(please keep the answers on the mailing list so everybody can read them) On Thu, Jun 18, 2020, 19:52 tony Hamilton <[email protected]> wrote:
> I'm in the process of using LightRoom 6 for both its DAM and its raw > processor functions. At the same time I am looking at replacements - one of > the main reasons being that most of my raw images come from an X-Trans > sensor; Lr 6 does not demosaic these well. DT seems to be a suitable > replacement as a raw processor. But it's DAM functions are not ss good as > Lr's (so I'm told). > I've never used LR, but that's probably true. DT DAM capabilities are quite basic. > So my workflow, were I to be using DT, would be as close as possible to > that which I use with Lr: acquire images (with renaming if possible), > triage the images using whatever facilities there are in DT (in Lr I mainly > use the 'rejected' flag on a quick pass through the imported images), crop, > perform tonal correction, lens corrections, sharpening and noise > correction, add/update metadata information, especially keywording, then > export to jpeg. > OK, DT can do all of that. However, you'll need to be more precise about your workflow to understand if using another DAM in conjunction with it will do what you want. For example, DT exports to the JPG only the metadata it knows of. If you use an external DAM, you'll need for it to independently write the metadata into the JPG, not only to a sidecar file. > For the DAM and metadata editing/keywording I am quite keen on using > iMatch because It has a design philosophy which will always allow me to > have access to my data - by writing .xmp files which could be read by an > alternative should iMatch cease to become available. I am concerned that > DT's use of a special .xmp is a long term risk - but maybe I don't fully > understand the implications. > DT xmp's files have nothing special, you can read them with any other program just as you can read the iMatch's ones (the only difference is the name convention). All the DAM info is stored in standard metadata fields in the xmp file. You can check it by yourself, just open the files with a plain text editor. The main limitation is probably that DT doesn't support many metadata fields, only the most common (although with some extra work this can be expanded in the lasts versions). And that bothers me: if the developers of DT decide tomorrow that they > don't want to do this any more, am I locked out of any other offering being > able to access my edited images? > No, because even if the current developers suddenly stop working on it, two things will happen: - somebody else will pick up the code and start working on it (it's open source) - even if nobody ever touches the code again, the program will keep working forever (or at least until your OS changes enough that it's not possible to compile and run it anymore) > Orr would I have to re-apply all those edits, > using the replacement raw processor. I think I > already know the answer: yes, re-edit - all 50+ > thousand of them. But that is probably no > different to any raw processor, including Lr, is > it? Exactly, that's not different from any other RAW processor. But there is an important difference: as DT is open source, you can actually see what the code does so in principle it's possible to port the editions to another program (which doesn't happen with LR). In practice, however, this probably won't happen because every RAW developer has it's own set of algorithms and it's quite difficult to match them. In any case, as I said before, I wouldn't worry about it for DT. In the worst case scenario you will end up running an old program in a virtual machine. > One of the other requirements that I have for a DAM is that it should > focus on the 'D' part: DT doesn't fully do this: it won't manage or allow > me to do complex searches on my considerable portfolio of audio, video or > text files, will it? > No, DT only deals with images. And its search capabilities are a bit basic, so you would benefit of a dedicated DAM even for image-only libraries (I use digikam for that). In the end, I think you should try it with a small set of files and see how your workflow works and which difficulties you encounter. You can always ask for specific advice if you get stuck. Best regards, Guillermo ____________________________________________________________________________ darktable user mailing list to unsubscribe send a mail to [email protected]
