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Sure, but that doesn't mean the UX is good. "This is meaningful to videographers and colorists" is a not a great defense of UX for an app that is targeted towar

Sure, but that doesn't mean the UX is good. "This is meaningful to videographers and colorists" is a not a great defense of UX for an app that is targeted towards photographers, not videographers or colorists. Lightroom and Capture One (and heck, even Affinity Photo), make common photography tasks like highlight recovery easily accessed with a single slider. Sure, the Darktable UI may be "meaningful to colorists", but that doesn't necessarily result in a good UX for the main people that are likely to want to use it.

orbital-decay 4y ago
I think UX and terminology are two different points actually - I agree UI/UX can be clunky overall. > "This is meaningful to videographers and colorists" is a not a great defense of UX for an app that is targeted towards photographers, not videographers or colorists. I think you underestimate the amount of photographers who know the fundamentals, as well as those who are familiar with related fields. After getting better in painting, I now resent tools like Lightroom which obscure everything behind some magic. I almost always see what I want from the photo, and I need a specific result. Photography tools are generally inconsistent, and most are light years behind video tools in getting predictable results. I want pastel colors in Lightroom and I know exactly what makes them; it's a single operation. Yet in Lightroom and Photoshop it needs multiple tweaks which feel like a workaround. The saturation in photo software can mean arbitrary things except being an actual axis in the color space. It can use several intermediate curves without telling you, making you fiddle with the sliders yet still not get the result you want. And so on. I mean, I tried Luminar AI recently, and it has a slider called Punch; what the hell does it do exactly?! There's a reason people are using things like Firegrade for Photoshop. Software like RT/ART and Darktable also does what it says on the tin and nothing more, this is a niche they fill, and I'm glad they exist. (although I'll admit RT still looks like an explosion of sliders to me, despite the fact I know what they are for)

orbital-decay 4y ago

I think UX and terminology are two different points actually - I agree UI/UX can be clunky overall. > "This is meaningful to videographers and colorists" is a not a great defense of UX for an app that is targeted towards photographers, not videographers or colorists. I think you underestimate the amount of photographers who know the fundamentals, as well as those who are familiar with related fields. After getting better in painting, I now resent tools like Lightroom which obscure everything behind some magic. I almost always see what I want from the photo, and I need a specific result. Photography tools are generally inconsistent, and most are light years behind video tools in getting predictable results. I want pastel colors in Lightroom and I know exactly what makes them; it's a single operation. Yet in Lightroom and Photoshop it needs multiple tweaks which feel like a workaround. The saturation in photo software can mean arbitrary things except being an actual axis in the color space. It can use several intermediate curves without telling you, making you fiddle with the sliders yet still not get the result you want. And so on. I mean, I tried Luminar AI recently, and it has a slider called Punch; what the hell does it do exactly?! There's a reason people are using things like Firegrade for Photoshop. Software like RT/ART and Darktable also does what it says on the tin and nothing more, this is a niche they fill, and I'm glad they exist. (although I'll admit RT still looks like an explosion of sliders to me, despite the fact I know what they are for)