My First Time Using Darktable to Edit Photos - Wow!

In this post-processing video I'm trying out Darktable RAW image editor. I'm editing a photograph from start to finish and talking about the all key features of this impressive photo editing app.
00:00 Intro
00:19 What is Darktable?
00:56 The Darktable interface
01:37 Editing a RAW image in Darkroom
01:58 Darktable Modules
02:27 Filmic RGB
03:14 White balance and tint
04:10 Haze removal
04:47 Shadows and highlights
05:35 Graduated density
08:38 Color balance RGB
09:21 Color zones
10:19 Split toning
11:22 Retouch module
13:10 Vignetting
14:16 Previewing the image
15:06 The final image
15:26 Conclusion
17:32 Outro

[@travellingjournalist966]

What I love about the masking aspect is if you mask the shadows on say a sunset and you have several scenes it doesn’t matter if they are horizontal or portrait or even if you’ve changed viewpoint it will just affect the shadows in each scene without adding or subtracting

[@sussexandy9933]

A steep learning curve but well worth persevering with, a great many tutorials available from the technical side (aurelian) or a user perspective (Bruce Williams). Adobe subscriptions are great for pro photographers who can claim as an expense but for hobbyists I believe way too dear. All we need now is for the Gimp team to finish 3.0 and then say goodbye to Photoshop. Darktable is the natural replacement for Lightroom.

[@biking-places]

something i really like about watching darktable tutorials is everyone uses different modules for similar effects. thanks for making this one, hope to see more.

[@Robert-Bishop]

I don't want to call this a tutorial, more of a first impressions video. I have realised since making the video just how comprehensive DarkTable's features are, and it clearly takes a lot of dedicated use to fully understand it. But as you point out, it's the results that matter and how you use the tools can be a personal journey. Many thanks for watching. 😊

[@rebelwriteruk]

I've been using DT for around 5 years now, the software has improved a lot during that time. I was a one time LR user, great software but is platform dependent, I decided to switch to linux for a plethora of reasons but was reluctant because of LR being unavailable. That all changed when I discovered DT, I'm now fully Linux on all my devices. I'm always interested in reviews of my software of choice, you never know what you may learn. I feel your review shows whats possible with DT, but as you are probably aware it offers so much more, but the learning curve can be steep for some people, but worth the trouble. 2 things I'll point out for your information, auto adjustments are possible, in the white balance and filmic modules, just click the eye droppers and adjust from the result. The tone equalizer module is also a better alternative to the shadow and highlight module it offers so much more control if used correctly. Clarity can be boosted with the Contrast Equaliser or Local Contrast modules. Like yourself I started by applying my knowledge of LR to DT and at times struggled to get the effect I was after. But over time it becomes easier. Thanks for sharing BTW I hope your journey with DT will be as enjoyable as my own.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for the tips, I'll try them out. Hoping to make more Darktable videos once I've got to grips with it a bit more. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@gerhardbotha7336]

Great contribution! I really enjoy DT because it forced me to learn more about raw processing, colour science, tonality, contrast, etc. In LR, my experience was to “edit” a raw image. I always felt like I am putting lipstick on a pig somehow. In DT, I find I analyse the data captured more thoroughly, and then extract and enhance what I feel will deliver the image I am after. Its a different experience altogether. I get better results and you know when it is right because you get there without having to do 10000 different actions you paint in etc. I really love it. Use scene-referred modules for the most part, learn about how the pipeline works and get creative. Thank you creators and contributors of DT!

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks - I realised while making the video that there's a lot more to learn! I keep going back to it here and there and find it a really great bit of software, so I'm hoping to do another video once I've become a bit more familiar with it. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@tonymckeage1028]

Thanks Robert, I think you can be the official crash test dummy for the dirth of photo processing options! I'm very happy with camera raw! and it' occupies my brain cells more than enough, thanks again mate

[@Robert-Bishop]

Camera RAW is still one that I never seem to get around to. Perhaps because it's so similar to Lightroom. If it's working for you Tony, then no need to fix, I suppose. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@yaffulwoodpeckerpresents7784]

An excellent tutorial. Thank you.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Glad it was useful. Thanks for watching. ☺️

[@archaja]

Work with DT since years. It´s great. And there is also an absolutely free alternative to photoshop: it´s GIMP. You can do the same as in Photoshop, maybe not as comfortable as there, but hey, it´s completely free and you can´t say the same about Adobe products ;) One hint: you tried to do the white blance very slightly and it´s difficult with the slider. Use right click and you can do it much more smooth.

