hpr-knowledge-base/hpr_transcripts/hpr3218.txt

Episode: 3218
Title: HPR3218: An introduction to Darktable
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr3218/hpr3218.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-24 19:00:49

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This is Haka Public Radio Episode 3218 for Wednesday 2 December 2020.
Today's show is entitled An Introduction to Noctable.
It is hosted by Port Work and is about 26 minutes long and carrying a clean flag.
The summary is a brief introduction to our A.W. photography, an octable application and then cheap may safely drain.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by an honest host.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HBR15. That's HBR15.
It's a web hosting that's honest and fair at An Honesthost.com.
Hello, good listener of Hacker Public Radio and welcome back to the Paul Quirk show.
A weekly podcast made specially for the Hacker Public Radio community under the Creative Commons license.
Today's show is a response to a request for me to talk about how to use dark table.
A very powerful open source raw photo editing tool that gives similar power and tools of the closed source Adobe Lightroom to people who don't want to get trapped into a monthly subscription with one-sided terms of service.
Dark table is one of those applications that makes the case that open source software is better than just good enough.
It really is professional grade software that delivers an effortless workflow for any photographer of any skill.
I personally find it very amusing that Lightroom is a portmando of light table and dark room and so is dark table, very clever, but first a disclaimer.
I am not currently a professional photographer nor am I involved with the development of dark table.
This is just an app I discovered after I started looking for better software to work with raw images than the SilkyPix program that came with my camera and I wanted something that allowed me to add a watermark to my pictures easily and effortlessly.
I also have no experience in using Adobe Lightroom since photography for me is just a hobby that already costs way too much money and closed source software does not interest me.
So let's have some real fun with this hobby, shall we?
The first question you might ask is what is dark table?
Well, I'm just going to read directly from dark tables website at darktable.org and I quote,
dark table is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer.
A virtual light table in dark room for photographers.
It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you review them through a zoomable light table and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.
The website goes on to tell us that dark table was created for photographers by photographers.
This is one of the philosophies of open source software that makes it so exceptional.
At a certain point, a big software development company takes a passion project to turn it into a saleable commodity and will use it to first get people hooked on using it so they can later melt them for all their worth.
It's not personal, it's business, but for me photography is an art that deserves better.
It helps me to find my happy place and is a natural antidepressant as well as a creative outlet.
It balances both the technical set of my mind as well as the creative.
To have this experience tainted by close source software is criminal.
Before I get into using dark table, I want to quickly go over the raw image format.
While dark table handles image formats like JPEG just fine, it really doesn't offer too many advantages over later applications like Shotwell for the casual user.
The reason being, a JPEG is the finished product.
There is only so much you can do with a JPEG file.
Don't get me wrong, I'd still use dark table over Shotwell even for JPEGs, but to really unleash its power, you will want to work on raw files.
A raw file isn't really an image, it's actually a set of data as captured by a camera sensor before it gets processed by the camera.
Today's camera sensors can capture an incredible amount of data.
Some people call a raw file a digital negative, but I think it's more than that.
It's more like a negative that's been exposed, but yet has not been developed.
With an undeveloped negative, you can push or pull developing, but once developed, that image is set in stone.
The magic of raw is that it can hold that image in a pre-developed state indefinitely, with much greater latitude than you could ever get from a film negative.
For those of you in the listening audience who are unfamiliar with these film terminologies, think of a JPEG as a compiled program.
The raw file as the source code and dark table as the IDE.
If a picture is over or under exposed, it's much easier to bring it into proper exposure without losing any of the details.
I have been able to bring up things in black areas of a raw photograph that in a JPEG just remain muddy and a lighter shade of black.
This means that raw files are considerably larger than JPEGs.
For example, a JPEG generated by my Pentax KP at the highest quality setting comes in at around 13 megabytes, while the raw file of that same image is nearly 31 megabytes.
To put this into perspective, over 18 years ago, with my first digital camera, I had to buy a 64 megabyte smart media card for that 2 megapixel digital camera because the 16 megabyte card it came with would fill up too quickly.
I thought that 64 megabyte card gave me plenty of room for lots of photos, but today it would only hold two raw images.
In those early days, each camera manufacturer had their own proprietary format, and your only two options to work with raw was either their bundled software or an expensive Adobe product.
Today, we have an abundance of open source programs that can read those proprietary formats, so this is a really good time to be a digital photographer.
So what Darktable really does is it provides a human interface to the image processing process that happens automatically when a camera creates a JPEG.
Since the computer in a digital camera is limited to its programming, an application like Darktable gives photographers the ability to do things that would be outside of the programming of their camera.
This means that it can give you ultimate power and control over your digital image, as though it was still sitting in the buffer directly from the sensor completely unprocessed.
This means that Darktable is not a simple program, and that's the reason why I recorded this episode as an introduction.
So the first thing you'll want to do if you're using Linux is to copy the images from your camera's card into a folder in your home directory, because, well, at least for me, Darktable doesn't have permissions to read anything outside of my home directory.
