Experiments with Darktable

[ElRoble]

I'm developing my first skills on darktable to develop NEF files,

The pictures are from Puerto Madero - Buenos Aires

I would appreciate your comments and feedback

Enrique

[Shadowman]

The ship is the best of the group, the others have issues, 1st is too dark, others lack sharpness.

[Richard Lundberg]

Keep playing with dark table. Composition I like. I don't think you can get any sharpness in uploads to this forum without paying money for a storage service. The first pic is not sure of its intent.

[ElRoble]

Thank you for your feedback, I also think there is an issue with uploading the pictures, the original NEF files are more sharp, of fact it is possible to clearly read some writings on the bench's back of the 3rd picture.

The first picture was the same day early in the morning near the others, when I was going to work with the camera ready to shot in the passenger front seat, I had to stop in an avenue wait a moment to avoid the traffic and take the picture. It is a unknown place of Buenos Aires (https://goo.gl/maps/oZRxt).

Rgds

EFA

[ElRoble]

Thank you for your feedback, I take in account your feedback,
Rgds
EFA

[Polar01]

Enrique May I suggest you will get better feed back if you only post one or two images in a thread you posted 6 images hard to comment on all of them. So again better with just one or two.

Cheers: Allan

[Richard Lundberg]

On looking again, I like your eye for composition very much. Is there a reason you're using Darktable in preference to one of the popular apps like Photoshop or Lightroom, or even the Nikon app? I doubt that many here use Darktable. I have it, but have never tried it.

[ElRoble]

Hi Polar01
Thank you for your feedback, next post I promise no more than two images! ,
Rgds
EFA

[TonyW]

Keep playing with dark table. Composition I like. I don't think you can get any sharpness in uploads to this forum without paying money for a storage service. The first pic is not sure of its intent.

I don't understand this comment about storage space. I use Flickr, which is free, and I think all my issues with lack of sharpness originate with me.

The images here, with a couple of exception, look OK to me and as others have pointed out have good composition. I am particularly interested in the bridge. It is another in the series of footbridges that have been built in various places around the world that have been designed to be different.

[DanK]

I'm developing my first skills on darktable to develop NEF files,

The pictures are from Puerto Madero - Buenos Aires

I would appreciate your comments and feedback

Enrique,

If your interest is in how to improve composing and editing your photos, the fact that you are using Darktable will only be important for a few specific things. Each software package has its own strengths and weaknesses. However, basic editing is the same--controlling contrast, saturation, exposure, sharpening, etc. You may end up doing them in different ways in different software packages, but the basic goals are the same. For example, if someone says that one of my images lacks contrast, it makes no difference which of several software packages that I own I choose to use. I can increase contrast in any of them.

So, my suggestion starts with Allan's: post only one or two images, or images that are related, for example, several different shots of the same thing. that will allow people to provide more specific suggestions. Second, if you have specific questions, ask them.

Re sharpness: I agree with Tony. If you are losing sharpness when you upload, you are probably doing something wrong. If you describe how you upload the images, perhaps someone can help with that.

Dan

[ajohnw]

I'd guess your sharpness problem is a common one. When you save the software demosaics and applies all of the changes you have made to the shot even reduction in size. Shots need sharpening after the size has been reduced. Some adobe products do this automatically with rather difficult user control in some cases (so I hear) opens source generally doesn't. What I do is use another package for that aspect. You could for instance export to the GIMP and do your reduction and final sharpening there. You see what you get doing it that way. That isn't the case with packages such as Darktable and for that matter Rawtherapee. Or allow Darktable to reduce/crop and save it and then load it up again for sharpening. A little goes a long way at this stage.

As to the shots.

I think 1 is ok but the foreground could be lightened a little. What people see in that respect can be dependent on the monitor they are using and it's calibration state. In some cases such as posting on Flickr for anybody with any old monitor browsing some brightening is probably essential.

2 isn't the sort of shot I take - fine apart from that but maybe the reds could be more strident.

3 Contrast/tone levels looks generally wrong to me. You will probably find that use of the free Nikon software that came with your camera for initial raw development especially the d light slider to bring up shadowy areas will make this sort of task a lot easier for you.

4 A bit like 3 and some of the whites look like they have been lost

5 a tad dark in places

6 same.