[@Robert-Bishop]

I was very new to DT when I made this and have learnt a lot since then. Thanks for the tip, that sounds really useful. I will have to make a GIMP video at some point. Cheers for watching. 😊

[@johncoombes6231]

Once again very interesting video Robert, I will give Darktable image editor a try it looks very good for a free download. But I have spent a lot of time studying Lightroom and Photoshop so for now I will probably stay with LRC package. Keep up the good work.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks John. A lot of Darktable is very similar to Lightroom. Perhaps one of the main differences is the way selective masks work. I'll most likely cover that in a future video.

[@sivakumarvadival]

I have no problems taking great photos. But I really suck at editing. But I’m inspired by your videos and going to give it another try.

[@JulesMoyaert_photo]

Thank you!

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for watching. 😊

[@AndrewHamiltonPhotography]

Ha ha I love the technical term “pop” Robert ! I think I’m all seriousness that’s what I try to achieve on my edits - I’m sure I’ve mentioned it before but the dreaded dust spots can be identified by whacking (another technical term 😂) the dehaze slider up. Anyway another great review and a very capable tool indeed. For free it’s a great choice looking at the comparison to LR 👍🏻

[@Robert-Bishop]

Cheers Andrew. Yeah, the dehaze trick is really useful. There's also a check box you can tick when using the healing brush that shows dust spots. I should probably just clean my sensor more often though! 😄 I haven't found something similar in Darktable yet though, so perhaps the haze removal module will work in a similar fashion for revealing the spots. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@Urbexy]

Great review. I have been using Darktable for several years and I'm very happy with it. One thing I really like is the integration between Gimp and Darktable. Gimp does not have any raw file capabilities. When you open a raw using gimp, it will open Darktable (if installed) then when you close Darktable it opens the file in Gimp with your edits preserved. I tend to use Darktable for the raw edits and then use Gimp for retouching. You mentioned using masks in DT... The parametric mask in the exposure module is brilliant. Thank you for reviewing an opensource alternative. :-)

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks. Gimp is another application I need to try out too. If we can just get open source equivalents of Illustrator, XD, InDesign, Premiere and After Effects I can ditch Adobe for good! 😁

[@robertleeimages]

I've just started using gimp for combining foreground images with a sequator stacked sky image but all my editing is currently done in Canon DPP4, but now I've got a handle on layers to produce the final image in gimp I'm going to get darktable for editing. For 4 yrs I've resisted PS/LR because of the yearly sub, and darktable looks quite capable of giving equal results as them and by looks far better than i get from DPP4

[@GaryParris]

@@Robert-Bishop Inkscape is as good as illustrator, Blender and video editing with the blackmagic software is your go to!

[@buckybucky8596]

There are 'raw' image plugins for GIMP.

[@JHuffPhoto]

Nice video. I have dabbled in darktable for several years but kept using LR. Last summer I switched completely over to darktable and for my use case it is pretty darn good. It has a very steep learning curve and it is easy to get the edits completely out of control and end up with something that looks horrible. I would encourage you to look at the series by Bruce Williams about darktable. I think he has around 120 videos in all. I learned about a lot of features that I didn't understand or didn't know were in the software. As far as the speed.....well yet it is not as responsive as LR but on my M1 Mac Mini it does a respectable job (much faster and more responsive than your demo). So it is somewhat hardware dependent. I have heard that it performs really good on Linux based systems.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks John - I'll check out those videos. I haven't tried the software on my laptop yet and that has the M1 chip, so might give that a go. 😊

[@badger67]

​@@Robert-Bishop can I mention RawTherapee as a free Open Source programme which is far easier to use than Darktable. You may just want to have a look at Krita too.Thanks for the video. Just subscribed 👍

[@Robert-Bishop]

@@badger67 Thanks, I've heard of RawTherapee but not had chance to try it yet. I'll check it out, as well as Krita. Thanks for the sub. 😊

[@marizuokereke7347]

Velvia is a slide film from Fuji that produces heavily saturated images. It was a favourite of landscape photographers.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for the info. 😊

[@martyjwalker]

1. I reckon there are so many folks with serious UI skills that could have a ball making this interface more inviting. Look at blender. If they can so can darktable. 2. I really wish you could work straight off a directory without importing. It makes working on multiple PCs a pain. This is one of the reasons I left LR many years ago.

