in the manual I guess Im supposed to import folder by folder and I have to wait for the photos to populate on the right pane so that I can then select them to be imported, I was trying to do all my 70k photos in one go haha, this is going to take a while x_x

    • AdaOP
      2•14 days ago

      You don’t need to import your library in to darktable. Darktable isn’t great at photo management and workflow.

      What I do is use digiKam to manage my old Lightroom collection. In lightroom, make sure you’ve set it up to store metadata in sidecar files. Write your sidecar files out (this can take a long time). Open digiKam, and you can import all of your lightroom photos and data.

      Then photos that need editing get sent to darktable from digiKam

      • @variantsEnglish
        2•14 days ago

        Ohh gotcha, so it’s more like digikam is lightroom and darktable is like if you were to open a photo from lightroom into photoshop

        • AdaOPEnglish
          2•14 days ago

          Yep! Exactly (though I did most of my image editing in Lightroom)

          Also, when you are playing around with darktable, it’s worth spending the time learning how to use parametric and drawn masks. If you ever use masks in your editing, mastering those in darktable will be the missing piece that makes it all come together for you. It’s very different to masking in Photoshop or Lightroom, but IMO, more flexible and more powerful. But you need to really play with it to understand how to use it best.