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Comment by alfanick | Hacker News Reader

Can someone compare it to Adobe Lightroom? Is it truly usable, is it quick enough?

I am stuck on classic dilemma "apple fucked up, what should I do", so I am planning moving back to Linux, but Lightroom is the only application keeping me back (however, I thought of OSX in VM on Linux for running just LR).

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Since I moved to Linux as my daily driver, I've been using Darktable as prefered editor. I do have to say that I'm not a high demanding user, so you'll have to take my experience with a grain of salt. Coming from Lightroom there's a slight learning curve and it's not as refined as Lightroom. But once you get the hang of things, it's really a great editor. Definitely quick but also really usable. The interface can sometimes be somewhat confusing, I can recall several occasions at which I didn't really know how to use a tool or preset. Luckily I'm better at googling than photography. I don't miss Lightroom at all and as of yet have not encountered any missing features.

I was facing the same dilemma, and photo is a source of income to me. I made the jump, use Linux and Darktable every day, and experienced no frustration at all. I didn't try to run macOS in a vm though.

To answer your questions : it is quick, and I find it to be a very good replacement for lightroom. To me, it's actually easier to extend than adobe software, mostly because Lua is very simple and the documentation is crystal clear.

The best advice I could give here would be to give yourself a good dozen of hours of deliberate practice on Darktable, maybe more if you're into very advanced editing, but no more than a week.

Great, thanks for sharing your experience :)

Fwiw lightroom is mainly written in lua

Just found the plugin doc thanks to your comment. I'm kind of ashamed I didn't know that...

I think Darktable fits the mold of a lot of other good free software in that it's well features and probably does what you need it too, but the proprietary equivalent(Lightroom in this case) is a more polished and easier to jump into, or at that's what I got from trying to introduce both(along with I think LightZone and a couple others) to my wife and she was just better able to pickup Lightroom. But if you want to move to Linux and take the time to get to know Darktable, I think it'll ultimately be a good replacement.

As a quick guide to trying it for yourself (it's cross-platform, free software) have a look at these videos:

https://www.youtube.com/user/harrydurgin/videos

He has the topics and modules covered in each video cross-referenced over at his website:

http://weeklyedit.com/

You're bound to find something useful.

It is very usable for editing photos. When I used to use it (a few versions ago), there were a few issues with library management, so I switched to Lightroom. Lightroom's workflow seems more "integrated", but I think Darktable has more photo-editing features. I would definitely recommend taking it for a spin.

I've just given it a hammering today and while I'd love to love it, DT is not going to give the LR team sleepless nights. It feels quick, but the interface lacks the silky refinement and there's a lack of coherence in the workflow. Plus the correction effects work poorly, such as shadow correction which affects regions outside shadows in one direction, not all shadows in another. The workflow coherence is based on the old Adobe RAW flow, which meant that all controls were to be applied from the top down in the order, starting with white balance and moving down. That coherence was diluted somewhat in newer versions of LR, but it is still good.

I too am shackled to OS X by LR, but I am a very demanding, heavy user of LR.

I too am shackled to LR and OSX. I've tried DT a few times, but it just does not quite hit the ease of use of my current LR workflow. Plus, I do not want to recreate/buy the filter packs I have made/bought. I also do not want to lose years of edits across thousands of pictures.

I run OSX in VM just for RAW Photo Processor, which in my opinion the best RAW converter out there developed by photographers for photographers. http://www.raw-photo-processor.com/RPP/Overview.html

Well, on Linux, darktable is incredibly much quicker than LR-in-wine ;-)

I also find DT more intuitive, which seems a bit weird considering the interface is so heavily inspired by LR (or did they just learn from LR's mistakes?).

The main reason to use LR is if you buy filter packs/plugins that are LR-only

I agree with you - Lightroom is the sizzle. But if you happen to convert Fujifilm RAF files on a regular basis, then there are image quality issues with ACP that might make the switchover decision easier for you.

The Fuji issue has mostly been solved. I used to use Irident Developer for my RAFs but since switching to the X-T2 and the latest LR updates the old issues are gone. I've compared IR to LR a few times and there's no real difference if you know how to use the sharpening tool in LR properly. The older sensors still exhibit the issue a bit though.

Glad to hear. Naturally Lightroom doesn't fit my Linux workhorse very well but it has the best workflow. Nice to hear it has improved -- many attributed Fujifilm's poor image detail to how ACP made the conversions early on.

If you go the VM route consider a Win7 guest instead. Much smoother experience than OSX.

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