[@leadfootnick4x4]

Good video and have a Good DAY

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks very much, you too. 😊

[@kimsuphan]

Great review Robert. Your approach is very Lightroom like. As I understand it, Darktable is structured about a pipeline modules based on a scene referred process with Filmic at the end converting image data to something that looks good on a screen . For example the White Balance module and color calibration are about getting the white balance correct(the whites in the image actually look white), not to adjust the colors to our liking. Modules like Filmic RGB are where you do your color grading.

[@Robert-Bishop]

More of a first impressions than a review, Kim. Definitely a lot to learn. Thanks for watching and sharing the tips. 😊

[@jthomas4859]

Direct access to the manual page for a control: Click the "?" button at the top right of the image box, then click the control title line. It launches the user manual page for that control. I use this quite often.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for the tip. 😊

[@olivierparlephoto]

Hi Robert, When you develop using Darktable, you have to choose if you want to develop scene oriented or display oriented. The default interface doesn't show you a difference in workflow. This is a reason why you get so many modules in darkroom, you might be or not familiar with. In short, display oriented development will use all data from your photo after it has been converted for your display. This was historically the default way to work on images. Scene oriented development will use all data before the conversion. And the conversion module are named filmic and sigmoid. Know that when a photo is process, it is passed from one module to another from the most lowest module up to the highest one in the list. FIlmic and sidmoid are in the middle. When working with RAW file, Filmic will be switched on by default. You might want to swap with sigmoid instead (this is a new module with dt 4.2). With jpeg, filmic is switched off as jpeg are already made for display. Module made for scene oriented development are place below filmic / sigmoid in the right column. Display oriented modules are all above filmic /sigmoid . That's easy to find out :) In my workflow, I only use module below filmic / sigmoid, and created my own menu and tab with them. Than way I only have a handful of module to deal with (about 10 in all). I could redirect you to some video I did about it, but they are in french.

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for the detailed response Olivier. Definitely a lot to learn - but this makes sense. I think I'd struggle with everyone explained in French, but there seems to be a lot of videos out there, so should help me to improve. 😊

[@olivierparlephoto]

@@Robert-Bishop Yes there are a lot of video explaining how it woirk. Not a lot are explaining the basics of darktable and these to side of Scene vs Display oriented worfklow and which to use or not :) Feel free to ping me if you ned some help discovering. I'm ok with english ;)

[@Robert-Bishop]

@@olivierparlephoto Thanks. 😊

[@AndrewWaltonPhotography]

I did look at Dark Table, but as I get access to creative suite through work (the only perk) ;) , it's surplus to requirements at the moment. If I was having to pay for my own software, I would be using this software.

[@Robert-Bishop]

That's a nice perk to have Andrew. The Adobe software is great - it's just so expensive. It's amazing that Darktable is just as capable and costs nothing. I just need equivalent alternatives to all the other Adobe applications now! 😁

[@paganphil100]

Which version of DT are you using here? I have version 4.2 and I can't find some of the modules/controls that you are using (e.g. "Technical").

[@Robert-Bishop]

I have 4.2 as well, for an Intel based Mac. Is it perhaps something to do with the preferences you have selected?

[@StevensonGphotos]

It depends a bit on what module layout preset you have selected - in the drop down menu at the top right of all the processing modules. I think "scene-referred" has most of them available - not sure as I have a customized layout.

[@StevensonGphotos]

Good job👍 Glad you like dt... it's my favorite! Re turning all adjustments off to see the difference, you can't exactly do that - sort of. What you can do is use the snapshot feature. Take a snapshot before you start editing, or at any point by going back in the history like you did, then click on the snapshot. You get a split screen that can be moved, and can be turned on or off at any time. You can also take a snapshot on one picture, then use that as you edit another image if you need a comparison. There's a few other tips I'm tempted to point out, but I don't want to be a nuisance...😃 Thanks!

[@Robert-Bishop]

Great tips, thank you. Please share as many as you like. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@a7xcss]

...the image (version) on the screen (monitor behind you at the end) seems to me to look way better..!!

