Darktable Tips and Tricks

[JohnBdigital]

Darktable tips and tricks

I figured I would start this up as I am a regular Darktable user who migrated from Lightroom and Capture One.

When I first made the switch over it was complicated but after watching a few youtube videos by Bruce Williams Photography <--click to see his youtube page, Darktable became as easy and better then Adobe Lightroom with much less cost. Also I use a Linux OS, Lightroom and Capture One as of now don't work on Linux.

So feel free to post your tips, tricks and questions regarding Darktable.

 

[JohnBdigital]

Here is an average photo showing the Before and After, what the photo looked like imported (the right side) and then tweaked in Darktable on the leftside.

 

[DaveNJ]

I also use Darktable because of my preference for Linux. Granted I do sometimes use other editing software in a Windows "virtual box". In addition to Bruce Williams Photography, I've found Boris Hajdukovic's channel useful.

 

[sidknee]

Hi John, I'm a long time user of Darktable, since 2015 when it was the best thing on linux to support my new 7DII. Mostly, these days, I do birds and using styles have it set up so with just a few clicks am well in the ball park, may be a little tweak here or there and a crop usually.

original
DSC05408--2023-12-05--16 by Sid Simmons, on Flickr
processed
DSC05408--2023-12-05--16 by Sid Simmons, on Flickr
darktable
Screenshot from 2023-12-09 17-23-36 by Sid Simmons, on Flickr

 

[JohnBdigital]

Darktable 4.6.0 has been released <-- click to see

 

[RodS57]

I've tinkered with darktable and rawtherapee. They have different sidecar files allowing you to test drive each. They both have strong points and weaknesses. My last round of raw edits was with darktable. I have a long way to go before I'm comfortable with either.

Rod

 

[PietZA]

I'm on Windows and I'm using Darktable because I cannot afford the Adobe alternatives. DT used to be a challenge to use, but not anymore. There are tons of videos. Boris Hajdukovic has a long running series called Editing moments. You may want to skip to the more recent ones as some may not be relevant anymore

 

[Skygod44]

John,
Thank you so much for introducing me to Darktable.

Having come back to stills from video, I'd given up on Lightroom (cost + updates + not used, so that was that) and only had DaVinci Resolve on my PC (mainly for video editing) and Snapseed (free from Google) on my smartphone.

I'm still learning, but Darktable seems very good so far.
There are some areas I'm not 100% happy with (cloning seems to be a bit tricky, so far), but I'm 99% happy with the software as a whole.

So, thanks again, and here's a before / after of the Shrine where I married Missus Skygod mk3.

Before:


After:

 

[West Coast Birder]

How’s the NR in Darktable? I have played around with it but not enough to get comfortable with it.

 

[Skygod44]

How’s the NR in Darktable? I have played around with it but not enough to get comfortable with it.

I've no idea
But judging by the GUI, pretty good I expect.

I'm still a complete newbie, but I'm liking it a lot.

 

[sidknee]

How’s the NR in Darktable? I have played around with it but not enough to get comfortable with it.

I have found the noise reduction to be pretty good. Never having used any other nr software to compare on my files I can only judge against other folks presentations and I don't feel disadvantaged in any way because of the software I'm using.
This is a 1 click outcome with no masking or further adjustment.

 

[Skygod44]

I have found the noise reduction to be pretty good. Never having used any other nr software to compare on my files I can only judge against other folks presentations and I don't feel disadvantaged in any way because of the software I'm using.
This is a 1 click outcome with no masking or further adjustment.

View attachment 40229

I'm so new to Darktable, I've not even clicked on the denoise module yet.
Thanks so much for showing this example.
I'm impressed!!!

This could make my m43 set-up even more "able" than it already is.

I'm a tad busy now, but when I get the chance I'll take some higher ISO shots to see what Darktable can do with them.

Cheers for now,
Simon

 

[Levina de Ruijter]

I looked at supported cameras and for Canon it stops with 1DXII.

 

[sidknee]

I looked at supported cameras and for Canon it stops with 1DXII.

The list you saw must need updating or something, CR3 support was added over 3 years ago! I just downloaded a R6II raw file from dprv and it opened fine with the current Darktable.

 

[Skygod44]

OK...
Had the chance to try out Denoise today in an exceedingly dark Wedding Chapel.
I've 2 "before and after" attempts coming up, both shot at ISO1250 on Olympus 20MP E-P7 sensor.
Any tips, let me know.
I used non-local-means and twiddled with the sliders.
First shot is some aisle decorative flowers.

Before:


And after:

 

[Skygod44]

Second shot(s) are of the whole chapel.

Before:


After:


A tad annoyingly, the file-size reduction for FoP means that in this edited shot, you can't see the details of the stained-glass window at the end, whereas viewing a decent file-size, every pane is clearly visible, despite the use a such a wide angle.

Anyway, if the Darktable experts can give me a "marks out of 10" for my first attempts, plus hints/tips, I'll be all ears

Regards,
Simon

 

[PietZA]

Simon I'm no DT expert, but it looks good to me! Like many other things there are more than one way to get rid of noise in DT. I have a preset that applies the lens-specific denoise to all images above a certain ISO number. But sometimes I play around with the denoise preset in "Contrast equalizer" (I think that is what it is called, I'm not at my PC at the moment)

 

[Infrared Guy]

I'm so new to Darktable, I've not even clicked on the denoise module yet.
Thanks so much for showing this example.
I'm impressed!!!

This could make my m43 set-up even more "able" than it already is.

I'm a tad busy now, but when I get the chance I'll take some higher ISO shots to see what Darktable can do with them.

Cheers for now,
Simon

Did you see that there are 3 different Denoise modules? "Astrophoto denoise", "denoise" and "RAW denoise". I rarely use them because I try to keep my ISO in the lower numbers.

 

[sidknee]

Second shot(s) are of the whole chapel.

Before:
View attachment 44188

After:
View attachment 44189

A tad annoyingly, the file-size reduction for FoP means that in this edited shot, you can't see the details of the stained-glass window at the end, whereas viewing a decent file-size, every pane is clearly visible, despite the use a such a wide angle.

Anyway, if the Darktable experts can give me a "marks out of 10" for my first attempts, plus hints/tips, I'll be all ears

Regards,
Simon

Your end results look fine here on my pc screen at the sizes they are, and if you are happy with them that's all that matters. I couldn't really see any noise in the originals so even harder to tell if that's satisfactory or not, I'd consider ISO 1250 to be pretty low anyway! We need to see 100% crops or screen shots to judge properly. Some of my shots yesterday were ISO20000! like this one....

 

[Skygod44]

Simon I'm no DT expert, but it looks good to me! Like many other things there are more than one way to get rid of noise in DT. I have a preset that applies the lens-specific denoise to all images above a certain ISO number. But sometimes I play around with the denoise preset in "Contrast equalizer" (I think that is what it is called, I'm not at my PC at the moment)

Thanks so much.
Of course, with these shots there was no need to push the ISO, so they really were just to play with.
But next time, when I truly need higher ISO, I'll look into the other methods.

Thanks again,
Simon