Darktable 2.0 released | Hacker News Reader

Darktable 2.0 released

darktable.org

248 pointsjakobdabo44 comments

> darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers.

Thanks, because it took me more than a few clicks just to figure this out. I was especially disappointed with the description of the GitHub repository, "darktable main repository".

I kind of like the idea from a few years ago, where there was a tagline under the logo of some web sites on every page, to explain what the site is.

The website really should provide some screenshots of the software!

This is a blog entry about why there is no Windows build of Darktabe: https://www.darktable.org/2015/07/why-dont-you-provide-a-win...

I would say this is quite reasonable. Since all developers regard this project as a hobby, they work on what interests them. And that is MacOS and Linux builds. They don't say Windows will never be supported. Just that nobody stepped up to maintain that build or even provide bugreports. That person might be you :). If you care so much about it.

Yikes, had no idea they didn't even have a windows build.

I know a non-trivial number of photogs who are windows based, considering they aim to be a LR replacement I don't see that happening anytime soon. Also probably going to be harder and harder to make that port happen the more development moves along.

> considering they aim to be a LR replacement

Where did you even get this idea from? :)

I would think that having this work on more platforms would also draw more developers which would help everyone, i.e. it's really a win-win, but if someone only wants to build software for some platform for whatever reason why would anyone care?

Obviously the people who use $platform care. Their development system is designed so that question answers itself.

I'm sure they care. The point I was trying to make is that if someone builds free software and intentionally limit support to a certain platform then people complaining about that doesn't really make sense.

On the other hand if you care about your free software attracting more users (some of whom could be developers who help push the software forward for everyone's benefit) then you should aim to target as many platforms as possible. I think there's a good correlation between successful open source products and the number of platforms they support.

Reading the blog and the comments (and the un-pulled GitHub pull request with changes to build under Windows) it seems the tone is that the developers aren't strongly motivated to get this working on Windows. They're entitled to their opinion, it's their software ... I just think they're thinking about this the wrong way. They seem to be thinking why should we do all this work for a platform we don't care about and carry the porting effort and the maintenance burden on our shoulders. Maybe I'm reading too much between the lines or this is reminding me of other similar situations...

> I just think they're thinking about this the wrong way. They seem to be thinking why should we do all this work for a platform we don't care about and carry the porting effort and the maintenance burden on our shoulders.

What's wrong with that?

But they do not intentionally limit support to other stuff. These are people working for their own pleasure, creating stuff that they need. They are not a company which creates stuff for money and needs to cater to its (spoiled?) users.

Users of this software are the developers themselves, and and anyone else who is pleased with the creation. And, for free!

You can even change the creation to your own liking, so, if you need a Windows build, why you don't step in?

I have used Darktable and like it a lot, I can easily recommend it. Props to the team for this release, we sorely need an open photography tool.

Never having heard of Darktable before, I had to click to the main page to find out what it was about. You might want to add a short blurb at the top of the release announcement about what it is.

I've heard of Darktable before and wanted to show this to my wife, a professional photographer who uses Lightroom, but there isn't much for her to see here. GTK+3? Packaging enhancements? These are noteworthy achievements for the developers, but I don't think most of the addressable market care about this any more than they care Lightroom was written with Lua.

Extracted from http://libregraphicsworld.org/blog/entry/darktable-2-0-relea...:

> The port to Gtk+3 widget set is yet another major change that you might or might not care about much. It's mostly to bring darktable up to date with recent changes in Gtk+ and simplify support for HiDPI displays (think Retina, 4K, 5K etc.)

Glad to see this. I switched from Lightroom to dark table earlier this year and have been pleased. The only thing I really miss is the dehaze slider. That thing is magical. It's possible to produce similar effects in light table but more finesse is required.

Everyone: it's just "raw". Not "RAW". It's not an acronym or abbreviation like IBM or ASM. But like assembly, it's not one thing, but a description of a class of things. It just literally means "raw" as in "uncooked" or "unprocessed" (though it's certainly not completely unprocessed, but nobody is going to call it "blanched" or "seared").

You've got the development momentum but it's still not as good as rawtherapee for the editing bit which is the only part I'm interested in.

I wish I could use Rawtherapee as it has support for DCP profiles. Rawtherapee has a big disadvantage though. AFAIK you can't affect just parts of the image, you always work with the whole image. One could argue that this is fine as you can open the image in GIMP or PS post raw conversion. However, this has more than a few cons.

Example: let's say contrast is increased during raw conversion. Parts of the image will be darker then they were before the edit. If you want to lighten up the the areas around the eyes in a portrait, they now contain less information and there will be a lot more visible noise by bringing up these shadows post raw conversion.

In this particular situation you can developed two versions - one darker, one brighter - and blend them together in gimp. I don't really do such intrusive/creative editing.

It is essential to have this in-app, not going to another app. Most people do not realize that even famous images that have no digital magic applied where heavily edited for exposure to support composition.

See e.g. http://petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-icon...

Why is it essential to have this in app ? Who makes these rules ?

No one said this is a rule but you.