[@digitalspecter]

If you have a decent graphics card that supports OpenCL turning it on in the processing settings will make operations quite a bit faster :)

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks for the info, I'll try that. 😊

[@littleman787]

Great stuff - tempted to switch but the huge amount of content/tutorials for LrC makes me hesitant to switch

[@Robert-Bishop]

Thanks. Yes, there's certainly more out there for Lightroom. Plenty of videos on Darktable too though. I'll probably make some more in the future. Thanks for watching. 😊

[@tompatton2086]

I would imagine you've learned quite a bit more about Darktable since making this video but I'm surprised you didn't notice how the histogram is shifted way to the left leaving the image very dark. Maybe that's the look you were after?

[@Robert-Bishop]

Yeah, it's a misconception that all images should have a histogram that is evenly spread. Too many people use that as a target to aim for, when infact the histogram is just a measurement tool to indicate the levels in an image. Some images have lots of dark areas and the histogram will be to the left and some have lots of light areas and it will be to the right. The most important thing to watch out for, is that nothing is clipping outside of the histogram.

[@GaryParris]

Darktable is much better han Lightroom that i used to use in conjunction with Photoshop, i will never go back to Adobe! Darktable, GIMP, Krita, Inkscape, Blender repalce all my needs for a number of years now! my whole Raw library of well over 100000+ is DT driven now, the latest versions of DT have much more speed and i believe a couple of AI enhanced parts for healing, but overall it's phenominal software!

[@Robert-Bishop]

To play devil's advocate, I think one of the things Lightroom has got going for it, is its relative simplicity. As you say, DarkTable is very powerful, but I think perhaps not the most user friendly for people new to it. Being free does make it incredibly attractive though! Thanks for watching and sharing your thoughts. 😊

[@Whatreally123]

I have used Darktable since the beginning days. Amazing tech under the hood but the UX/UI sucks. For an image editing application, it looks so bad. Kind of ironic.

[@ytfeelslikenorthkorea]

so far, the interface just makes me angry and I walk away from it. How can someone desig such an unintuitive and cluttered interface?

[@Robert-Bishop]

Certainly one of the downsides of the software.

[@ytfeelslikenorthkorea]

@@Robert-Bishop that's why it annoys me so much when someone just writes 'darktable' when question arises for Lr alternatives. There ARE NO Lr alteratives. Each competing software requires a complete change of workflow, mindset etc... and if that's someone's main tool / critical part of their workflow, it's hard to recommend change. For me, for years now, darktable was a bit of a meme, a painful joke, an example of why open-source projects for desktop rarely deliver what they promised. My test was simple - I had 150k of photos, made with 30+ cameras and 3x more lenses. All I needed as step 1, was to import the photos and scub through them quickly like I can in Lr - darktable always failed at some point... I'm decimating my collection (below 20k now) and darktable seems to be more and more viable, don't remember it crashing on import in the last few weeks. But admittedly, DxO delivers better quality results, but requires Windows :( I was hoping to switch to Linux desktop 100%). And DxO's interface is even more confusing at times :) I still have a few weeks before I terminate my Adobe subscription, so I need to run a few tests with some photos from different cameras to see how 'alternatives' act.

[@alangaughran]

Not that helpful to those who want to know what the various DT modules do. Filmic: "It's to make it look like film" is less than helpful. Why is it better than the plethora of other modules? It gives me no clue as to your intention and therefore gives me no sight of the edit destination so that I can see what you are up to. Looks to me that a dull but passable landscape has been made less real but even more dull. Was this the intention? God only knows. What is your view on "scene referred" operation as opposed to ""display referred" processing? Have you actuallyread the manual?

[@Robert-Bishop]

As I stated at the start of the video, Alan, this video was my first impressions of the software. This was more or less the first time I had used DarkTable, and I dont have the knowledge or experience to provide in-depth knowledge about it, so that's not how I presented the video. In answer to your questions, no - I haven't read the manual. However, thanks to other commenters who have been very polite and helpful, I have learnt about scene and display oriented development. My intentions for the image were to create an end result that I liked. It's a shame you didn't like the video, but thanks for watching anyway. You may already be aware of them, but if you're looking for videos that provide more detailed information about DT, there are quite a few recommendations in the comments from very knowledgeable users.

[@travellingjournalist966]

You could use gimp though gimp doesn’t handle raw images with darktable installed if you open a raw image in gimp it will automatically transfer it to darktable then just click DT off and carry on in gimp