Over this past week, I've been kicking the tyres on Darktable again -- partly to see if I can now make it work for me, but also partly out of necessity (as my usual workstation + office-space are out of commission currently, but I had a bunch of photos needing editing, and Picasa - which I've been using to date - will eventually bite the dust in a bad way as it's been long deprecated so I wanted to avoid putting it on yet another machine... plus, I kept forgetting to grab the installer from my backup drive when I plugged it in).
Maybe there's a bit of "Stockholm Syndrome" here, but early indications are that with the latest current version (4.8.1 when I went to download it recently), Darktable has resolved a whole bunch of idiosyncrasies that made it an annoying non-started previously, along with offering a bunch of new capabilities that present a good way of achieving some of the "Ultimate Photo Editing" tool points I mentioned previously.
Update Notes:
* 25/11/2024 - Original Post. May end up tacking on more details in a later revision, in which case these update notes will be updated.
Things I Like So Far (Ordered in Order That I Like These)
* Pros 1) Way to Copy Edit "Recipes" from an Image, and Apply This to Others
This has been quite a game-changer for finally being able to batch-apply similar edits to a sequence of shots (often taken in quick succession, or if nothing else, in a short span of time pointed at similar things).
The only thing that irks me is that I have to switch to Lightroom mode to be able to access this, instead of being able to do it while zoomed in editing an image, skip to the next one, apply, then move over again and repeat...
* Pros 2) Hotkey for Exporting Images (Ctrl-E)
No confirmation, no dialogs, nothing. Just fire it off anytime you're looking at an image, or when you're in Lighttable mode with 1+ photos selected.
Ctrl-E will export all of them. Instantly. No fuss.
Simple :)
* Pros 3) "Color Balance RGB" + "RGB Primaries" modules
This pair are currently two of my favourite modules to use - I'm still getting that hang of them (and their limitations), so in some cases, I ended up with "slightly off-looking" attempts at color matching between items in a sequence) along with probably overdoing it sometimes...
Also, they don't quite cover everything yet, but it's close!
* Pros 4) While nothing quite beats using "Spacebar" to filter out the good photos vs the bad ones, I must say that I love the inspired decision to allow 1-5 keys be used for specifying the star rating.
* Pros 5) With the 5-star system (+ rejects), along with the way the filtering works, I can figure out a way to do my multi-pass reviews in a better way. Requires quite a bit of discipline to pull it off consistently, but there's a path forward there!
Things that Irk Me Still
Unfortunately, this list is still way longer than I'd like. But at least some of these can be worked around (and most sound like things that are simple-enough for most devs with a working build env for this to be able to quickly whip up). Also, some of these may just be me not having found the right buttons to mash to do this easier!
* Cons 1) Left-Right Arrows Do *NOT* Skip to Next/Prev Images
Argh! This took me so many attempts to find the right way to override the shortcuts here. But the lack of this as the default really made it almost impossible to use this comfortably.
* Con 2) I really wish I could map "U" and "Escape" as alternative ways of going back out to Lighttable mode from Darktable. "U" as I'm so used to it from Gerrit at work, and "Escape" as that's what Picasa used.
* Con 3) There's no hotkey to just activate or "jump to" the crop tool + make it then let me freehand box-select / rubber-band out the region I want to crop. Instead, I need to always remember where the crop module is, expand it, then muck around with the onscreen handles trying to move them where I want them to be.
* Con4) When exporting images, cannot set a path that uses a combination of "alternative base-path" + "parent directory's name" only. Instead, we can only use the full directory of the parent folder, which means we cannot put all the exports in a separate "exports" folder instead
* Con 5) Cannot do the copy/paste of settings/recipes from Darktable mode. Have to switch back to Lighttable to be able to see these controls, even though it would be handy to have them there
* Con 6) Need an easy way to reset sliders back to their default values / zero them out again (after playing with them). Currently can only reset the entire module, which may be overkill after only accidentally nudging one control.
* Con 7) I need a faster (i.e. one-click) way of clearing the filters (notably the star filters). Currently this requires right clicking on the Filter icon to bring up a panel, and then clicking "Clear All Quick Filters" from there. (Trying to click on the other buttons just leads to a confusing mess)
* Con 8) The scrollbar on the "Film Row" folders list in Lighttable mode is annoying - it always gets out of sync with how many items actually exist in that list, so you end up scrolling several times to get it to suddenly jump to the bottom of the list
* Con 9) In Darktable mode, clicking on items in the Film Strip is unreliable. Can often end up on the left/right one vs what you intended (i.e. maybe since they move around after each click to recent the list?)
* Con 10) Text/icons sometimes still too small
* Con 11) Need to disable "always generate sidecar files" - I don't want to litter my "originals" folders with sidecar files when just browsing through them. I understand though using them to store settings related to the files when the files have been edited - in fact, it's very good that you can have the recipes beside the files.
Speaking of edit recipes, I'd love if you could stash multiple recipes per image / with maybe branching behaviour to try out different edits. (IIRC, I probably mentioned this in my ultimate list too)
EDIT: The "Snapshot" feature sounds like I can use it to make various versions of an image. I wonder whether it can be used to save off branching points that can be used for new variations?
* Con 12) Should make it so the overlays are always enabled in Lighttable view by default. And should probably show the filename too.
* Con 12) I haven't yet figured out all of my favourite modules, so haven't whittled them down to the limited set I'd like to almost always use. But once I have, I think I'd want to be able to have a view / mode where those are the only ones I've shown (and make it default to that tab)
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