Why? Because of the UX. It completely breaks the creative workflow if you have to save two [or several] versions of an image and switch to another app to compose them together to see an effect applied locally. And then go back and repeat, if the strength is not to your liking.

Besides, Gimp doesn't support floating point image editing, so there is a also data loss involved if you use this app for compositing your RAW samples. Krita & Natron seem the only alternatives on Linux unless I miss something. On OSX, you could use Krita, DaVinci Resolve, Fusion, or Natron. Or pay for Photoshop. In any case, switching apps sucks. :]

DT's authors understood this and added support for masks and module instancing. Plus a ton of blend modes. That's what sets DT apart from the competition when it comes to 'how' you work. As for the 'what': there is very little that the toolset of DT leaves to be desired. Even for professionals. :)

Congratulations darktable team. Very great going and keep it up. Its an amazing work you are doing.

Have never tried it myself - but as a user of both DPP (canon digital photo professional) and Photoshop, I have found that the cabin software has an advantage with quality - something about understanding the camera better. How does darktable match up to DPP and Photoshop?

It doesn't fare that well. Proper RAW encoders have tens of manyears of dedicated work put in, intimate knowledge of the camera sensors (often with the assistance of camera makers), expensive labs for color tests etc, and top it with several patented proprietary techniques for the image processing part (Photoshop has tons of those).

That's frankly bollocks. :) Caveat: I'm a visual effects professional since 20 years. I know "a bit" about color and image processing. I also use Photoshop since the time when it was called "Barneyscan".

Now, if you tell me what color workflow tools DT lacks and what camera/sensor specific things you think are missing and what secret image processing sauce Photoshop supposedly has that DT is missing, I'm sure I will be able to refute every single one of your concerns.

On a sidenote, one of DT's authors is Johannes Hannika, PhD. Who works at Weta in Wellington NZ as a visual effects professional. Go figure. :)

Those things are all nice but they don't necessarily bring superiority. For example I've found RawTherapee's AMAZE algorithm to be superior to Lightroom and Photoshop when it comes to demosaicing RAW files. It deals noticeably (and consistently) better with moiré on clothing for example.

Can you define what makes a proper RAW "decoder"? We actually discuss about RAW decoding here. Adobe offers the DNG SDK as open source, it gives quite good clue on how to process RAW images, alternatively dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software. Once the CFA bayer (or other mosaicing type) data is available (decrypted as it is crypted for quite a few camera makers), the demosaicing performed and the photo white-balanced and exported with its full dynamic range in a RGB colourspace, you have done most of the technical steps to start working creatively with it.

>Adobe offers the DNG SDK as open source, it gives quite good clue on how to process RAW images, alternatively dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software.

The DNG software is not really relevant, as it's mainly used by smaller camera makers. Yeah, it would be niced if everyone adopted an open standard, but in the real world Nikon, Canon, Sony etc use their own RAW formats, and those are undocumented and proprietary. dcraw from Dave Coffin, on the other hand, is a small, mostly one man, project based on reverse engineering.

>Once the CFA bayer (or other mosaicing type) data is available (decrypted as it is crypted for quite a few camera makers), the demosaicing performed and the photo white-balanced and exported with its full dynamic range in a RGB colourspace, you have done most of the technical steps to start working creatively with it.

Having done "most of the technical steps to start working creatively" and having the best possible image resulting from the decoder is a totally different thing.

Choice of demosaicing algorithm (there's not an 1-1 mapping between a RAW file and that), and steps applied after that, like sharpening, color correction and some basic curves affect the end result in a big way, and are big parts of what makes a photo software good in its RAW handling. RAW images don't just get demosaiced and that's it before we view/start editing them.

> dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software.

That is actually not true. Yes, _some_ free/libre apps do use, but if you look closer, they probably make 1/2 of free software, and it's the least capable half.

Actually, it fares really well, depending on how you use it. If you're using one-click, ultra-simple modules like shadows and highlights, temperature, or brightness and contrast, Photoshop & Lightroom will win every time. Doing high-level editing with tone-curve, base-curve, color-zones, color-correction, split-toning, etc. is a different story. Darktable holds its ground. Even if it messes up, you can easily fix any errors with a parametric mask.

Darktable already has a database of base curves and noise profiles for many cameras. I don't know what else you really need?

can we start posting checksums over https?

s/posting checksums/doing everything on the web/

It looks like they actually offer https, just don't force it. There's a good chance they're just testing it, seeing as their CA, Let's Encrypt, was made available to the public less than a month ago (and their cert's validity period starts on the LE public beta launch day, so it's unlikely they were part of the private beta):

https://www.darktable.org/2015/12/darktable-2-0-released/

Would be great if it could deal with Equirectangular <> Gnomonic/Cubic images too.

So I assume the name is a play on Adobe Lightroom.

Disappointed to find out no Windows support.

spacey up above posted a link[0] to a blog post explaining exactly why that is.

[0]: https://www.darktable.org/2015/07/why-dont-you-provide-a-win...

Lack of screenshots is usually a red flag; you guys should fix that :)

Its there:

http://www.darktable.org/about/screenshots/

About -> Screenshots

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