Hi Tony,
I teach photography and imaging classes. I promote GIMP as a free
alternative to Photoshop because it does 99% of what photoshop does, is
free and in my opinion is nicer to work with. I do not promote DT as a LR
alternative because in my opinion it is not. LR is a program designed by
Adobe for professional photographers. Lr manages the
digital assets (images) so well. I personally use keywords, but it also
offers rating systems, collections and can search metadata. The second side
to LR is fundamental editing of images including Raw images. The editing
ability of LR is sufficient for the average studio or wedding photographer
that needs to do some final tweaks before presenting the image to the
customer. LR is a beautiful professional photographer's tool. Subscription
cost should not be a barrier to a professional.
However, LR's editing capabilities are relatively limited. I have so much
more fun working images in DT. I love the various modules and the
flexibility of the drawn and parametric masking systems that are so much
more flexible than LR's. I love the ability to do multiple instances of the
same module. I love the multiple options for sharpening and noise
reduction. I love DT as a photographer and as an artist because of its
ultimate level of editing control, which LR can not rival. However, if I
was a professional photographer I would stick to LR. The reason is time is
money. Firstly I would photograph in RAW and JPG and I would try to have my
JPG tweaked by camera settings to be a finished quality not requiring any
editing because that is a waste of a professional's time. However, if I did
have to do editing I would want some quick and dirty fixes that could be
applied to all the images in just minutes. That is what LR is great at. DT
has styles which can also process images quickly but it is no rival in
terms of speed to LR.
I still use LR for HDR merge of raw files and sometimes for panorama
stitching. Microsoft ICE is a really great free panorama stitcher for
Windows and can handle challenging merges that PS and LR fails at. For
restoring scanned images and film I use DT for sharpening and grain
reduction (noise reduction) but then move onto GIMP for dust removal. DT
could do dust removal but GIMP is easier and quicker. I also like to
experiment with levels and curves in GIMP to tweak the final color and
contrast.
My suggestion is to pick the best from each program. I wish DT had the DAM
capabilities of LR and then it would be an alternative to LR. Your post was
very successful at starting or reigniting a conversation on the topic.
On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 23:36, tony Hamilton <[email protected]>
wrote:
> Hi Terry,
>
> I'm a bit ... well, I suppose the concept is 'humbled' ... by the response
> to my posting on this topic. I am equally very impressed by the consistency
> of the advice I have been given. I have obviously invested far too much
> time and effort in this part of DT where other solutions - such as you
> describe - are far more practical. So now I should focus on those functions
> DT is good at: raw processing. Plenty of work to do there, I sense.
> On 25/06/2020 22:34, Terry Pinfold wrote:
>
> Hi Tony,
> I replied to the long post. I feel just use DT for editing images
> and another program such as LR or Adobe Bridge to catalog, sort and import
> (copy) images from your SD card. DT is a great editor but is not an
> all-in-one solution like LR tries to be.
> Good luck.
>
> On Fri, 26 Jun 2020 at 03:44, tony Hamilton <[email protected]>
> wrote:
>
>> Hi Terry,
>>
>> I had not considered this option (as you can see from my long posting
>> just a few minutes ago), but what you say makes good sense to me - I see
>> you share my concern about the security of images on the SD card. That
>> factor really gave me the heebie-jeebies when I realised what DT was doing
>> - shudder... I'll examine this in more detail.
>>
>> Tony
>> On 24/06/2020 02:49, Terry Pinfold wrote:
>>
>> Hi Tony,
>> since you have LR use that program to import and organise your
>> files. It is well designed and excellent at that task. It also does good
>> editing of Raw files, but DT is more sophisticated in the edits you can do.
>> I own LR and use it as a catalog, sometimes to do panorama stitching and
>> sometimes HDR images. But I love DT editing far more than LR editing
>> usually. Focus on what DT does great, which is editing not cataloging. BTW,
>> the extra images may be JPG files associated (embedded) with Raw files but
>> I am not sure. I also recommend never letting the computer delete images
>> from your camera's SD card. I have seen this as a cause of problems with my
>> photography students in the past. I recommend copying images from the Sd
>> card. Ensuring you have a minimum of two copies of the original on separate
>> drives. Then, and only then, format the card in the camera to clean up the
>> card. I would format rather than delete all images. Hope that helps.
>>
>> On Tue, 23 Jun 2020 at 21:30, tony Hamilton <[email protected]>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> In addition to the difficulties I am having with import (the subject of
>>> an earlier posting) I now find that DT imports more images than there
>>> are on my SD card. The camera tells me my card has 52 images; Windows
>>> tells me my card has 52 images. Lightroom finds and imports 52 images.
>>> iMatch tells me there are 52 images and adds them to its database as I
>>> expect. DigiKam does likewise. DT, uniquely, finds 72 of these 52,
>>> providing sometimes as many as 8 images with the same file name. What
>>> causes this strange behaviour and how can I trust that DT is also not
>>> 'losing' some images on import, in addition to 'creating' some?
>>>
>>>
>>> ____________________________________________________________________________
>>> darktable user mailing list
>>> to unsubscribe send a mail to
>>> [email protected]
>>>
>>>
>>
>> --
>> Dr Terry Pinfold
>> Cytometry & Histology Lab Manager
>> Lecturer in Flow Cytometry
>> University of Tasmania
>> 17 Liverpool St, Hobart, 7000
>> Ph 6226 4846 or 0408 699053
>>
>>
>
> --
> Dr Terry Pinfold
> Cytometry & Histology Lab Manager
> Lecturer in Flow Cytometry
> University of Tasmania
> 17 Liverpool St, Hobart, 7000
> Ph 6226 4846 or 0408 699053
>
>
--
Dr Terry Pinfold
Cytometry & Histology Lab Manager
Lecturer in Flow Cytometry
University of Tasmania
17 Liverpool St, Hobart, 7000
Ph 6226 4846 or 0408 699053
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