I suspect sharpening after reduction will help all of them plus shadow reduction how ever you do it but do try and keep detail and shape in the whites.

I haven't used Darktable for ages but keep meaning to take a look again. It's been extended significantly including some facilities for local work by the look of it. I generally use Rawtherapee for raw development - no local work at all - and follow that with the GIMP or a Linux application called Fotoxx. Or even both at times.

I had a play with one of yours, can be deleted if you object. I used the GIMP's default unsharp mask setting on it. It made a big difference. I then used levels on it to bring out a bit more of the shadowy side of the boat - centre in slider only and then a tiny contrast increase to make up for the levels change. Just the sharpening makes a lot of difference and other people would probably finally adjust in some other way after that. Tastes vary.



You'll find a number of people mention Adobe products on here - good luck to them but they aren't essential.

Not sure if you are using a calibrated and profiled monitor given the contrast/tone on some of the shots. Many feel that aspect is essential. Your shots do have an embedded profile - that is good. Darktable is doing that for you.

John
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[ElRoble]

Hi John

Thank you for your honest and exhaustive feedback, I will study in detail all of your recommendations and I'll try to apply them, I need to start studying GIMP urgently to have my Ubuntu Photo Suite. I also have in my pending list the Rawtherapee.

Last weekend I was reading about monitor calibration techniques and my monitor is not as good as I paid for!! so I'm afraid I will have to live with some color and resolutions issues :-( .

Please feel free to use my images, it's my way to thank your help ;-)

TKU

EFA

[ElRoble]

Hi Dan
Thank you for your feedback, I'll try with a different upload method next post.
Rgds
EFA

[ElRoble]

Hi Tony
Thank you for your feedback,
The bridge is called "The Woman Bridge", in Puerto Madero almost everything have a name related with a woman,
Rgds
EFA

[Inkanyezi]

I'm on an Ubuntu suite as well, presently Mint Mate, and I have installed Darktable but not used it yet, thinking that it might do what Lightroom does for whe WinMac crowd. However, using Gimp earlier, I find it much more convenient to use UFRaw for conversion, as with the plugin, I can open the RAW files directly from Gimp to convert them (akin to ACR in Photoshop). I have tried Raw Therapee as well, but I like UFRaw better for its way of displaying blown-out pixels.

As I haven't really tried Darktable yet, I don't have any particular opinion. I thought of it as a way to create some structure in my picture handling, as I have always used just the file browser for transfers before, and most of my images are in a terrible disorder, for which I use Picasa to eye through folders when I want to find a particular image. I don't really like the way F-Spot downloads and stores images, and I also need a structured way to register RAW files in connection to their jpegs. (Ya es no más cagazón...)

La segunda imagen es la que más me gusta, por su limpieza de tonalidad y composición.

This is the image I chose for my desktop in the Mate version of Mint (feel free to use it):

[ajohnw]

Rawtherapee will also show clipped pixels Urban. 4 buttons 2 of which are triangles at the top of the view. There is a little catch. one setting indicates if any channel is clipped. The one that shows a black and white image indicates all channels clipping. Sometimes it doesn't matter if one or more channels are slightly clipped and adjusting so that none are clipped can result in a flat image so both styles are useful. One up on some Adobe products that only show complete all channel clipping - it seems - going on some ones image I edited on here a while ago. In this case it did matter that some channels were clipping.

I feel that the biggest problem with using Rawtherapee - RT - is too many sliders too soon. I tried to explain that here - post near the end.

Perfect Photo Suite

The wiki they have created helps too.

It can be a problem to find camera profiles for Ufraw. No problem with RT if people read the manual. The other problem is that all tonal adjustments are via 2 curves. It's worth going to their home page and following the link to a curve package that should be used in the 1st curve panel. It's odd how often the point and shoot one works well. This AKA the white wedding curve. Ufraw's age can show in this area - it will only accept a limited number of predefined curves.

