QuestionMoving from Lightroom to darktable, how long did it take you to stop hating it?

Right, I've done it. Cancelled the Adobe plan over Christmas (the renewal email was the last straw) and I'm two weeks into darktable. I'm not giving up, but I'll be honest, it's been a proper slog. I spent most of last Sunday trying to get a sky to look the way one slider would have done it in Lightroom, and it still came out a bit grey and sad. Very on brand for Scottish skies, to be fair.

Files are all from the E-M1 II, mostly landscapes in rubbish light. Which modules do people actually use day to day? There seem to be about four ways to do everything. Any tips for someone who isn't a colour scientist would be lovely.

Ignore most of the module list. The scene-referred workflow needs maybe six of them for 90% of images:

• exposure (set the midtones, ignore the highlights at this stage)
• filmic rgb or sigmoid (pick one, I use sigmoid now, it's less fiddly)
• color calibration (white balance lives here now)
• color balance rgb (saturation and the overall look)
• tone equalizer (this is your shadows/highlights slider, with a mask)
• diffuse or sharpen, sparingly

The grey sky is almost certainly the tone mapper squashing your highlights. Bring the sky down with tone equalizer before it gets there, don't try to fix it after. That ordering is the bit Lightroom hides from you and darktable makes you think about.

Also hide the modules you never use with a module group preset. Half the overwhelm is visual clutter. Give it a month. By March Lightroom will feel like it's guessing for you, because it is.

rawtherapist said:

Bring the sky down with tone equalizer before it gets there

Oh. Oh that's what I was doing wrong. Tried it on the Glencoe one this morning and it's miles better already, the clouds actually have some shape now instead of being porridge. Thank you!

Fair play for sticking with it. I lasted about an hour

rawtherapist said:

By March Lightroom will feel like it's guessing for you, because it is.

Or by March she'll have gone back to Lightroom like the rest of us who tried... Not knocking it, the results can be cracking, but six modules to do what one slider does is a bit of a faff for a hobby. Just saying.

tomthurlow said:

six modules to do what one slider does

It's not one slider. It's one slider plus a pile of decisions someone at Adobe made for you that you can't see. Fine if you like their decisions. I didn't, which is why I left.

I use darktable since version 3, so maybe I can help a little. For landscape the tone equalizer is the most important module, rawtherapist is right. I made one preset for my mountain files with the mask already set for skies, and I apply it on import, then only small changes.

One more thing: for Olympus files try the denoise (profiled) module, it has a profile for the E-M1 II and is better than people expect. Not AI, but good, and fast. Small sensor files at ISO 1600 in a dark glen will thank you.

Also the styles function is very useful when you have a look you like. It took me some months to stop going back to Lightroom, so do not worry if it is slow now.

TomekKRK said:

try the denoise (profiled) module

Ooh, didn't know it had camera profiles. Will try that tonight. And the preset with the sky mask is a great idea, I do the same three things to every single image anyway, usually while muttering at the screen. Is the styles thing the same as a preset, or is that different again? Sorry, this is the bit where I feel like I'm learning a new language

Grand to see another m43 person giving it a go. I'm still on Lightroom but I've been giving out about the price for two years, and every time it renews I say this is the last year. GX9 files are small enough that I'd say my old laptop would cope with darktable fine. Keep us posted on how you get on, and if you're still at it in March I'll probably follow you

Little update since a couple of people asked. Four weeks in and I'm faster in darktable than I ever was in Lightroom for landscapes, mostly thanks to tomasz's preset idea. My routine now is: import with the preset (exposure, sigmoid, tone equalizer with the sky mask, profiled denoise), then I only really touch exposure, the tone equalizer curve and colour balance rgb for the look, and maybe a bit of diffuse or sharpen if it's going to be printed. Three or four minutes an image, and most of that is me staring at it.

What I didn't expect is that the files look different, in a good way. Highlights roll off more gently, and the grey Scottish skies have more tone in them instead of going flat white. Still slower for quick snaps of the dog, I'll grant you, and the export dialogue still confuses me. Haven't missed Adobe once, which I didn't expect

Dreich said:

Haven't missed Adobe once

Alright, alright. Maybe I'll have another go.

Well I said March and it's now autumn, but the renewal email landed last week and that was it, cancelled. Dreich is your preset shareable at all or is that a cheeky ask?

micro43mick said:

is your preset shareable

Not cheeky at all! I'll stick the settings in here once I've tidied it up. Fair warning though, it's very much tuned for grey skies and wet hills, so your Cork harbours might come out looking like Glencoe...