March 8th, 2023 I first dipped my toes in the water that is Darktable, the RAW image editor. It pretty much scared the living daylights out of me and it wasn’t shortly thereafter that I was tinkering around with RAW Therapee. That was much more accessible for someone who knows absolutely nothing about editing RAW files.
So there I was trying to figure something out in RAW Therapee and had to turn to the web for guidance. I couldn’t really find anything. I didn’t turn every stone on the internet over, but I do believe RAW Therapee is quite younger in age than Darktable is. Or perhaps most of the help is behind the Discord Wall of Illusion. So I gave Darktable another shot, because even at this point, I still didn’t know even the most basic things about the application. Anything that may or may not have made my images look any better was by sheer luck and luck alone.
I found a couple of sites that were very helpful, and started to be able to put my head around terms related to both post-processing and the application itself. And the jargon. What workflow and culling means in this realm. The whole process frustrates the hell out of me very quickly, but I keep going back to it. Rage quit the application, open it back up 25 seconds later. It’s beautiful.
Tinkering with all the options, first to their extremes to get my head around what it does, and then going back and slightly tweaking things is all very fascinating. ChatGPT actually has been very helpful in this regard, explaining to me things about the post-production process in technical terms, but not as hardcore technical terms as much of the available online documentation.
I am still running into issues when it comes to making “styles” and “presets” and work across all sorts of different images. I’ve read in numerous places that it is best to make the LEAST POSSIBLE AMOUNT of changes for things to be saved as presets, because settings like exposure will vary so wildly across different photographs. Either way, it’s one step at a time. You know “they say” that you gotta crawl before you walk. Well, I’m still very much crawling in regards to Darktable but it’s a helluva good ride and I’m enjoying it. It’s sort of essential in a way, so that’s what I keep telling myself because this valuable time has taken a pretty large bite out of reading, writing, walking, being outside, and otherthings. Jocko mentioned on some recent podcast I was listening to at work, about keeping Return on Investment in mind when pursuing new goals. There is a big ROI on this pursuit, so that’s how I’m justifying my actions.
Let’s keep spreading positivity and kindness together. ■
DISCLAIMER: There may be grammatical and or spelling erors in this post. Most editing processes have been tossed out the window in the face of AI, to prove our humanity.
