DarkTable vs Rawtherapee (Show of Strength) 

Had some experience with DarkTable or Rawtherapee? What are your favorite features?

I was using both until I bought my Canon R7 over a year ago. I ended up using DT since then. My main reason was RT was not reporting exif data correctly and DT was quick to include R7 support with noise profiles etc. I love DT for my use. RT may have more demosaic control compared to DT, but I don’t miss it really. DT is more actively developed and it is nicely featured- no need to look at LR etc

congratulations, i am also attempting to educate more people in my community and local organisations. i am a FOSS Advocate, i use Darktable in a professional manner without GIMP, but i totally use GIMP for other things. i am going to be giving a FOSS presentation for my local council for Artists, and hope to continue to do so. so i appreciate what you are doing! :O)

Nice presentation!

A couple of corrections to the video. Darktable has History too, and Snapshots. The Darktable modules don't have to be accessed from the long list at the bottom: you can choose which modules permanently appear in the 'top down' lists of tools, and you can also create a Favourites list of tools that stay under the 'Star' list. Finally, the video fails to mention that Darktable has very powerful 'local actions' capability that RawTherapee lacks, where you can use drawn or parametric masks, or combinations of both, to apply each tool to discrete areas of the image. I certainly agree that they are both powerful tools, and both deserve their reputations as genuine heavyweights in the image processing world, in terms of power, if not in terms of popularity. cheers

Raw Therappee is actually vastly superior to lightroom. You have better control of the demosaicing algorithms you have control of wavelets it has better sharpening control and noise reduction also. I only used RT for my raw files and finish off in photoshop for at least ten years.

I love some of darktable's features, but I still find I get the best output with Raw Therapee. I'm playing with the Digikam 7.0 beta the last couple of days, that fills in a lot of the darktable features that aren't in Raw Therapee like DAM, spot healing, film grain, etc.,etc. Digikam seeems able to integrate with RT to some extent. I keep trying darktable again and again, but I just can't get the same quality output from it as I can from RT, although I reckon it is possible. Anyway, they're both great, I love how they're more complicated than most commercial software,more complicated things are usually better, and have a higher fun factor too, because you can't get bored of something you haven't fully figured out how to use yet lol. I haven't decided whether I'll start using digikam full time yet, but Raw Therapee is definately what I'm going to use for all raw conversion for now l, I just love the look of the pictures it makes.

I wish there was one software that combined all of these

Darktable 3.0.0: -crashed when I first time ever exported 38 images of jpg. -allows various adjustment using scroll wheel, but merely hovering a mouse on the panels will also trigger false adjustment. That creates confusions. need to keep your mouse on the scroll bar to browse across panels to avoid that. -Removing images out of Collection from lighttable tab sometimes accidentally removed another unintended images. It feels like a bug. I need to extra click on that image before removal. Or perhaps the UX confuses me about what is being selected and what is the mouse hovering on. --Also, removing a pic from collection seems to keep the editing profile - how to delete that as well automatically? -cropping tool is more flexible and user-friendly than Rawtherapee because you can move the cropped area around the picture, while Rawtherapee makes you use "Left" and "Top" to slowly change the cropped area around the image. -Not much of right click menu (actually none I think) Rawtherapee I don't know where to geotag my pics. That's the first thing I wanted to do with my pictures, so I gotta switch back to Darktable... Darktable has potential when UX and stability are improved because it has the closer look to lightroom - Lightroom-ers will appreciate it when they switch over to Darktable. If this video isn't factual about both, I'll just drop these here and look at another video. Cheers.

I'm so glad to see this channel growing! Big UP for your work!

The music is distracting

Thank you for doing what you are doing. I am a linux fan---loving DT, kdenlive, and open source in general. Subscribed!

Hey mate, great video. Thanks for putting it together. Music distracted a bit but your video was clear and had plenty of information. Cheers

Old video BUT, I've used both but RawTherapee no longer displays the preview thumbs or image correctly. Don't know the problem and have no time to dig into it.

Thank you, I am trying to decide which Lightroom Alternative should I use, and after going through several reviews, I end up having two choices, either Dartable or Rawtherapee. I will sure try them both eventually, as I am yet still a beginner, looking forward to building my experience step by step. Subscribed and wishing you the best, looking forward to more intuitive videos. Edit: forgot to mention that I probably will go with Darktable first ( which means for several months probably as I am still new and need to build up a reference point), Firstly because it's recognized by Gimp, Secondly, coz it's community is larger and has more support and a strong community than Rawtherapee as it is, in fact, an Opensource, been around since 2009, while Rawtherapee is just 2 months old. Which is actually astonishing and so awesome to find it competing already in the free market. But I have a feeling that it will turn commercially soon maybe having a pro edition or something.

I am a long time user of Photoshop, since 1994. Lightroom, I wasn't really a fan of until I started work that required batch editing. So I was a late user of that. I still prefer PS for 90% of my editing. I purchased several standalone versions of PS throughout the years and stopped being a fan of Adobe's when they went to the subscription model. With PS v 6.0 already installed I simply did not sign up for the sub because I felt I could do anything I needed in PS 6.0. With all that history now said, which of the two profiled here (or GIMP) should I use as an adjunct to Photoshop? Will one simply import into it as does Lightroom? I don't like saving out of one and into another. I'd prefer edits to transfer if possible.

