Doing my usual jumping between a dozen current tasks to stay fresh and alert at 5:30am, I stepped away from the proposal I was writing, and opened this image from a recent exploration in Lightroom. Could not get it quite how I remember seeing it. Then I remembered that Lr makes its own default changes. Yes, I know they can be changed, but after 15 years I have tuned them pretty much how I want for my editing style. But sometimes, on some images, the defaults suck. So I switched over to darktable. And as often happens when I do this, my jaw dropped.
The image was beautiful. Right out of the box. It looked how I remembered it. No colour changes or oversaturation. No noise. No blown highlights. No excessive contrast. No need for extensive editing just to get anywhere near what I was looking for.
I made a couple minor contrast adjustments and threw in a darktable watermark that includes my logo and exif info from the image (try doing that in Lr) and that was it. Edit complete. I show here the Lr and darktable export of the very same image. In MY opinion, which may of course vary from yours, the darktable image is better. I know I could edit in Lr for a better look. Point is, I don’t need to. And look how sharp that darktable export is. Again, this is pretty much out of the box as opened. Using darktable defaults, you could say.
I love Lr. Been using it for over a decade. Reluctant to move away from it, it is a core part of my commercial workflow. But it has weaknesses in some areas. Including but not limited to price. As this side by side clearly shows. darktable for the win. I am moving toward a fully darktable integrated solution which uses a range of other software. But that’s another, I think interesting story. For another time.