Goodbye LR?

[DanS]

What I've seen looks good, but after fighting ON1 for a year, I don't want another buggy program.

What OS are you using, and what bugs are you encountering?

I'm running 64 bit Windows 10 pro, and haven't had any issue with ON1 in the 2 years I've been using it.

 

[Bob T]

What OS are you using, and what bugs are you encountering?

I'm running 64 bit Windows 10 pro, and haven't had any issue with ON1 in the 2 years I've been using it.

And you are one of many lucky ones...My computer (Win 10 64 with lots of speed and memory), is fine. And it works fine with every other software I've ever put on it, except ON1. Tried every fix offered. Every update required new fixes. Lost work, crashed computers, hard drives spinning for hours, etc.

You might have missed a lot of it, because they always closed or removed any discussions about performance or operation issues, from the forums and face book page. Not allowed, and all we wanted was help.

Even paid for a plus membership.

I am sure I'll try 2019.5, and I'll love it, and than it will just let me down again.

Have some time? Most of the issues people have are in this thread: On1 Photo RAW 2019

 

[DanS]

Have some time? Most of the issues people have are in this thread: On1 Photo RAW 2019

I'm familiar with that thread as I follow it and have posted in it. I'm a developer by trade, and I don't remember anything from that thread that jumped out at me as an obvious software issue. I've seen a lot of opinions in it though.

I'm not trying to insult anyone but I regularly deal with "bugs" at work, that aren't bugs. They're out of date drivers, over zealous ad/spy ware applications, under powered cpus or gpus, low on ram, drives with no more ips to give, etc.

For my machine is as follows, and its due to be replaced next year most likely.

• 6850k overclocked to 4.2Ghz
• GTX 1070 overclocked to 2.1 Ghz
• 32 GB of DDR4 ram
• 950 pro 512GB m.2 os drive
• 19 TB of spinning drives in various RAIDs for storage.
• Windows 10 Pro 64 bit latest updates installed.

 

[Bob T]

Nice machine, and there are also many running lower end machines, that have no problem. This I know.
And plenty with higher end machines that do have problems, like mine.
I spent too much time in the Plus forums being helped and helping others to not understand there are issues. And not unusual, or rare issues.
Bottom line, my machine works with every other photo software I've tried.
Every other one, and it was a lot of them.

We should bet back to the darktable discussion.

 

[Linh]

I don't know what that does in LR, but darktable has very flexible ability to bind keyboard shortcuts to events

It evaluates the exposure of the current image (how I've adjusted it) and proceeds to match the exposure of it for all the photos in that scene I've selected. It's not just syncing settings, but actually trying to match exposure.

 

[0000]

It evaluates the exposure of the current image (how I've adjusted it) and proceeds to match the exposure of it for all the photos in that scene I've selected. It's not just syncing settings, but actually trying to match exposure.

Hmm. A key part of the darktable workflow involves the use of copy/paste of one image's history stack (or some portion thereof) to the other selected images. Once you get used to working that way, it becomes easy to apply it to other stuff like white balance, etc...

That said, the way to do what you describe would be to use the exposure module in "automatic" rather than "manual" mode. Then, when you copy and paste it to other images, it attempts to hit the same target EV, rather than simply applying the exact same compensation. Making this a one-keystroke operation would take some Lua scripting, but if it's a major part of your workflow it could be worth it, I suppose...

 

[Linh]

Hmm. A key part of the darktable workflow involves the use of copy/paste of one image's history stack (or some portion thereof) to the other selected images. Once you get used to working that way, it becomes easy to apply it to other stuff like white balance, etc...

That said, the way to do what you describe would be to use the exposure module in "automatic" rather than "manual" mode. Then, when you copy and paste it to other images, it attempts to hit the same target EV, rather than simply applying the exact same compensation. Making this a one-keystroke operation would take some Lua scripting, but if it's a major part of your workflow it could be worth it, I suppose...

Good to know it seems to be possible. Still don't think the learning curve is worth it for me yet, but we'll see where Adobe goes in the next couple years (yes, I'm also aware that this is how they're getting me stringing us along).

 

[chicks]

I'm very much a hobbyist-level photographer, but now that I'm retired, will be spending more time trying to improve. I was involuntarily wedded to Windoze during my long career at MegaCorp, am now happily running Chrome OS on my ChromeBox at home. It has native RAW viewing capabilities in the file manager, which is nice.

Polarr runs flawlessly on it, with an Intel Core i3 processor and 8GB of RAM. However, Polarr doesn't actually support RAW files, it converts them to jpg upon opening, at just 1440X1920 max. Great for posting images online, but I want full resolution for any photos that I will print. Looks like Darktable is a great option. It appears to run fine in the Linux Beta terminal on my ChromeBox. Looking forward to learning how to use it.

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[PakkyT]

I have been using darktable for a little bit now since I got a new computer and upgraded from Gimp 2.8 to 2.10. darktable is used as the front end converter of raw files for Gimp. Normally I just use Apple's Photos application but for my infrared shooting I prefer some of the features in Gimp. I am still trying to learn my way about darktable (and Gimp for that matter) but so far it does a lot for me. The integration with Gimp is pretty seamless. I can right click a raw file, say to open with Gimp and the file will first open in darktable then when i am done there I simply close darktable and the image is passed on to Gimp. It doesn't require any sort of intermediate saving of a TIFF or that sort of thing.

I really should spend some time with the various darktable online videos and tutorials. One great thing about it is the designers know which effects should be applied before others (for example the old advise to always applying unsharp mask last) and have designed the application to do them in the correct order. So you can apply any changes in any order and darktable will apply them to the original in the correct (by their rules) order. Great for editing dummies like me.

