![]() ![]() It takes a great deal of experimentation, trial and error, and online searching to figure out all the tools at your disposal. The sheer level of complexity can also be a significant detriment. Here, the Lighttable interface is unusable until all the thumbnails can be properly re-loaded by the program. Glitches like this show up far more than I’d prefer. ![]() Odd interface quirks abound, like truncated slider names and weird thumbnail resizing when switching in and out of the Lighttable mode. Implementing edits is slow, and drawing custom masks can be a patience-draining exercise. And while there is no doubt that Darktable can handle any image editing tasks you throw at it, including more advanced options such as tethered shooting, slideshows, and printing, there are a host of drawbacks, as well.Īs much as I want to like Darktable, I just can’t get around its overall sluggishness and lack of polish. This article is not meant to be a review of Darktable, but rather a tool to help you decide if this program is right for you. Proceed with cautionĪt this point, you might be ready to cancel all your editing software subscriptions and jump on the Darktable bandwagon.īut before you take the leap, I need to offer a few words of caution. There is also no mobile support, meaning photographers who rely on tablets or phones as essential components of their editing workflow will be left out in the cold. Drawing a mask, moving a slider, or even cropping an image often involves precious seconds of wait time, which can really add up when going through hundreds of images. Performing many of the editing maneuvers is an exercise in patience, even on a newer computer. You can create masks of all shapes and sizes in Darktable, which are useful for applying edits in specific image locations.Īgain, I need to temper expectations. For frugal photographers, it would be difficult not to recommend Darktable, and for everyone else, it just helps to have some patience. I am still kind of amazed that all these features are in a free program that continues to be actively developed. While speed is important, it’s not everything, and many quibbles with Darktable are mitigated by its price.Īfter all, despite my issues with Darktable’s user interface and lack of polish, it’s impossible to overlook the cost. That’s not necessarily the only peg to hang your editing hat on, though. The latter will get the job done, but the former will do it way faster. ![]() Not that Lightroom and Capture One are speed demons – but comparing them to Darktable is like comparing a Ferrari to a Toyota Corolla. ![]() Scrolling through images, selecting pictures, editing metadata information, and other simple operations take far longer than other programs. My biggest issue with Darktable is evident just from using the Lighttable module: overall responsiveness is not great. While things seem great up to this point, I do need to temper your expectations a bit. View the video below and learn how to handle them like a pro.You can customize many different elements of the export process. That said, I think I saw somewhere that the ability to store parametric masks may come at a later date.īut for now it is all about your circles, ellipses, patches, brushes and gradients. These are always dependent on current pixel values, so they can only be used when and where they are made. It is important to keep in mind that the Mask Manager can not handle parametric masks. Starting to use this will open up many new possibilities for your drawn masks. Now take a look at the left side of the screen and you’ll find the Mask Manager. You see the drawn masks in the different modules, but there’s a limit to what you can do with them. When you have just started out with Darktable it may not be that obvious. The masks can even be named, so you can easily see which is which. They can also be reused in other modules, and organized in different ways. These can be combined in a number of ways, more than you can accomplish directly in the module where you make them. When making local adjustments in Darktable, one of the ways to isolate a part of an image is to use drawn masks. ![]()
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