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I'm curious if it's possible to make the switch from Lightroom to Darktable (which uses libgphoto2 underneath I believe). The last time I tried was years ago an

I'm curious if it's possible to make the switch from Lightroom to Darktable (which uses libgphoto2 underneath I believe). The last time I tried was years ago and it was not a success.

brudgers 7y ago
Looking at tethering support in Darktable is how I came across libgphoto2. I'd say switching comes down the switch's goal and how committed you are to that goal versus how committed you are to your current workflow. At the level of mouse movements, switching means abandoning your LightTable workflow and making a new one in Darktable. At the level of tooling, switching means finding equivalent tools and/or combinations of tools to achieve your photographic results...or living without some LightRoom tools. At the high level, the proof is in the print. It might be worth watching some of Bruce Williams Darktable tutorials on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkqe4BYsllmcxo2dsF-rFQw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkqe4BYsllmcxo2dsF-rFQw
frio 7y ago
I've been trying to migrate my flow from Lightroom to purely OSS tools. So far I've landed on a big mess of importing RAW with the gphoto2 CLI so that I've got a reliable archive to then feed the other tools: digiKam for active library management of the shots I want to develop, Rawtherapee and Darktable for processing, and then the GIMP for final touchups. As much as I find Adobe distasteful, it's a much, much smoother experience. If you don't mind hacking away to find a workflow that works for you, you'll get similar results out of open source tools -- but the path to those results is much longer.
- brudgers 7y ago
  Darktable and Rawtherapee support many RAW formats directly. Gimp supports many RAW formats with a plugin. For those workflows, preprocessing with libgphoto2 may not be required.
  - frio 7y ago
    gphoto2 is more for archival. For whatever reason it feels safer to me to use the CLI as a feeder for the other apps; gphoto2 grabs the photos off the camera, pops them in a folder, and I then import into digiKam from there rather than from the camera. The archive is independently backed up and remains a pristine home for all my digital negatives, without the risk of me annihilating things in digiKam/Darktable, which I am wont to do ;).
    - brudgers 7y ago
      That makes sense. I use Rapid Photo Downloader to ingest images. It handles renaming, directory creation, and teeing the data stream to a primary and a backup location. https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ It replaced shell my scripts about two years ago. Periodically, I archive the online disks to an offline disk. When the online backup disk is full, I archive it and buy another. Likewise with the SD cards from the camera, I shoot until they are full and then archive them. I don't delete images off of them and replace them when full. I treat SD cards as a consumable...like film.
      - frio 7y ago
        Thanks for the link, I'll take a look :).

I'm curious if it's possible to make the switch from Lightroom to Darktable (which uses libgphoto2 underneath I believe). The last time I tried was years ago and it was not a success.

brudgers 7y ago

Looking at tethering support in Darktable is how I came across libgphoto2. I'd say switching comes down the switch's goal and how committed you are to that goal versus how committed you are to your current workflow. At the level of mouse movements, switching means abandoning your LightTable workflow and making a new one in Darktable. At the level of tooling, switching means finding equivalent tools and/or combinations of tools to achieve your photographic results...or living without some LightRoom tools. At the high level, the proof is in the print. It might be worth watching some of Bruce Williams Darktable tutorials on Youtube. https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkqe4BYsllmcxo2dsF-rFQw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCkqe4BYsllmcxo2dsF-rFQw

frio 7y ago

I've been trying to migrate my flow from Lightroom to purely OSS tools. So far I've landed on a big mess of importing RAW with the gphoto2 CLI so that I've got a reliable archive to then feed the other tools: digiKam for active library management of the shots I want to develop, Rawtherapee and Darktable for processing, and then the GIMP for final touchups. As much as I find Adobe distasteful, it's a much, much smoother experience. If you don't mind hacking away to find a workflow that works for you, you'll get similar results out of open source tools -- but the path to those results is much longer.

brudgers 7y ago
Darktable and Rawtherapee support many RAW formats directly. Gimp supports many RAW formats with a plugin. For those workflows, preprocessing with libgphoto2 may not be required.
- frio 7y ago
  gphoto2 is more for archival. For whatever reason it feels safer to me to use the CLI as a feeder for the other apps; gphoto2 grabs the photos off the camera, pops them in a folder, and I then import into digiKam from there rather than from the camera. The archive is independently backed up and remains a pristine home for all my digital negatives, without the risk of me annihilating things in digiKam/Darktable, which I am wont to do ;).
  - brudgers 7y ago
    That makes sense. I use Rapid Photo Downloader to ingest images. It handles renaming, directory creation, and teeing the data stream to a primary and a backup location. https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ https://www.damonlynch.net/rapid/ It replaced shell my scripts about two years ago. Periodically, I archive the online disks to an offline disk. When the online backup disk is full, I archive it and buy another. Likewise with the SD cards from the camera, I shoot until they are full and then archive them. I don't delete images off of them and replace them when full. I treat SD cards as a consumable...like film.
    - frio 7y ago
      Thanks for the link, I'll take a look :).