Make your photos POP with ONE CLICK using DARKTABLE STYLES

In this Darktable Tutorial, I’ll show you how to create styles/presets to rasterize your Darktable workflow into one click, saving significant amounts of time. Darktable’s styles/presets are a huge benefit of Darktable vs Lightroom. I will also make finishing touches and edit each photograph.
My photography website:
nicklongphotography.com/
Check my video with a comprehensive tutorial on my workflow:
• I Edit YOUR Photos in ...
Check out my video on Darktable vs Lightroom (with workflow):
• Is DARKTABLE Secretly ...
00:00 - Intro
01:40 - Crafting a Workflow Into a Style
06:50 - Creating the Style
07:57 - Applying the Style to Snowy Dear
08:46 - Applying Style to Sunset Blue Sky
10:06 - Applying the Style to Deer with Red Fence
13:31 - Outro

[@DominikMarczuk]

One additional use case for styles that might be worth mentioning: you can auto-apply them during export. For example, create a style that adds a watermark, use the export option to apply that style and save it as a preset. Boom, you now have a consistent export preset for, say, watermarked Instagram pics. I use this all the time.

[@lefixkoch6272]

Thank you very much. You are doing the best DT content. For me the editing still is overwhelming, because there seemingly endless ways to do something. So this helps a lot.

[@deepskypics]

Hey thanks mate!! This is quite the comment. I noticed that there was a gap in the content in taking all this knowledge and putting together into a cohesive workflow, so my intention has been to fill that gap

[@jasondotj]

Thank you. I like how your videos are to the point. Other videos on DT are anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.

[@deepskypics]

Thank you mate! I really try and put a lot of thought into making my videos concise and hopefully easy to understand as well.

[@soundofmusic0613]

Cool! Thank you so much for this useful and time-saving workflow!😍

[@deepskypics]

You are very welcome!!

[@robscott9312]

Great Video thanks Nick

[@deepskypics]

@@robscott9312 You are very welcome sir! Thanks for commenting

[@Jansonsma]

I like your Darktable video's. Thanks! Would like to see more of your edditing work.

[@deepskypics]

Thanks mate! Really appreciate the kind words. More coming up.

[@mbiios1044]

New on DarkTable, thx for the video it help a lot for Sport Photographer

[@signedelacroix7213]

I like the POWERFUL gesture.

[@deepskypics]

Thank you! It is a powerful tool!

[@charliehubbard4073]

Like button booped, Nick. Thanks for this! Very useful.

[@deepskypics]

You are very welcome!! And thank you for watching & commenting!

[@ayoubthegreat]

Awesome way to speed up the workflow. Thank you

[@deepskypics]

You are very welcome! Thanks for watching & commenting.

[@hansgouda8593]

Very educational, thank you!

[@deepskypics]

You are very welcome! Thanks for watching and commenting.

[@tytis2060]

Good job

[@deepskypics]

Thanks mate! Appreciate the kind words

[@EvansKabubu-dc1xx]

😅😅 Lets detonate our Lightroom subscriptions. The style option seems like a proper time saver.

[@deepskypics]

Mega time saver! Haha figured the community would think that’s funny.

[@RasmusDK]

Thanks for the video, any chance you can share a style for normal photos and one for B&W?

[@triplewinlin5576]

Very helpful information as always! You crack me up with your gestures but they really add emphasis : )

[@deepskypics]

Hey thanks mate!! Awkward much better than boring on YT haha.

[@nwrth]

The color equalizer module looks nice. :-) I've seen several of your videos now, and I like the style, so you've got a new subscriber. Here are a couple of things I've noticed though, and you may be able to explain them to me: 1) You use the diffuse and sharpen module a lot pretty much at the beginning of the workflows you demonstrate. But this module is computationally very heavy, and users with slower computers will struggle, as the rest of the workflow gets much slower. Maybe that would be nice to take into account, or at least mention. 2) You're putting a scene-referred workflow module after Sigmoid. Why? You can introduce clipping to your image, and I haven't seen you checking for that. 🙂 Cheers! 🍻

[@lxhk3595]

I liked that slapstick insert. 😂 Seriously, nice tipps again that would have saved me hours a year or so ago. We have almost the same workflow. But I still struggle with finding the best parameters to fit best in average. Will try yours definitely. Looking forward to more content. Nice pictures btw.