After that, I launch Darktable, and then I'm presented with a pretty intimidating screen that makes shot well look like a simple photo viewer.
Now don't be put off by this, as you'll come to learn, everything you need is there, and it's very logical.
I start with the import folder function.
Look to the top left of the screen, and you will see import with a drop triangle next to it.
Clicking on that drop triangle expands or closes the functions available under import.
Remember this, because these drop triangles are how you will navigate throughout the entire application.
Under the import function, you can select either image or folder.
I always select folder, because this will fill up my light table with thumbnails of all the images in that folder.
If you select open image instead, this will take you straight to the darkroom for that image.
I usually take multiple photographs in a session, and prefer navigating them in the light table mode, as this contributes to a more efficient workflow, where I can navigate my thumbnails, select one I wish to work on, and then click on the darkroom option at the top right of the screen.
Though there are times when I would just want to work on one image, so the image import is useful for that type of workflow.
So when importing a folder, you might notice import options at the bottom with a drop triangle next to it.
This allows you to do things like ignore JPEG files, or apply metadata to the files on import, which improves efficiency.
This attention to detail shows itself throughout the application.
Once your folder has been imported, you should notice some things about the behavior of the light table navigation screen.
First of all, it will group JPEGs with their RAW file if you imported both JPEGs in RAW.
At the bottom of the photo viewer, in the middle of the screen, is another drop triangle, with the three options being zoomable, light table, file manager, and calling.
I have heard that there may be a fourth option available, but I'm just going to talk about the first two.
Next to that is a slider. This slider makes the thumbnails larger or smaller.
Under file manager, your scroll wheel scrolls through the pictures, while on the zoomable light table mode, the scroll wheel lets you zoom in and out while holding down the left mouse button lets you scroll around.
I find that the zoomable light table mode works well if I'm using my wake om tablet, while the file manager mode works best for me when using a mouse, touchpad, or trackball.
Shift clicking and control clicking allows me to select groups of images as I would in any file manager.
To the right are all the headings of things I can do, including select, select images, history, stack, styles, metadata, editor, taking, geo-taking, and exporting the selected images.
If you select, if you start clicking on the drop triangles, a scroll bar eventually appears to the right, so you can still see the other options.
I usually leave the exported selected option open and set the target source to a unique folder where I export images for that session.
You can change the target source to email, for example, which will open an email client, but I usually leave this as a file on disk.
There are file formats you can choose from, which include JPEG, JPEG2000, Open EXR, PDF, PFM, PNG, PPM, TIFF, Web, PNXCF.
Under global options, I can set the maximum resolution and other settings related to the image format, which I have at default.
There's a gear icon next to the export button, which allows me to edit metadata exportation by allowing me to select what information, such as geotags, gets exported.
Clicking on export will export all of the images I've selected.
For the photographer who only shoots raw, this can give you a quick and easy way to turn your images into any format you choose, in the resolution of your choice.
Giving you control over what metadata goes into your images, and the settings you choose are remembered by the application.
So say, for example, you intend on uploading all of your images to the web and want them to load fast.
You could set the optimal quality and resolution size for the service you're using, and once you set it, you can forget it.
I can leave the export selected open because the two main reasons I use this screen are to select the images I wish to edit, and then to export those images into the finished product.
Obviously, there are other uses on this screen, such as editing my metadata, creating an HDR image, and so forth, but this podcast is just intended as a getting started guide.
When you hover over an image, it shows you details stored about that image, such as its file name, the date and time it was taken, and the camera settings used.
You will also notice across the bottom of the screen, a timeline, as you import your work into this application, this timeline becomes populated, so you can see down here wearing time you're working.
You can select an image either by double clicking it, or by selecting the image and then clicking on darkroom on the top of the screen.
This is where the fun begins.
The first thing you'll notice include the image, feeling most of the center of the screen, to the top right is a very detailed histogram, and the top left is the image, like a smaller thumbnail of it, and across the bottom are all of the images in your collection.
This film strip across the bottom allows you to navigate from image to image without you needing to return to the light table screen.
Elements of this screen are completely customizable.
For example, if you don't want the film strip across the bottom of the screen, or you don't see it in which to have it, you can use Ctrl F to toggle that feature on and off.
This information is available in the user's manual at darktable.org.
Now to the left, we see menu options such as snapshot, history, duplicate manager, color picker, tagging, image information, and mask manager.
If you want to see, if you have duplicates of the same photo in your collection, this will show up under the duplicate manager.
History shows a history of all the changes that have been made to the image, while snapshot is used to take a snapshot of changes you have made to the image thus far,
giving you something to return to while you're in the process of tweaking an image.
There's a mask editor where you can select shapes and gradients to mask areas of the image for further manipulation and editing, and you can see all the exit F data under image information.
Now to the right of the image in below the histogram are the modules.
This is where you can load and use different modules in order to make the changes or create the effects you're after.
About the modules are a row of icons.
The one that looks like a power button will show only active modules.
The star shows only your favorites.
The open circle shows the basic group of modules.