 

[PakkyT]

One great thing about it is the designers know which effects should be applied before others (for example the old advise to always applying unsharp mask last) and have designed the application to do them in the correct order.

Just noticed the darktable 3.0.0 announcement post here. It mentions that you can now change the processing order. My question is, does the application have a default "darktable approved" order you can use for those of us without the knowledge to muck around with processing order?

 

[speedy]

I understand the Windows version is relatively new. Does anyone have any experience with it?
What I've seen looks good, but after fighting ON1 for a year, I don't want another buggy program.

Sounds like my experience with ON1. I’m running a Intel factory built i7 quad core NUC, 16GB of RAM, &1.5TB of SSD Hard drives. Just would not run properly for me. I liked the program, contacted support, sent them log files? the works, reinstalled, updated, tried all the fixes, just kept freezing and/or crashing

 

[Brownie]

I've been running Darktable on Windows 10 for well over a year. I've ran it on three machines, and my daughter on one. No issues.

Edit:
I need to fix my statement above. It occurred to me that it was loaded on an older machine with Windows 7 for about six months. I bought a new laptop and desktop about this time last year, both with 10 (obviously). Even the older machine had no problems.

 

[pdk42]

I played with DT recently and liked it a lot. I could definitely see it replacing LR for new images. BUT... the thought of having to migrate about 7 years of images in LR to another tool sounds like way too big a job.

 

[0000]

Looking forward to learning how to use it.

You might not want to invest too much time getting comfortable with the old 2.6 versions, though.

(for example the old advise to always applying unsharp mask last)

You'll be excited to note that this conventional wisdom has been completely discarded in 3.0... the sharpen module has been moved to a much earlier point in the "processing pipe", which actually kind of makes sense for various reasons... and the fact that advanced interpolation algorithms are commonplace now makes the advice to sharpen after downscaling much less important than it used to be... and in many cases darktable wasn't doing that anyway...

My question is, does the application have a default "darktable approved" order you can use for those of us without the knowledge to muck around with processing order?

Absolutely, just like before, but with some re-thinking of the defaults (see above) in light of favoring a new RGB-space (as opposed to L*a*b) processing workflow. You have to go out of your way to change the ordering, and you shouldn't really do it without a clear reason... this feature is also currently "half-baked" IMHO, in that it was decided that styles wouldn't apply any user-changed ordering (long story); it's still useful, but it will be much more useful once there's a method to easily apply re-orderings you frequently use to batches of images.

I played with DT recently and liked it a lot. I could definitely see it replacing LR for new images. BUT... the thought of having to migrate about 7 years of images in LR to another tool sounds like way too big a job.

I'm vaguely aware that there's some kind of migration tool available, but I've never used it (or LR). It certainly won't reproduce all your editing, but at least metadata... and I think maybe a few basic modules (exposure, etc) get mapped across... anyway, a good thread for dt-specific discussion is probably this one: https://www.mu-43.com/threads/darktable-3-0-0-released.106809/

 

[marcsitkin]

Just noticed the darktable 3.0.0 announcement post here. It mentions that you can now change the processing order. My question is, does the application have a default "darktable approved" order you can use for those of us without the knowledge to muck around with processing order?

It's recommended that you keep the processing order set as it's presented to you, otherwise baad things may happen.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I've just started using this software.

 

[Brownie]

You might not want to invest too much time getting comfortable with the old 2.6 versions, though.

You're making me nervous. I'm using 2.6.2. Are there going to be changes so vast that the current version won't even provide familiarity?

 

[0000]

It's recommended that you keep the processing order set as it's presented to you, otherwise baad things may happen.
Take this with a grain of salt, as I've just started using this software.

One of the reasons for emphasizing this strongly is because historically people have asked for a way of grouping their favorite modules together in the UI in an order related to their workflow... which is exactly what you DO NOT want to use this for. This is not that feature, move along, nothing to see here... OTOH, other people have wished to be able to change the fixed processing order for various legitimate, but somewhat "advanced" or "speciailized" reasons... this IS that feature.

You're making me nervous. I'm using 2.6.2. Are there going to be changes so vast that the current version won't even provide familiarity?

Naw, but if somebody is just starting out now, why not start with the new version? Of course, I'm all for maintaining some historical perspective, so if you've got the dendrites to spare for that, go ahead and check out the predecessor! Just don't learn it *too* hard...

 

[PakkyT]

Naw, but if somebody is just starting out now, why not start with the new version? Of course, I'm all for maintaining some historical perspective, so if you've got the dendrites to spare for that, go ahead and check out the predecessor! Just don't learn it *too* hard...

Of course the one issue is while the application is now v3, all the videos, pdfs, and other resources are still at v2.6, so there may be some disconnect between the two until they get around to updating those resources to support the new version.

 

[0000]

Yeah, that's one reason I'm not a huge fan of information in that "baked" format... it doesn't lend itself to incremental updating. The manual, on the other hand, has been getting some love, but it doesn't get "published" until it's fully updated, which can take a while... for the intrepid/desperate, you can find the source here... if you're handy with document software you can try building it... or for the beautiful mutants, just mentally parse the XML markup.

Also, these videos were made alongside the 3.0 development process, but may be a little heavy on low-level details for most people.

 

[Cederic]

I found 2.6 a bit painful. It's powerful but it doesn't feel designed for processing large batches of photographs, which was always a strength of Lightroom.

Has 3.0 made it easier to just work through 300 photographs at the end of each day, discard 250, turn the remainder into something publishable and hit a single button to put them onto (e.g.) Smugmug? That's an hour or two in Lightroom.