Comment by siver_john | Hacker News Reader

Comment by siver_john | Hacker News Reader

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I'm always glad to see this stuff move forward. I recently got back into photography and was delighted to see the state of OSS software. However, because I could never find a comparison between rawtherapee and darktable I downloaded both to try each, and I just never could understand how darktable really worked[1]. Rawtherapee just seemed instantly more intuitive. For those that have used both, is there anything I'm missing between the two? And does darktable just better mirror lightroom and therefore is better for Adobe converts?

I hope I don't start any flamewars, this is a genuine question. And I remember initially there was some statement that rawtherapee handled x-trans RAW files better but some other people said that because they use the same software it doesn't matter. I intended to write up a blog post on both of these at some point for people in the future who have these questions, but time is what it is I haven't had the time to sink into it to get an intimate understanding of both (I still have a lot of photos I need to go back and process generally).

[1]Admittedly have not put in the work of going through guides or anything it was just kind of fumbling around in the software.

edit: Didn't know asterisks italicized, though I should have... Replaces asterisk with [1] instead...

Frankly, Darktable does not mirror Lightroom in anything but the basic screen layout. Its tools are by and large entirely different.

A few months ago, I tried to do a big comparison of RAW developers, maybe you'll find it interesting: https://bastibe.de/2020-05-01-raw-developer-comparison.html

What I learned from that is mostly that these are all massively complex programs that can't really be judged without investing a few months into them. But even at the superficial level that can be compared in a trial month, there are serious differences in how even the simplest tools work in all of these tools. And that many of them actually exhibit quite severe artifacts.

But Darktable and RawTherapee were among the best of them in terms of results. One truly does not need to invest money in a RAW developer if one doesn't want to.

If you don't already, head over to discuss.pixls.us for in-depth discussions of Darktable's and RawTherapee's inner workings.

instantly more intuitive

For me, a photo editor is a tool I am likely to use for years...and indeed, I've been using Darktable continuously and frequently for almost five years. I'm still learning how to better use and discovering new things it can do.

This is not in any way saying it is better than RawTherapee...though it has proven to be better for me when I have used RawTherapee over the past five years to see what it offers.

Mainly, for me it is Darktable gave me a workflow that let me work through a few hundred just taken images in a few hours the first time I sat down to work through a few hundred just taken images in a few hours and allowed me to constantly improve that workflow over the years to shave hours off of the few hours to fewer hours.

One of the big differentiators for me was Darktable's support of GPU hardware acceleration via OpenCL. Googling suggests RawTherapee has not added it and LightRoom only got support in the last two or three years...at least for operations in the pixel-pipeline.

Darktable doesn't really mirror Lightroom because as commercial software, Lightroom exposes less of the underlying mechanisms to appeal to a wider segment of the market. Darktable's UI is much more "mathy", e.g. the tab showing the order of applied modules in the pixel pipeline (and the use of "pixel pipeline" as an explanatory term and fundamental concept).

I don't find Darktable's interface intuitive, but it's very familiar at this point and that's good enough or maybe even better.

Please do try the videos here: https://www.youtube.com/user/audio2u

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