I use Fotoxx a lot and save versions as I am working. There was a whole series of video's on each feature but many of them have gone. There are still some on it's web site and they are probably comprehensive. It uses dcraw on raw files and parameters can be set. It will also use Rawtherapee in batch mode so I suspect that the dcraw settings can be changed to RT. It can also use RT, GIMP or anything else as a plugin. RT will also export to other packages. The GIMP is assumed but that can be changed. All sorts of things can be done with these features that avoid having to save files. Fotoxx's undo is the only way to back track on that package, hence saving versions. I don't find that a problem. It's image browser is much faster than others but I prefer to avoid using it or others. It scans new directories very very quickly. It's also a very user friendly package from a usage point of view. Excellent mouse control - left and right clicks plus the mouse wheel. One interesting aspect is brush use. An adjustment can be brushed and the area will change if settings are altered after the brushing is completed.

I assume darktable usage could also be arranged in the same fashion.

One thing I have noticed of late is that I always use GIMP's healing brush on final images if spots etc need removing. It's much better than cloning.

John
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[ElRoble]

Hi Inkanyezi,

Thank you for your advices, I'm installing UFRaw and Rawtherapee and I'll take a look to both of them, I expect to sdhare my findings in the near future.

It's a nice Mate!!!

I'm a mate addict! in fact while I'm writing thois lines I'm drinking some mate!

Rgds

EFA

PD: tu español es muy bueno ;-)

[Inkanyezi]

There was a time when I was almost addicted to mate as well, but long ago. I was playing in a band then, and the band leader was a porteño with very Argentinian habits. We used to pass the mate around, occasionally filling some hot water from the vacuum flask. Unfortunately he died young, by anaphylactic shock, when an icecream had fragments of some nut in it. My instruments were primarily the quena, and I also played charango and bombo.

My mother tongue is Swedish (pero me puedo hacer el sueco en qualquier idioma). My wife is from Cuba, and there is no other language than Spanish spoken at home. She absolutely refuses to learn Swedish, or any other language; says she's too old for that. When we first met, fourteen years ago, my Spanish accent was rather Argentinian, with the typical way of pronouncing double-l and double-r and also the intonation, but it has changed to something more like Cuban Oriental. It was many years before I could use the Cuban phrase for catching a bus, although I had no problem to understand what they meant by "coger la guagua". However, when coaching a woman band in Santiago de Cuba, I unknowingly committed one of those false friends errors in Spanish too, telling the band leader to pass me her tres to tune it, using the verb "templar" for tuning. In Cuba it means the same as "coger" in Argentina... ¡Oye Zulema! pásame el tres, que lo voy a templar.
Seven women stared at me in awe, Zulema asking me "What did you say you would do with the tres?". (For those that don't know, 'coger' in Argentina, and 'templar' in Cuba is f**k. The Cuban phrase for catching a bus would mean to rape a baby in Argentina, and I asked Zulema to pass me her guitar, so that I could f**k it.) So, one is never too old to learn something new.

I haven't figured out how to retain EXIF info when using Raw Therapee; it gets lost when I pass the image to Gimp. RT uses a temporary tiff that it passes to Gimp, and it has no EXIF. However I use RT when I want to set white balance with the eye-dropper in a jpeg, as it opens jpegs.

[ajohnw]

Not at all sure how that is happening Urban. One thing I do is to tell the GIMP to retain RT's colour profile rather than convert it but have done both and still retain EXIF data. Here is one for instance but to see the full Exif you may have to download it. GIMP and RT mentioned - and load it up in Fotoxx to see the entire EXIF. I still haven't found a decent picture browser that shows full EXIF that isn't associated with an editor.



While in RT I should have desaturated the greens a little really. This one is RT from raw and some work in Fotoxx finalised in the GIMP and probably went into RT or Fotoxx more than once.

I am a very long term Suse user who went to OpenSuse when Novell took it over so I have used DisCalGui to generate and install a system wide colour profile for the monitor and leave packages at their default sRGB settings. They seem to sort this out themselves apart from Firefox which can't handle the type of profile i use. DispCalGui mentions swapping colour orders in the profile to make sure that it is being used corretcly - Firefox produces some odd results. Opera, Konqueror fine as is everything else. The advantage of using a profile like this is that it is similar to using a hardware calibrated monitor- only 8bit LUTS, better than nothing.

John
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[ElRoble]

Hi John

Thank you for your explanations, I'm developing my first skills with Rawtherapee, I guess this weekend I may post my first image.

By the way, may you recommend me some readings to better understand the theory behind the raw developing process and terms utilized on these raw processing softwares (Rawtherapee, Darktable, Fotoxx, etc.)?

Regards

EFA