Hi Christian!
welcome - thanks for your lengthy but yet very interesting description
of first-time darktable usage! Reports like yours are very helpful for
us to determine workflow glitches or functions which are not entirely
obvious how to use - figuring out stuff like this as developer is quite
hard since most of us have been using darktable for years and have seen
it growing and evolving.
See my comments inline, I tried to answer the questions I know, others
might chime in and correct me...
On 04/09/2013 12:30 PM, Christian Drechsler wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm new to darktable. I'm currently trying to get away from Apple and
> its products, and darktable seems to be a good way to get rid of Aperture.
>
> I've worked with Aperture for many years now, and of course I'm quick
> with it and know all the keyboard shortcuts that are relevant to me.
> I'm only slowly getting to know darktable and finding my ways in it.
>
> There's some stuff that currently seems to be impossible to do quickly
> and without a lot of clicking around, changing views etc. I'm not sure
> if I just didn't see how I could do certain stuff, which is why I post
> here.
>
> My typical workflow looks like this:
>
> 1. Copy a few hundred images over from the camera.
> 2. Organize them into projects (i.e. film rolls in darktable)
> 3. In every project/film roll, look at every image, delete the bad
> ones, do some basic editing (crop, exposure, sometimes white balance)
> 4. Tag the faces with the names
> 5. Put certain images into albums
> 6. Export to internet gallery
>
> Point 3 is where most of the time goes, and a lot of stuff there seems
> to be much more clumsy to achieve in darktable than in Aperture.
>
> First thing, I'm in darkroom view now, which means that I can't delete
> images. I'm not really sure what that separation between light table
> and dark room is for, anyway? Sure, it makes sense to separate
> import/export and organizing images into film rolls from the dark room
> part.
in the darktable way, we try to separate things in analogy to film
photography. I.e. "darkroom" represents the place where the development
of your images happens, which is usually separated from going through
the shots, picking, tagging and rating. All that is done on a
"lighttable", which you do not want to have in your darkroom obviously.
Having said this - in digital photography things change quite a bit of
course, which is why we try to build bridges between the two sections,
e.g. allowing style application in lightroom or rating and (color-)
tagging in darkroom.
>
> But why am I not allowed to delete or tag images in dark room mode?
> That's where I see them full screen, so that's where I see if they are
> badly focused or blurred, which is impossible at thumbnail view. So I
> have to put in an extra step, reject them or tag them with red color,
> e.g., so that I can delete them later in light table view.
>
> Same with tagging: I don't need the face recognition stuff from
> Aperture which doesn't work well, anyway. But I'd like to tag in dark
> room view where I see the image full screen and know who's on it
> (using tags for people's names, mainly). Plus, even if I do it in
> light table view later, it's a terrible hell of clicking and shoving
> the mouse around, as there doesn't seem to be a possibility to change
> the currently selected image without using the mouse. (If there is,
> please tell me!)
There is. The standard shortcut for changing images in lighttable mode
are just the arrow keys. This should work in both the temporarily zoomed
image using the "z" shortcut and - what you probably want to use - the
full-image view of lighttable to which you can switch using ALT+1.
>
> What I'd like to do: Switch from image to image in fullscreen mode
> using the keyboard (not! the mouse!) and simply add tags (from a list
> of several hundred) using the keyboard only, too.
>
> What I actually have to do: Click on an image using the mouse. Press z
> to see it full screen. Press Ctrl-T to tag it and start typing to
> select a tag. That last one is exactly the way I'd like it, BUT: After
> I've added a tag, I'd like to add another one. Simply pressing Ctrl-T
> again doesn't work as expected, though, nothing happens. I have to
> click on the image with the mouse /again/ to be able to press Ctrl-T
> again for another tag.
Okay, let's separate this:
* Using "z" for full-screen image might not be what you want here since
you have to hold it down. I'd suggest using ALT+1 and maybe hit TAB to
hide all panels.
* Not being able to add a second tag after having applied one using
Ctrl+T is clearly a bug and needs to be solved. Please file an entry
here: http://www.darktable.org/redmine/projects/darktable/issues/new
>
> Or cropping in dark room mode:
>
> What I'd like to do (what I'm accustomed to from Aperture): Press c to
> select the cropping tool. Click and drag to create a crop box on the
> image (that is restricted to whatever aspect ratio is currently
> selected). Press return to see the image cropped.
>
> What I actually have to do: I assigned c as the keyboard shortcut to
> activate the cropping module. That works, but the module doesn't get
> focus or something; no helper lines appear on the image, and I can't
> crop anything (same if I active the crop module with the mouse). I
> have to collapse and uncollapse the crop module with the mouse for it
> to get focus and the helper lines to appear. Even then I can't just
> click and drag to create a new box of the size I want on the screen, I
> can only resize the existing one, which means a lot more clicks and
> drags. Then, to see the image cropped, I have to somehow unfocus the
> crop module again. The quickest way I found is switch to the next
> image with space and then back to my current image with backspace
> (which is a lot quicker than finding and focusing another module with
> the mouse), but that's still /very/ cumbersome, of course.
I would consider this behaviour a bug. Activating the module using
shortcuts should always move focus, too. We should change this
implementation, I completely agree with you.
>
> Please don't get me wrong: Darktable is great all in all, especially
> in its dark room features it has much more possibilities than
> Aperture. I especially like the "right click on a slider" feature.
> That's really a /very/ good idea to make coarse as well as fine
> adjustments a simple task.
>
> But for me, much more important than all the feature masses I'll never
> use is the possibility to work quickly and move from image to image in
> seconds, quickly adjusting each one, using the mouse only where the
> mouse actually is better (faster) than the keyboard.
>
> I don't fear learning different stuff; so if I oversaw possibilities
> in darktable, please tell me. Especially tagging looks more or less
> unusable to me at the moment, actually a show stopper---I sincerely
> hope that I'm just doing it wrong right now. :-)
You directly addressed one of the field where we definitely need
improvement. We have discussed the implementation of tags and tagging
quite some times and all aggree that there lies a lot of potential
improvements. So if you have concrete ideas or suggestions - let us know!
>
> My next computer won't be a Mac anymore, I'll switch back to Linux.
> The thing I fear losing most is Aperture, but darktable is /very/ near
> being a good replacement. It already is more than that technically,
> but not so workflow-wise.
>
> Currently, I don't need a new computer, so I won't buy one. But I'd
> like to do the transition to darktable now already in order to make
> the step an easy one when the time has come. What's holding me back
> right now is tagging.
>
> I hope you can show me how to do that efficiently in darktable. :-)
>
> Thanks and best regards, Christian
Cheers!
Simon
>
>
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analytics on semi-structured data. The platform includes APIs for building
apps and a phenomenal toolset for data science. Developers can use
our toolset for easy data analysis & visualization. Get a free account!
http://www2.precog.com/precogplatform/slashdotnewsletter
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