I started as a pure JPEG-photographer, but Darktable sparked my interest in RAW-photography. Darktable has its quirks, especially for a complete beginner, but its manual way of doing things forced me to learn some fundamentals, instead of just sliding some sliders to see if something sticks.
What is your workflow in Darktable? Which module is a game changer for you?
These are the steps I almost always take:
- denoise (profiled): Match with the ISO of the photo, sometimes reduce 'preserve shadow'
- Lens correction: correction method: Lensfun database. It finds my camera and lens and I like the correction most of the time.
- exposure: turn up the exposure until my subject is well lit.
- crop: to compensate my ability to hold the camera horizontal
- color calibration: I often use the eye dropper on a neutral color, or on the whole picture. Then correct the hue and chroma a bit, until my picture is as balanced as possible.
- diffuse or sharpen: Preset 'lens deblur: medium' to get it sharper
- diffuse or sharpen (second instance): Preset 'local contrast'; I often turn up the iterations, I like it contrasty.
- color calibration: Preset 'basic colorfulness: standard' to get the picture more colorful. I often add even more saturation. What are those chroma-sliders for?
- filmic rgb: I use the eye droper for the white relative exposure. For the black relative exposure, I take a look at the darker parts and turn it down, until I can see enough details in the shadows.
I experimented a bit with the red/green/blue-channel in the color calibration module, according to Boris Hajdukovic. That was fun, but the modules 'color equalizer' and 'rgb primaries' are a bit easier to use to tweak the colors. The 'tone equalizer' is also often used to brighten up the darker parts of my pictures.
Worked well for me. Although all the people I care about had already Signal, Element or Threema installed, so I am not a great pull factor.
And those everyday moms from child care or from wherever can reach me via SMS, for the two messages/year.