[@deepskypics]

Hahaha! I figured the viewers would like that. It was fun recording that. Saves huge amounts of time. It’s taken be quite some time too to find a best average fit. The parameters here are working for me well. I’d say it leans slightly on the less side, where I’m more likely to add contrast/saturation etc

[@20DYNAMITE06]

Boop'd

[@jasonwalton9169]

Thanks for the video! Is there a way to bulk remove the framing on many photos once I have edited and want to export?

[@DominikMarczuk]

I find that styles in darktable tend to produce odd results if not used correctly. Repeated edits in the history stack, weird output colours, exposure issues, that sort of things. The styles' learning curve is steeper compared to Lightroom. Therefore it's vital to put in some effort and practice to avoid ending up with a "starting point" that's completely unusable. Also, for best results, I prefer to apply styles to correctly exposed photos (ie, I first set the exposure and apply the style afterwards). It's kind of important for high key/low key styles.

[@deepskypics]

I have a few thoughts for you mate. Is it possible you have some duplicate or conflicting modules when style is applied? Like base modules like white balance or color calibration? Or could the style be conflicting with the default settings of your processing tab (sigmoid/filmic)? I’ve experienced strange effects when setting up my style due to these factors. Hope this will is helpful.

[@DominikMarczuk]

@@deepskypics Even in your video, after applying the style, you end up with two Sigmoid edits in your history. So that's one thing (and admittedly, it's enough to compress history to get rid of it, so not a big deal). The other thing is figuring out all the append/replace/keep/whatever (sorry, I don't have darktable open right now to check the exact labels) checkbox combinations. When learning about styles for the first time, I needed to fiddle around with them a bit to understand how things work and what the best settings were.

[@angelogrieco]

Is it possible that my CPU goes 950% while editing and exporting (and export takes forever)? MACBOOK Pro 2,6 GHz Intel Core i7 6 core AMD Radeon Pro 5300M 4 GB Intel UHD Graphics 630 1536 MB 32 GB 2667 MHz DDR4 I think is the sharpening and the denoise modules.

[@deepskypics]

I do know from my experience that for whatever reason, exporting seems to be slower than other programs like LR. Diffuse or Sharpen is a very processing intensive module. If your experiencing slowness with it, Id recommend making DoS one of the last steps you do because it has to recalculate every time you change something else, pushing your CPU harder. I have a desktop with a big brick of a graphics card and cooled processor, which I take for granted sometimes. I think I should have clarified that in my tutorials haha 😆

[@lxhk3595]

Btw, can you make a video maybe about your certainly efficient workflow to view and select your pictures? Just came back from a trip to Sicily with a ton of pictures which condensing to a selection of 200 took me way too much time. Maybe you have good tips.

[@deepskypics]

That’s is not a bad idea! I can’t promise it’s more efficient than yours. I normally: 1) import photos I want into a new roll - often just do em all because the import screen thumbnails are too small haha 2) I use the stars ⭐️ feature sometimes to ID and filter photos I really like 3) I move best photos into a new DT folder 4) Delete the excess so it doesn’t block up my drive

[@lxhk3595]

@@deepskypics thanks. The real time eater seems the comparison in series of pictures. I'm usually only keeping 2..4 photos per scene, but tend to shoot spray and pray in difficult situations. I'm just too lazy to work into the features for that, because it's not as thrilling as learning color grading or manage contrast.

[@yuriyt3998]

why do you prefer the local contrast from "diffuse or sharpen" as opposed to the "local contrast" module?

[@deepskypics]

Great question! I like the way it deals with color - saturation. It adds a taste of color contrast. It doesn’t pull beck the saturation like the local contrast module does and it looks beautiful. I also don’t feel the need to fiddle with it, just adjust strength via iterations. Always looks great as is to me. Same with DoS - lens deblur. Just works great in all photos.

[@yuriyt3998]

@@deepskypics thanks, been trying lens deblur lately since i saw this vid. seems to do a nice job, maybe even better than the sharpen setting on "contrast equalizer" that i've been using.

[@deepskypics]

@@yuriyt3998 Ya! It’s amazing! I seems to be able to recover sharpness quite beautifully in a wide variety of conditions