Dark Table, Raw Therapee or Lightroom - Which is Better???

Patreon Exclusive Members Videos & Articles: bit.ly/2SwaSZ6
Get DXO Noise Reduction: tidd.ly/46w0FQc
Dark Table, Raw Therapee or Lightroom - Which is Better???
In this video we will take a look at three SIMPLE and EASY workflows in DarkTable, Raw Therappe and Lightroom, using the same image (Cheers Gary!) to try and answer a question I'm always asked BUT struggle to answer when it comes to raw editing..
Time Stamps:
00:00 Why I've been absent!
01:18 What's in this video
03:35 The Lightroom Bit
10:07 The Raw Therapee Bit
15:34 The Dark Table Bit
21:36 Dodge & Burn - Emulating Lightroom Adjustment Brushes in Dark Table with Local Contrast Brush masks.
30:58 Lightroom Finishing
37:30 Conclusions???
==============================================================================
PLEASE help support this channel by liking, subscribing and commenting - it really does help!
Joining my Patreon Channel / andyastbury helps me even further, plus gets you access to an ever-growing amount of exclusive member's only content.
You could donate to the channel by clicking the 'Thanks' button under the video, or by PayPal at [e-mail]
Many thanks to all the people who help out already - seriously, THANK YOU ALL.

[@diousin]

I like ART ("a derivative of RawTherapee"), particularly its Tone Equalizer.

[@gerhardbotha7336]

I like DT because it does the film like behaviour process well, it has regular development work happening, camera meta data etc works and once you understand how it works, its very intuitive I feel

[@adventure-tense6842]

Thanks!

[@mrN3w7]

Yeah, I like Darktable... quite powerful. Just not very beginner friendly, there is a little bit of a learning curve with the software.

[@ccoopify]

thank you for this demo Andy, I like DT best personally for a few reasons but primarily because of cost with LR and the flow of RT seems clunkier. Its great how you can achieve almost the same image using all three if you know how to.

[@1Esteband]

Thank you!

[@AndyAstbury]

You're welcome!

[@CCdePlicque]

I've used all three and have settled on darktable - just a hobbyist :) Would be nice to have the squirrel photo raw to play with if the photographer was willing to share it?

[@patrickwynne6666]

Awesome video, i am very surprise to see the free software Raw Therapee and Darktable doing a very good job compare to lightroom pay monthly. Well done. i will go ahead and use the darktable and get rid of lightroom to save my money. Do you have darktable video for beginner, i like to learn more aBOUT IT

[@jjuarez83]

Ok Andy, so I know you primarily from you RT tutorials. Yes great to use multiple tools but which would you pick between RT and DT? Why? I have primarily stuck with RT because I like the quality I get out of it as a raw processor.

[@furiobisotti8150]

Just evaluating how to leave LR (I paid version 6 and lost all updates, not available to pay a subscription). Your vid helped me a lot, thanks. Darktable is attracting me a lot. Just need to wait an update because my new OM-1 mkII is not yet supported, cannot edit new pics now...

[@TweakMDS]

I've recently learned to love darktable for single file processing, as long as I'm able to spend the time on an image, and do some searching for all non-standard operations. I dislike it for editing down from 100's to 20 images. The workflow is clunky, shortcuts are meh, and it has annoying little things like if you rate an image the same twice, the second time it effectively rejects it (like; rate 3 stars by pressing 3; press 3 again and it removes the rating). I also with the filmstrip worked the same between light and darkroom, and you could just zoom to 100% by double-clicking in lightmode.

[@cacophonix]

I can’t get RT to read Sony raw files (.ARW). Any ideas how to fix this?

[@AndyAstbury]

Off what model Sony? I've not known there to be a problem before.

[@cacophonix]

@@AndyAstbury a7rV

[@benoittissier58]

RT can open only uncompressed RAW files. If you use any type of compressed files, RT can't open them.

[@AndyAstbury]

All Canon raw files are lossless compressed, as are at least 50% of all current mirrorless cameras. Every Sony raw file I've had sent to me over the years will open in RT. Only thing I can think of is the OP is using an older version of RT that needs a camera database update perhaps?

[@benoittissier58]

@@AndyAstbury With Sony cameras you can choose uncompressed, lossless compressed or compressed. There is no difference in the file format name between Sony's compressed and uncompressed. I didn't understand why RT would not see my files. Until I realised it can "see" only the uncompressed ones.

[@longingbydesign]

Does either DT or RT have AI masks, like mask subject, mask sky, mask object, mask persons? Wouldn't want to work without that at all, any more.

[@AndyAstbury]

Hell NO!.............DT and RT are FOSS, so where are they going to get the required money from?

[@joshmcdzz6925]

As they say, photography is dead and thanks to the enablers.. photographers themselves.. These AI tools are set up to replace you.. don't worry in a few years, you might not need to edit your photos anymore.. Sony's coming out with the AI thing in their cameras that will eliminate the need for masking.. On a second note, laziness has another thing that's killed photography.. back in the days of film, everything was delibrate and calculated now people hold Sony ( fighting for auto this and that ).. that's nothing more than a Point and shoot.. guess who point and shoot was made for back then? Consumers.

[@AndyAstbury]

Ohhhhh, never has a truer set of words been written!!! In every way!!! There's another new tech 'bit' that will arrive at some point - VRT, or variable resistance technology. Any photosites on the sensor seeing the brighter parts of a scene will have their impedance increased, so they won't 'blow'. The ramifications of that little algorithm set will remove all the skills of exposure, and the post skills of masking, and totally remove the need for bracketing. The majority of folk up in arms about Ai are 'post digital' photographers, and their reactions are pretty much akin to those of old film farts like me when the dSLR first became popular. The skill required to obtain a high quality image today is a mere fraction of what it used to be when I first started in photography. Laziness - a word so apt to describe a lot of people I come across in photography nowadays. The concept of 'not being able to win until you have lost' is something the majority seem to think they have a God-given right to circumvent - but isn't that true of society as a whole?

[@longingbydesign]

@@AndyAstbury Well, then in most cases FOSS is not an alternative for me in this case.

[@kenyongunnell8585]

You know I use a cheap camera when he says "Noise is creeping in at ONLY ISO 1000" and I cry internally a the fact that my camera has noise at ISO 800 sometimes.

[@ViewportPlaythrough]

i have mine start on 400.. 200 is decent but clearly losses details 😁

[@dummag4126]

ZXX??? Is this English?