Thanks for the compared. The subject is "detailed photo editing" but video is 480p, it is a bit dissapointed. 😕

Tried both think DT is more powerful (?) I used the favorites to mimic Lightroom's layout. Like how it ties into Gimp. However my go to is Capture One Pro.

hi, i m new to photography, just bought my first camera canon rp. it came with canon's digital photo professional........i cant afford adobe subscriptions....is it good for beginner to stick with canon's dpp or should i try something else? i am also confused....on internet and youtube.....some says go with gimp, some says go with raw therapee, some favors darktable.....i m so confused.......if they are all adobe alternatives then why some have unique feature that others dont have? it means you have to use all of them one by one for your photo edits? time consuming and confusing....which will defeat the purpose of avoiding costly adobe subscriptions. please advice. thanks.

Good video! I was just curious what you had to say about the differences between Raw Therapee and Darktable so I watched. I've never used Darktable as my workflow is Lightroom for cataloging, then Raw Therapee for preparing raw files for export into Photoshop. Raw Therapee's demosaicing is far superior and adjustable as compared to Lightroom. Also, you have some very targeted and superior noise reduction and capture sharpening within Raw Therapee. Lightroom is too global in its adjustments.

The trouble I am having with DarkTable is it does not have the camera profile for my camera. I am using the R5C and it is not working right.

I prefer rawtherapee colors tones highligts blacks. Looks like a little less contrast LR or Capture one picture, very good look pictures. DT has incredible tools but I can't have the look I like.

Hi, thanks for this very useful video. I am in the middle of deciding between just these two apps. I am replacing ACDSEE and have noticed that Darktable preserves all my IPTC descriptions and keywords whereas Rawtherapee does not. Since I have lots of metadata in IPTC in family and client archives that I don't want to have to reinput. I do a lot of film negative captures also and want the best one for speeding up inversion and colour balance. Darktable provides this in 'negadoctor' and so does Darktable with 'Film Negative'. So far I've found that RawTherapee seems to provide better off the bat colour balance using Film Negative.

i came here because i bought a sony xperia 5ii. You think raw therapee supports sony mobile raw files?

You had over 10 minutes to make the Darkroom image brighter, yet you managed not to do so. Why?

Dealing with this issue right now.... BOTH have things i like, and a few maybe not as much... Just jumping back and forth, seeing which operates more like I think.... ( natural working/ thinking flow?)

Which is better dark table raw thearpee or gimp

Thanks for the Video.. Linux is Life over here and Open Source is amazing. I never got into photo editing,while I suck at it, I enjoy the ease of some of the software as I work around GIMP. I thoroughly enjoy the world of Linux. I have no idea what Half the Things do in there, But i love just turning somethings up and down and see what happens. Basic photo editing for the most part on my side. ome things are a bit more complicated in gimp to achieve vs something like raw therapee or darktable.

thanks for the great review

Thanks!

I can relate to your appraisal of GIMP. While very useful, it's still not at the Photoshop level of being "everything to everyone". I usually keep it out of the "photo enhancement/dark room" tool set and use it more for "image hacking" (i.e., what most people refer to as "photoshopping"), mostly to combine it with work from other sources. Well, that's how I've arranged my workflow, and so far it's what's worked best.

Nitpick: If you're trying to use Krita as a "photoshop replacement", then you're using the wrong tool. Krita is primarily a drawing & painting program, rather than photo manipulation. For the latter, use GIMP or an equivalent.

I would maminky point out that DT and RT are both for RAW file developement and all changes to image are non destructive. GIMP is not for RAW developement and that is main reason why you must first develop your RAW file to be able to use it in GIMP.

I'd love to test Darktable, but since my Canon m50 uses .CR3 fileformat, i cant. Somehow Darktable doesnt support that but Rawtherapee does.

I was a little frustrated since you really did not compare them, or did it lightly. I got confused.

Photopea is worth reviewing as well

Hi, thank you for your videos ! If I may say you are missing the big difference between RT and DT : the masks. DT offers in every module the possibility to apply the changes to only a part of the image, part that you can draw or define with parameters, even more powerful than in LR. By the way I am surprised you don’t even mention LR in your video, even though DT (a bit less RT to my knowledge) is a fantastic and free alternative to LR. Thx again

Hi Nate, I've little experience with photography yet. Do you know how Digikam/ShoFoto compares to these?

Can you use plugins like Nik collection with Gimp or either of these 2 programs?

480P max???

I use both both are great dark table is easier tbh but I love raw therpee too

Show! XD

C'mon man 480p?

I love darktable, I use it professionally. It has very advanced features and makes It easy to streamline your workflow with styles. I use it to preproces my RAW files. Favorite features? - styles / batch processing - parametric blend modes - advanced color correction/grading modules - object removal module - etc.

I just discovered both Rawtherapee and Darktable, but can you do layers with either? I've been using On1 Photo Raw and Luminar 3. Do these compare?

I prefer RT but I really like the Filmic module in DT.

Too less facts :-(. Where is the difference between DT and RT? Pros and cons?

digiKam + Rawtherapee - on a base of Kubuntu. Darktable is good too!

GNU Linux is also free. Try it :))) Btw, thanks for this video.

Basic editing tools 😂😂😂😂

My dude darktable is total crap it just is. I just installed it. First of all, buggy. Gave a database error the first times I tried to run. Keep minimizing for no reason. Finally it opened but ran sluggish like a dog. Then the colors are all off. Not black background as I see in your video. Light grey, horrible. I tried to open a file, nah, not even that works, shows directories in the worst least intuitive way possible like the idiots at Linux do, complicate too much what is easy. I chose the folder with raw images, for some reason this darktable crapfest doesn't show any files in there, I can't open files. Uninstall, this is horrible.