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I use darktable for my photography and really appreciate how powerful it is. I do wish the UI was a little more friendly. Throughout the versions I’ve run into

I use darktable for my photography and really appreciate how powerful it is. I do wish the UI was a little more friendly. Throughout the versions I’ve run into a large number of quirks. Tool tips not being a huge thing means you have to learn what all the tiny greyscale icons mean by heart. Duplicating the exposure module to touch up a specific area means the histogram now controls the duplicate and not the original. Minor adjustments for any slider with a right click on the tiny slider knob we’re super broken for a while. These kinds of things would be great to not happen. But I think my biggest struggle with it is documentation. The docs are written in a way that seem to assume you know a whole lot of details of the software and the theory behind image processing. I am by no means an expert so when I start reading about how a specific module does it’s transforms at some specific phase in the pipeline and in this specific color space I don’t actually get what the effect of that will have on the photo. I understand that there is a lot you can do with the software but for example it took like an hour of YouTube videos from random people for me to figure out how to add a soft focus effect (apparently I needed to invoke local contrast?) or how to darken a specific spot on a photo in a way that blended nicely with the rest of it. Personally I have gotten comfortable with it and now can do what I need to do but at the same time that learning curve was super steep. I still wonder if I should give Lightroom a try just to see if that’s more user friendly.

noir_lord 5y ago
I mean this is in a non-snarky way but have you fed this back to the developers and considered writing documentation aimed at people like yourself?.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I have not and I know that’s a thing I can do. I don’t think I could write the documentation because (a) time and (b) I honestly don’t think I actually have enough knowledge to do that well.
morsch 5y ago
I was consistently surprised how thorough the manual is. There are not many open source (or closed source!) pieces of software that come with a 220 page manual, with another 100 pages of appendices. Usually you have to pay another 30 bucks for a book, and then do it again when another version is released. That said, it sure is a complicated piece of software and I hear that the Lightroom UI is a bit more intuitive and polished.
- asutekku 5y ago
  It’s amazing they’ve made this available, but if you need a 220 page manual to use a software then maybe the UX could be improved a bit.
  - morsch 5y ago
    I've only looked up a few things here and there, but in order for that to work the documentation needs to be pretty thorough. If you think pro software doesn't need a manual, I invite you to check just how many shelves in your local bookstore are devoted to Photoshop, InDesign etc. Those books used to come with the software.
  - rhn_mk1 5y ago
    There are limits to this. There's no amount of UX that will explain mathematical concepts as a side effect of being useful. Sure, you can implement some UX to show the differences between different demosaicing methods and how good they are, but you're going to implement an interactive toy/tutorial (so another form of a manual), or you'll end up failing to explain the theory.
  - tomc1985 5y ago
    Or maybe people should RTFM This idea that software should always come to us, and not the other way around, is untenable. And, I think, selfish.
    - Zak 5y ago
      There are valid points on both sides of that issue. On one hand, sophisticated image processing techniques require a level of user education that doesn't fit nicely into a UI. How to get the most out of the various tools belongs in the manual. On the other hand, Darktable's UI would benefit from some polishing, and perhaps a more gentle learning curve for beginners to become productive. This is very common in open source applications, as there tend to be more programmers contributing than UX designers.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
I agree. darktable is super powerful but the UI could use some cleanup. I also don't like the concept of film rolls. I would prefer if it just worked off a disk folder hierarchy. A dream would be to combine the file management of digikam with the darktable image processing engine. I also agree that you have to have way more knowledge of image processing concepts compared to Lightroom and Capture One who shield you from these things. But the biggest upside of darktable is that they expose a ton of functionality and constantly ship new stuff. Yes, you have to figure it out but at least there is progress. With Capture One I paid yearly for upgrades that didn't add much new stuff but often only polished existing features. One more thought about the learning curve: It took me years to get used to and comfortable with a lot of quirks in Capture One so I expect the same with darktable too.
- l0b0 5y ago
  The devs are actively anti-folder structure handling within Darktable[1], which is why I still have to use Digikam or a file manager and then leave my computer for a few hours to re-import my entire collection every so often. Re. UI, open source programs almost always end up on the side of technically correct rather than user friendly. So we're served a bunch of jargon with no easy way to find out more other than searching the web and hoping that whichever term they use has a single meaning, is only used in this context, and is used universally rather than some other term. These things are rarely all true at the same time. All that said, Darktable is great for my simple use, and it's my main photo developing application. [1] https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/#faq-rename-files https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/#faq-rename-files
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    "The devs are actively anti-folder structure handling within Darktable[1], which is why I still have to use Digikam" Same here. I wonder why that is. They already have some file handling ability but it seems half baked and just weird. The note from the FAQ sounds very hostile BTW. I wonder if would be possible to set up Digikam so when you double click an image it gets opened in darktable.
  - 5y ago
sleepybrett 5y ago
Based on inkscape and gimp, you'll be waiting for a better ui forever.
- capableweb 5y ago
  Or with a slightly happier outlook: Blender really turned their UX and UI around within 20 years of initial open source release. So change is possible, might just be really hard.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- Zababa 5y ago
  Gimp has been getting better in the last 10 years. Sure it's a long time, but how many UI/UX specialists are contributing to open source with their skills? At least there's a will for improving things.
ttctciyf 5y ago
You might like to dip in to Bruce Williams' youtube channel [1] which has many good clear explanations of darktable features (though there's the odd mistake, he generally corrects it in a subsequent episode). The main programmer of darktable also has a channel[2] which goes very in-depth (and opinionated!) on some aspects, like the recent filmic module. They are both useful adjuncts to the provided documentation, which can be pretty technical and abstruse. 1: https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u/videos 2: https://www.youtube.com/c/Aur%C3%A9lienPIERREPhoto/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Aur%C3%A9lienPIERREPhoto/videos
- morsch 5y ago
  Aurélien is not the main programmer of darktable, as far as I know. I'm not sure there is one main programmer of darktable.
  - ttctciyf 5y ago
    Not sure where I got that idea from - thanks for the correction.
benibela 5y ago
It took me perhaps an hour trying to figure out how to save/export my edited photo...
paperd 5y ago
Hi, I'm one of the darktable docs maintainers. We recently rewrote most of the docs. Have you checked them out? I agree that we should provide a more approachable description for a lot of modules. But we can't cover general image processing stuff because the manual would be unmaintainable.

noir_lord 5y ago

I mean this is in a non-snarky way but have you fed this back to the developers and considered writing documentation aimed at people like yourself?.