The circle with the gradient fill shows you the tone group of modules.
The circle with the rainbow pattern of red, green, and blue shows you the color group.
The broken circle shows you the correction group, and the circle with the stars shows you the effects group.
Not all modules will show up here.
So if you're looking to do something like say for example adding a watermark, you can try searching for that module if you have an idea of what you're after,
or you can just browse modules under the more modules menu at the bottom.
Some of the functionality of these modules can overlap.
So it's more of a matter of selecting the modules that matter to you for your workflow.
A good place to start is the basic group, and under there basic adjustments.
This lets you adjust the things like the black level, exposure, highlight, contrast, brightness, saturation, and vibrance.
There is an auto button here that works pretty well.
Clicking on each module expands it, and there's a power button next to each one that is grayed out until an element of the picture has been changed by that module.
Some modules are automatically turned on, like orientation, base curve, and white balance, because these are used to create the image from the raw data in the first place.
Besides the basic adjustments, another favorite of mine is the white balance.
This lets me fine-tune the color temperature in tint of my pictures.
Sometimes I go between white balance and basic adjustments to get things just right, but sometimes I don't use the white balance at all, say for instance if I'm working in black and white.
As I mentioned previously, some of these modules get turned on automatically by dark table.
Dark table reads the metadata in the raw image and sets these modules based on the manufacturer of the camera.
One of these is base curve. Sometimes I find that the base curve applied to the image can cause parts of the image to become overexposed, resulting in a loss of detail.
There are different presets to play around with, or you can adjust this to your own tastes.
Alternatively, there is a zone system which I kind of prefer since I have been a long time user of light zone, another open source raw imaging editing program, which I may talk about in a future episode.
If you're unfamiliar with the concepts like the zone system or the base curve, don't worry. You can dive as deep as you want, but if you just want to do some simple cropping and corrections, you can stick with the basic adjustments and get perfectly fine results.
But it's good to know that when you're ready to do some more advanced editing in which to apply your knowledge of these concepts, dark table will be waiting.
Now, above the film strip and below the image are a group of icons that look like a light bulb, a 2x2 RGB grid, a slashed square, a triangle, an exclamation mark, and a crosshatch.
The crosshatch lets you change the overlay color of things like masks, in case the default color doesn't show up well over the image you're processing.
The triangle with the exclamation mark is for gamut checking, and the other is for soft proofing, which are useful for checking to see if there are colors that fall out of the gamut of your monitor or printer.
The two squares are the most useful in my opinion. The slashed square will toggle under an overexposed highlighting, while the 2x2 RGB grid toggles the raw overexposed indication.
This light bulb is to toggle the ISO 12646 color assessment conditions. This is professional grid software, and so you will have access to everything the pros do, if you like.
As you're working on your image, you may need to zoom into different areas to apply different effects or fixes.
You can use the scroll wheel to zoom in and out of the image. The smaller thumbnail of the image in the upper left hand corner of the screen will show you where in the image you are working when you're zoomed in.
If you want to quickly jump from one part of the image to another, you can click on this thumbnail in the area you wish to jump to.
The thing I really like most about Darktable is that it is a tool that's made for professionals, but a hobbyist like me can install it and start using it, develop an efficient workflow, and then I can learn new things about the art of digital photography along the way.
There are a ton of how-to videos on YouTube, and documentation at darktable.org is very thorough if you prefer that approach.
Darktable can be customized to your tastes. A beginner can start shooting everything in RAW and get up to speed making JPEGs to share with others without much hassle, and when they want to dive deeper, they can return to those original RAW files because Darktable does its edits in a non-destructive manner.
Full disclosure, I just started using Darktable earlier this year and have not been able to spend the time I've wanted to with it, but it seems that every time I use it, I learned something new.
I've heard that Adobe Lightroom works in a similar fashion to Darktable, so there is the added bonus that the skills you learn in Darktable are most likely transferable if you wish to pursue a career as a graphics designer, for example.
So in my books, Darktable is a winner all around and is my preferred image editing tool for my photographs, both digital and film.
Well, that's all I have for covering some of the basics of Darktable, and this should give you enough information to get up and going without frustration.
When I'm editing my photographs, I like to listen to calm, relaxing music in the background. That's right, we're at the point in the Paul Quirk show where it's time for your dose of candy for your ear holes.
Today, I'm going to play for you an area from the Lively Hunt is All My Hearts Desire, composed by Joanne Sebastian Bach.
Also known as the Hunting Catata, this secular cantata, it was composed for the 31st birthday of Duke, Christian, of Sax, Wiesenthales on the 23rd of February 1713.
This area, sheep may safely graze, is the best known part of this work and was performed by the Toronto Chamber Orchestra. Enjoy!
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If you'd like to get in touch with me, I'm on the Fediverse at Paul at Cloud.P Quirk.com.
Since Social in Next Cloud is still an alpha, I decided to start using my mastodone account again, and you can find me there at QuirkatMastodone.Social.
Until next time, please remember to drive safe and have fun.
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