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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

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.
- paperd 5y ago
  In the Collections modules you can easily see your imported images based on what folder they are in.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  I don’t really get why this is a problem for people. I import my files into YYYY-MM-DD dated directories, then import each as a roll. Each roll now corresponds to a directory of photos. I export them such that there is a sub directly with the JPEGs. I don’t use tags or any such feature of darktable itself to organize the photos.
paperd 5y ago
Hi, the phrase"the ui could use some clean up" is inactionable and generally when people say this they mean "be more like light room" which isn't something the project is interested in. If you have some actionable UI/UX improvements, please open an issue. To the best of my knowledge, we currently have zero people who work only on UX/UI issues.
- IgorPartola 5y ago
  Larger and clearer buttons, fewer buttons in favor of more context menus, saner scrolling behavior (don’t change a slider when I want to scroll up/down in a sidebar), and let me control which exposure module is attached to the histogram.
  - Derbasti 5y ago
    The scrolling is a setting.
  - paperd 5y ago
    Button and text sizes are the able. Can you give an example of what you would put in a context menu?
    - spaetzleesser 5y ago
      A simple example would be to select an image or images in the lighttable screen. Pretty much all buttons from the “selected images” section would make sense in a context menu. Right click the image and see applicable actions. Users are used to that.
  - paperd 5y ago
    If you go to Preferences > Misc, you can control which exposure the histogram controls.
- spaetzleesser 5y ago
  One improvement would be to use drop down menus and context menus like other apps do. It’s not about emulating Lightroom but about behaving like most other GUI applications. By using drop down menus a lot of the right side of the lighttable screen could be removed. This section looks very overloaded. Another nice feature would be to resync an imported folder to detect moved and deleted images. Also moving folders/film rolls would be nice. I am pretty ok with the darkroom screen. My main problems are with file handling.

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.
paperd 5y ago
In the Collections modules you can easily see your imported images based on what folder they are in.
IgorPartola 5y ago
I don’t really get why this is a problem for people. I import my files into YYYY-MM-DD dated directories, then import each as a roll. Each roll now corresponds to a directory of photos. I export them such that there is a sub directly with the JPEGs. I don’t use tags or any such feature of darktable itself to organize the photos.

paperd 5y ago

Hi, the phrase"the ui could use some clean up" is inactionable and generally when people say this they mean "be more like light room" which isn't something the project is interested in. If you have some actionable UI/UX improvements, please open an issue. To the best of my knowledge, we currently have zero people who work only on UX/UI issues.

IgorPartola 5y ago
Larger and clearer buttons, fewer buttons in favor of more context menus, saner scrolling behavior (don’t change a slider when I want to scroll up/down in a sidebar), and let me control which exposure module is attached to the histogram.
- Derbasti 5y ago
  The scrolling is a setting.
- paperd 5y ago
  Button and text sizes are the able. Can you give an example of what you would put in a context menu?
  - spaetzleesser 5y ago
    A simple example would be to select an image or images in the lighttable screen. Pretty much all buttons from the “selected images” section would make sense in a context menu. Right click the image and see applicable actions. Users are used to that.
- paperd 5y ago
  If you go to Preferences > Misc, you can control which exposure the histogram controls.
spaetzleesser 5y ago
One improvement would be to use drop down menus and context menus like other apps do. It’s not about emulating Lightroom but about behaving like most other GUI applications. By using drop down menus a lot of the right side of the lighttable screen could be removed. This section looks very overloaded. Another nice feature would be to resync an imported folder to detect moved and deleted images. Also moving folders/film rolls would be nice. I am pretty ok with the darkroom screen. My main problems are with file handling.