darktable ep 023 - Snapshots, the History Stack, and Styles

[@manuelmatias3772]

I've already told you I love your videos, but I think it's only fair to say it once more. I don't usually play around with the history stack and that's why I haven't got myself caught in that trap *yet*, so this video serves a double purpose for me: It helps me to get more juice out of darktable's modules and it also prevents me from falling into that very frustrating trap. Also, I find that your videos on one hand and darktable's manual on the other are two vastly different ways of learning about darktable's modules, and they complement each other fantastically.

[@audio2u]

Thanks for the kind words! 😊

[@talende]

soooo helpful. Didn't have the guts to experiment with the snapshot feature myself as it seemed to do nothing like it does in Lightroom when I initially tried it. I'm so glad I took the time to get your explanation so I saved myself from a couple of epic mistakes...!!

[@audio2u]

Glad it helped!

[@thebobster2024]

I've been caught in the trap a couple of times..... thanks for showing how I can stay away from the trap in the future.

[@stephenward5133]

Your videos are really helpful. Your comment about the history stack at about 11 mins was brilliant because I didn’t know how to undo a load of tangle I had got myself in trying new stuff out.

[@audio2u]

Glad it was helpful! 😃

[@bernym4047]

I have a friend who does stacked astro images. Styles will be an incredibly powerful tool for him. Thank you.

[@audio2u]

No worries! :)

[@petercolley3561]

Hi Bruce. I'm on EP23 and climbing! Fantastic tutorials, thank you.

[@audio2u]

Glad your finding them useful. Cheers.

[@pettere8429]

It may be worth mentioning that snapshots are also carried over between images, i.e. if I take a snapshot of pic a and then go to pic b the snapshot of pic a is still in the list. Can be useful for comparing pictures, I have used it while culling my shots after a shoot.

[@audio2u]

Good to know! Cheers!

[@SebastianMarelli]

That Snapshot Trap got me quiet a few times. Would be great to have an option to get the history back. Thanks for the Vid

[@audio2u]

Yes, that would be helpful!

[@audio2u]

Yep, it would!

[@foxus]

Hello, thanks for this instructive video. I actually found this snapshot feature very useful but also a bit confusing, precisely because it takes a bitmap snapshot off of your current history stack. I was first thinking that it was a bug to finally understand why it was like so. Another example, if you press tab to open your image in 'full' view, the result is weird because it's comparing a snapshot at a specific size, with the way bigger dynamic image, which is a bit unpractical. I went to the code repository of the project and opened an issue to describe the problem. They don't consider it as bug because it was decided to behave like this during development. Obviously, it has undesirable side effects but they told me that they think about implementing real dynamic snapshots in future versions. This will hopefully solve all these side effects issues :-)

[@audio2u]

Yeah, it's one of the few areas where I preferred the Lightroom interpretation.

[@antipodesman]

I wonder if you may have confused some viewers regarding the "compress history stack" feature. In order to "create a minimal history stack" it is necessary to highlight the top item in the history stack. If the highlight is on any lower item in the stack, all modules above the highlight will be deleted. I don't think you emphasized that point. Otherwise a very good video as are the rest of your Darktable tutorials. Thank you.

[@audio2u]

Thanks for that. Good point. Always the curse once you've spent long enough with a piece of software. Easy to forget the things that will trip up the new users.

[@joaovtaveira]

9:27 if you press "compress history stack" in this moment, you will clean all states above it.

[@soumyakundu5341]

Excellent tutorial. Very helpful. Cleared a lot of confusions especially because snapshots work very different in lightroom. When you duplicate a file, is there any way to rename them - say version 1, version 2, BW version? Thanks in advance.

[@audio2u]

That video is very old now, and things have changed with the release of v4.8. You can now restore a snapshot to the active history state, which is awesome. And yes, in darkroom view, there is a module on the left side called 'duplicate manager', and in there, you can name each version of an image you have.

[@joaovtaveira]

11:08 I learnt that the hard way.

[@yeinierferras2721]

If you press Ctrl + Z at least 3 times you can recover lost modules.

[@audio2u]

Interesting. I'll have to try that.

[@kriticol3052]

everytime i hit “original” all my modules keep resetting to how it was to the beginning, please help!!

[@audio2u]

Sorry, no idea.

[@kriticol3052]

Bruce Williams Photography like for example, i’m wanna do a before and after comparison of my edited picture. i click screenshot on the recent module i used (example; 17 vibrance), then i go to history, click on “1 original” and all recent modules i used are gone.

[@audio2u]

You mean they completely disappear from your History module (left hand side of darkroom view)?

[@kriticol3052]

Bruce Williams Photography yes exactly!, is there a way to stop making the modules go away when i click “1 original”?

[@audio2u]

That sounds like a bug. I tried it on my system and that did not happen. Nor should it. I would suggest opening a bug report on the github page.

[@reesewilson]

I know this video was taken a while ago, but as with other snapshot systems, the order you showed here is a bit backwards. Normally you'd go back in the history panel and take a snapshot of a previous state, then roll forward and compare to the current state. It doesn't make sense to take a snapshot of the most recent history state and then roll back, especially if you're planning on rolling forwards again. Same point as you were making, just a different way of thinking about it.

[@audio2u]

Depends on what you understand about darktable's snapshot feature. It is not like a snapshot in Lightroom. It simply captures a bitmap screen shot. It is not a snapshot of the history stack.

[@reesewilson]

@@audio2u I see. I never used Lightroom's snapshots, I was thinking more about databases and other software things. Comparing to Lightroom's functionality does seem like a better way to go for this audience

[@FirenikoTube]

i can set Style to several images, but if i wan to try other one then styles became union. So need to reset hystory befor apply new style. May be do you know other path?

[@audio2u]

That's a good point. I'm going to do a follow-up to this video, because there was a couple of things I should have covered, but didn't... and this is one of them! You do need to reset the history stack before applying a new style. Again, probably a good case for the 'duplicate' xmp file workflow. :)

[@SteffenOschatz]

Shortcut hint to styles: you just can press ctrl-c to copy the history stack and apply with ctrl-v on any other

[@KevinSaruwatari]

Just saw Bruce's discussion on this in EP24. For a single image, you need to reset the stack before applying a new style. If you accidentally apply one style over another style and do it to several (or many images): 1) go to the first image and reset your history stack 2) apply only the style you want 3) go to the lighttable and open the history stack module on the right side 4) select the image you just applied the single style to and select "copy all" 5) for mode select "overwrite" (defaults to append I believe) 6) select the images with dual styles applied and pick paste or paste all This wipes out the stack and put in only what you want. I use paste all when I don't have things like cropping or orientation etc. It also works on fresh images when you want to wipe out any default modules. Can be a time saver if you change your mind about styles too.

[@JakubMareda]

I came to this video googling how to restore the snapshot. This is a trap indeed, it's 100% natural to assume that the history is backed up with the snapshot. Thanks for explaining. But I think this feature should be changed... :( All my changes lost and judging from the comments, I'm not alone.

[@audio2u]

The best way to make that happen would be to lodge a feature request through github.