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I'm glad Darktable exists. Adobe letting Lightroom "Classic" sit and rot for years, along with increasing the price substantially has really opened the market

I'm glad Darktable exists. Adobe letting Lightroom "Classic" sit and rot for years, along with increasing the price substantially has really opened the market up to competition. I'm currently using PhotoLab 4, but that's mostly because workflow wise it is "good enough" while offering killer features like DeepPrime and ClearView+ (that neither Lightroom Classic nor Darktable have an answer to yet). Long term though I suspect Darktable will be the final victor if they can find a consistent group of contributors. The biggest limitation right now is lack of proprietary plugin support, for example if they had PureRaw Plugin support I could use Darktable instead of PhotoLab 4 today.

omoikane 5y ago
I am also on PhotoLab and have been very happy with it, the killer features for me are the spot removal tool and the perpetual license model. Darktable would have been able to satisfy both of those features, but when I tried it years ago, I had to go back to the menu to select the tool for each spot I wanted to remove and it was just not workable. Darktable had many interface annoyances of this sort and I am not sure if it has improved since.
jseliger 5y ago
I'm using Capture One—I tried darktable (I think they like the "no capital d"), but on MacOS it is a nonstarter, or was when I attempted it.
Youden 5y ago
I've just recently been combining Photolab with Darktable. DeepPRIME really is a killer feature. It produces images that are basically noise-free without turning the whole image into a smooth featureless blob. But I also really like Darktable's Filmic RGB module and colour management (you can output P3 images and actually make use of the wide gamut displays that nearly every modern device has). So I've taken to this process: - Cull my images and putting everything but the ones that make the cut into a "Rejected" folder. I used FastRawViewer at first but I've warmed to Digikam. - Run DeepPRIME and DxO's optical corrections with Photolab and export a DNG. - Do final adjustments and exports in Darktable. Basically, Photolab allows me to use Darktable but skip Lensfun (which others have mentioned is a bit of a weak point in Darktable) and push my shadows as far as I want without noise.

omoikane 5y ago

I am also on PhotoLab and have been very happy with it, the killer features for me are the spot removal tool and the perpetual license model. Darktable would have been able to satisfy both of those features, but when I tried it years ago, I had to go back to the menu to select the tool for each spot I wanted to remove and it was just not workable. Darktable had many interface annoyances of this sort and I am not sure if it has improved since.

jseliger 5y ago

I'm using Capture One—I tried darktable (I think they like the "no capital d"), but on MacOS it is a nonstarter, or was when I attempted it.

Youden 5y ago

I've just recently been combining Photolab with Darktable. DeepPRIME really is a killer feature. It produces images that are basically noise-free without turning the whole image into a smooth featureless blob. But I also really like Darktable's Filmic RGB module and colour management (you can output P3 images and actually make use of the wide gamut displays that nearly every modern device has). So I've taken to this process: - Cull my images and putting everything but the ones that make the cut into a "Rejected" folder. I used FastRawViewer at first but I've warmed to Digikam. - Run DeepPRIME and DxO's optical corrections with Photolab and export a DNG. - Do final adjustments and exports in Darktable. Basically, Photolab allows me to use Darktable but skip Lensfun (which others have mentioned is a bit of a weak point in Darktable) and push my shadows as far as I want without noise.