IgorPartola 5y ago
I have not and I know that’s a thing I can do. I don’t think I could write the documentation because (a) time and (b) I honestly don’t think I actually have enough knowledge to do that well.

morsch 5y ago

I was consistently surprised how thorough the manual is. There are not many open source (or closed source!) pieces of software that come with a 220 page manual, with another 100 pages of appendices. Usually you have to pay another 30 bucks for a book, and then do it again when another version is released. That said, it sure is a complicated piece of software and I hear that the Lightroom UI is a bit more intuitive and polished.

asutekku 5y ago
It’s amazing they’ve made this available, but if you need a 220 page manual to use a software then maybe the UX could be improved a bit.
- morsch 5y ago
  I've only looked up a few things here and there, but in order for that to work the documentation needs to be pretty thorough. If you think pro software doesn't need a manual, I invite you to check just how many shelves in your local bookstore are devoted to Photoshop, InDesign etc. Those books used to come with the software.
- rhn_mk1 5y ago
  There are limits to this. There's no amount of UX that will explain mathematical concepts as a side effect of being useful. Sure, you can implement some UX to show the differences between different demosaicing methods and how good they are, but you're going to implement an interactive toy/tutorial (so another form of a manual), or you'll end up failing to explain the theory.
- tomc1985 5y ago
  Or maybe people should RTFM This idea that software should always come to us, and not the other way around, is untenable. And, I think, selfish.
  - Zak 5y ago
    There are valid points on both sides of that issue. On one hand, sophisticated image processing techniques require a level of user education that doesn't fit nicely into a UI. How to get the most out of the various tools belongs in the manual. On the other hand, Darktable's UI would benefit from some polishing, and perhaps a more gentle learning curve for beginners to become productive. This is very common in open source applications, as there tend to be more programmers contributing than UX designers.

spaetzleesser 5y ago

I agree. darktable is super powerful but the UI could use some cleanup. I also don't like the concept of film rolls. I would prefer if it just worked off a disk folder hierarchy. A dream would be to combine the file management of digikam with the darktable image processing engine. I also agree that you have to have way more knowledge of image processing concepts compared to Lightroom and Capture One who shield you from these things. But the biggest upside of darktable is that they expose a ton of functionality and constantly ship new stuff. Yes, you have to figure it out but at least there is progress. With Capture One I paid yearly for upgrades that didn't add much new stuff but often only polished existing features. One more thought about the learning curve: It took me years to get used to and comfortable with a lot of quirks in Capture One so I expect the same with darktable too.

l0b0 5y ago
The devs are actively anti-folder structure handling within Darktable[1], which is why I still have to use Digikam or a file manager and then leave my computer for a few hours to re-import my entire collection every so often. Re. UI, open source programs almost always end up on the side of technically correct rather than user friendly. So we're served a bunch of jargon with no easy way to find out more other than searching the web and hoping that whichever term they use has a single meaning, is only used in this context, and is used universally rather than some other term. These things are rarely all true at the same time. All that said, Darktable is great for my simple use, and it's my main photo developing application. [1] https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/#faq-rename-files https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/#faq-rename-files
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  "The devs are actively anti-folder structure handling within Darktable[1], which is why I still have to use Digikam" Same here. I wonder why that is. They already have some file handling ability but it seems half baked and just weird. The note from the FAQ sounds very hostile BTW. I wonder if would be possible to set up Digikam so when you double click an image it gets opened in darktable.
- 5y ago

sleepybrett 5y ago

Based on inkscape and gimp, you'll be waiting for a better ui forever.

capableweb 5y ago
Or with a slightly happier outlook: Blender really turned their UX and UI around within 20 years of initial open source release. So change is possible, might just be really hard.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
Zababa 5y ago
Gimp has been getting better in the last 10 years. Sure it's a long time, but how many UI/UX specialists are contributing to open source with their skills? At least there's a will for improving things.

ttctciyf 5y ago

You might like to dip in to Bruce Williams' youtube channel [1] which has many good clear explanations of darktable features (though there's the odd mistake, he generally corrects it in a subsequent episode). The main programmer of darktable also has a channel[2] which goes very in-depth (and opinionated!) on some aspects, like the recent filmic module. They are both useful adjuncts to the provided documentation, which can be pretty technical and abstruse. 1: https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u/videos https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u/videos 2: https://www.youtube.com/c/Aur%C3%A9lienPIERREPhoto/videos https://www.youtube.com/c/Aur%C3%A9lienPIERREPhoto/videos

morsch 5y ago
Aurélien is not the main programmer of darktable, as far as I know. I'm not sure there is one main programmer of darktable.
- ttctciyf 5y ago
  Not sure where I got that idea from - thanks for the correction.

benibela 5y ago

It took me perhaps an hour trying to figure out how to save/export my edited photo...

paperd 5y ago

Hi, I'm one of the darktable docs maintainers. We recently rewrote most of the docs. Have you checked them out? I agree that we should provide a more approachable description for a lot of modules. But we can't cover general image processing stuff because the manual would be unmaintainable.