Yes, it’s this time of the year again. The annual Libre Graphics Meeting is getting closer, and we, that is the whole developer community of your favorite free graphics applications, would like to ask you for your help. Some of you might remember our call for sponsoring from last year. Back then we asked for donations for specific people – a task that didn’t work out that well in the end. So this year we would just like to ask you for a small donation to the general funding campaign instead. This money is only being used to pay the travel expenses of developers and contributors of free graphics projects. Like us. You can see an incomplete list here.
If you want to make sure that good things can happen, like having the first-ever real life darktable developer meeting, please consider to spare a coin at the official Pledgie campaign. Thank you.
Of course you are also welcome to attend LGM yourself. Make sure to ping us beforehand so we can meet. :-)
Update: The program is now online.
As an ex Bibble/Aftershot (and also Lightzone) user, I would be willing to pay a good annual subscription fee even, for this software and thus fund your coding and meetings. But (no offense meant honestly) current coders seem to be more intrsted and focused on new features than usability, while the general complaint about the software is about the second.
Not only me, many have been left out by Corel and are in the same situation as me (just read their forums and comments on darktable). We have new cameras, all unsupported by Aftershot. And darktable is the only software powerful enough to replace it, just that it's too hard to use when processing hundreds of photos in one go.
I hope you consider this. Developing is fun, but reading your users can also be interesting!
BR
I use dt since December 2011, and I can tell you that the developers have done a lot to improve performance.
So I tell you this as one dt user to the other, you get what you pay for...
And yes, I am very willing to pay, honest. Otherwise I wouldn't have paid for Bibble and Aftershot.
Just my 2c
According to the criticism above:
It took me some time to get used to the concept of the UI but today I reached a real good performance with your software - and it's fun.
And what's really amazing: I am always using the developers stream of the software and have really very little stability issues (less then with a lot of commercial software).
Please go on like this,
Thomas
If you ever tried other applications like AfterShot though,it generally takes just 2-3 clicks to process photos, not 15 or 20.
What I mostly do for example is adjusting levels, fill shadows, and correct highlights. With a simple ctrl+C+V I can copy the same setting to 20 similar photos. Then I am done.
The same task in Darktable requires navigating through different panes, and collapsing and opening multiple toolboxes.
If you put them all in your preferred/starred tool list, the tools aren't sorted nor grouped in a logical manner. The screen ends up messy, and hard to find anything.
I got used to certain quirks of the app already, but it still takes me much longer to do the same tasks I did before.
I hope not, because I wouldnt' understand why a photographer needs to tweak that on every single photo.
My question is then... why are those tools in the Basic group?
I understand that if you get used to find things, then the program can be fine for you, but it just requires way more clicks than one should imho.
Btw, once you copy paste wrong by mistake, try to undo all of them quickly, and if you find a way, please let me know ;-)
A suggestion, though: why not link the campaign on the main page of the site? A week ago -- before I came across this post -- I was actually trying to find a way to send you guys a donation because I was so impressed with the program. Having hunted around the site for a few minutes I found nothing and assumed that you weren't interested in monetary contributions...
Good for you. I'm day one beta tester (that's right, hitting my 5 years anniversary with dt one of these days), and I'm still struggling with its UI.
- Use auto-applied presets for settings that you always apply (specify eg camera or lens type for auto-apply)
- Define styles for settings that you want to apply often but not always
- Collect the settings that you want to change often as favourites
- Define presets on these settings and all the other settings you want to use
- disable all the settings you don't want to use in the GUI (darkroom - "more modules") eg if you never change the base curve
- have fun