A number of people are willing to test the resources offered by
alternative software such as Darktable. However, for a newbee, this
often appears too complex. There are just too many modules and
parameters to choose from, especially if you don't exactly know what is
about. It is not that hard to learn, but this requires a lot of time,
and many beginners are soon discouraged when they discover that their
best achievements yeald poor results when compared to those of the jpeg
produced by their camera. I believe that most Darktable users already
have spent a lot of time on such commercial tools as "Photoshop"...
which indeed may not be that much easier to use.
As a newbee myself, having tested "Darktable", I am willing to share my
experiments, and tell you where I got so far, with results that I now
most often find better than that of the camera jpegs.
I use Darktable 1.6 on Ubuntu 14.04, and a Canon EOS 600D. I import
downloaded CR2s into Darktable, then I treat them one by one in the
'darkroom'. As the images display, they have already undergone a process
that is part of the Darktable presets ; I could modify those, but I
found easier not to bother with this. Instead, in the "history" panel, I
highlight :
'0 - original'
Then I click onto the icon 'quick access to your styles', where I have
previously setup a style that I named 'start'. This style does only 3
things:
1 - Lens correction (automatically fit to my Canon EOS according to
metadata that are in the CR2s)
2 - Input color profile (I have replaced the so called Standard
Color Matrix or Enhanced color matrix by my home generated profile
(using Christophe Métairie 's CMS Target), but you surely can use the
Standard)
3 - Base Curve DEACTIVATED. Yes, with the parameters that I have
chosen, I use no base curve. If you don't have a home generated profile,
you may want to activate a base curve.
That's it for the module START, which, as previously said, I activate
after the 'historical' has been set back to 'original'
This being donc, next thing I do is 'Crop and Rotate' if need be.
I don't play with 'White Balance', which will remain that of the camera.
Next I click on 'Levels', then on the left circle to 'activate' the
module, then click on 'auto'.
This being done, I click onto the module 'Tone Curve', then 'Presets
(=), then 'average contrast'. At this stage I watch the picture and
compare aspects in testing 'average contrast', 'high contrast' 'low
contrast' and 'linear'. Most times, the best choices are 'average
contrast' or 'Linear'.
Then I test 'Local Contrast' WITH ITS PRESET VALUES (Granularity 50,
contrast 20, detail 0.200, blending deactivated). I so far never tried
changing these values, since one must be careful not changing more than
one thing at a time, especially when you don't exactly know what you do).
Then, at last, I activate 'Equalizer' and, in its presets, I click on
'sharpen'. Same as for Local Contrast, I don't fiddle around with this
tool. I just watch the picture and decide whether to leave or deactivate
the preset Equalizer, same for Local Contrast
Then that is it !!
In watching the "used modules", I can see that 'Highlight
reconstruction' is ON with a clipping threshold of 1,000 (maybe it does
nothing...). It probably is a default value, I did not attempt to change it.
This is therefore the way I operate so far
Any comment will be welcome
Bernard
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