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1b) Please add hyperlinks to each paragraph (scrolling is a pain). It's
explained here:
http://help.libreoffice.org/Writer/Formatting_an_Index_or_a_Table_of_Contents

A newbie doesn't know where all the information will be stored. She may
know that data can be saved either in .xmp files or in library.db, but
doesn't know which kind of data are saved where.
Actually, the book explains where each data is saved (except for styles,
which are saved in ~/.config/darktable/styles). What is missing, IMO, is
a general table where one can have a quick overview.

Something like this:

XMP files: by default contain ...
You can write history stack, metadata and tags in the xmp files by
clicking on "Write sidecar files"

library.db: darktable specific information is saved here (for example:
rating,.....)

~/.config/darktable/styles: styles are saved here

I think that newbies really need some tips about how to organize their
photos and set up everything in a way that they won't have to delete
their database every time things break (because of files moved in a
different directory, for example).

from Emmanuel Lacour [email protected] via lists.sourceforge.net
to [email protected]
date Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 8:51 PM
subject [Darktable-users] Noise reduction
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Important mainly because of the people in the conversation.

hide details Oct 11 (1 day ago)

Hi again DT users ;)

in current 0.9.2, I found three way to do noise reduction:

• using equalizer
• using raw denoise
• using denoise (bilateral filter)

there is for example a lot of difference between the two last.

I'm not very satisfied with any (most probably, because I missuse it)
and can't get the same and not so bad noise reduction done by my Canon
500D.

DT users, which one are you using?
DT devels, os there some plans to remove one or more of those three
method in the futur (so I don't use an obsolet one ;))?

thanks for any hints :)

from johannes hanika [email protected]
to Stefano Fornari [email protected]
cc Darktable-users [email protected]
date Tue, Oct 11, 2011 at 11:33 PM
subject Re: [Darktable-users] resize and sharpening
mailed-by gmail.com
signed-by gmail.com
Important mainly because of your interaction with messages in the conversation.

hide details 11:33 PM (10 hours ago)

you can try the `high-quality downsampling during export' switch in
the core options i believe that is. this will first process your image
at full res, and then downsample at the very end (and is thus a lot
slower and more mem hungry, but needed in some cases, especially with
extreme lens distortion correction and such).

From the user lists:

dt uses the xmp as backup sidecars, in case the image is not found in
db (because parsing xmp is slow).

if you want to update, you need to re-read the xmp (there's a button
for that in lt somewhere).

Nicolas S. Dade [email protected] via lists.sourceforge.net

I like the book, and it helped clear up a few things I didn't fully understand about darktable.
(which itself has rapidly become my go-to raw image development tool).

As I read it I kept notes of where I though things were unclear or could be misinterpreted,
as well as any typos and places where the English was ungracefull or idomatically incorrect.
Here's the result:

Ideas:
Page 12: rotating a photo to correct one slightly off-kilter
It's might be easier for beginners to use the right-mouse button a draw a line and have the software figure out the angle. Otherwise how would they know the angle to use for their own photos? Trial and error maybe, but that is slow and awkward.

Page 14: pressing Enter to validate a crop
I discovered that double-clicking in the cropped area sets the crop too, and it's one less keypress
Though really I found the cropping non-intuative. For weeks I though it was broken b/c my crops were not working. B/c unlike the other operations, the crop operation must be validated.
I don't fully understand why it works that way, rather than just cropping where the crop marks are placed.

Page 15: magic values for the white-balance fix
No beginner is going to know what sort of values to enter for their photos. Why not have them drag the temp-in slider and tint, and watch the result. Or use a photo with a gray or white area and use the spot white blance. Those are the ways a beginner uses white balance.

Page 16: "set both spinner max size to 0"
I think the word "spinner" here needs a plural, or needs to go entirely. You might think of the size entry widget as a spinner, but that's not how a beginner sees it
Also the max sizes are not zero in Figure 14, while everything else is set in accordance to the text, which is a little confusing

Page 15: "note the light gray border"
You might want to say "thin border", otherwise I could think you were talking about the thicker film-slide-like border, which is also light grey.

Page 48: "diagonal frame formed as illustrated in Error: Reference source not found."
I'm not sure why the error, since the figure 18 is there, on the next page.

Typoes and Eaa2L errors:
Typoes and Eaa2L errors:
Page 11:
"crop and rotate plu-in will"
s/plu/plug/

Page 17:
"The first impact with"
s/impact/interactions/
"Who comes from analog photography is"
s/Who comes...is/Readers who come...are/

Page 42:
"Being the color cast a linear function"
s/Being the color cast a/Since the color cast is a/

Page 52:
"the braking pattern"
s/braking/breaking/
"one o the"
s/o/of/

Page 59:
"nothing more than thinking...will make a great photograph"
s/nothing more...will/there's nothing better...to/
"fully plain...instead, also"
s/plain/horizontal/
s/also/even/

Page 60:
"silver were applied"
s/were/was/
"force a different"
s/force/forces/
"Why someone may want"
s/someone may/would someone/

Page 64:
"the lesser the diameter the circle"
s/lesser/smaller/
s/diameter the/diameter of the/

Page 69:
"On the opposite side"
s/opposite side/other hand/
"this is well shown by"
s/well shown/easily seen/ (or maybe /reflected in/)

Page 71:
"be not linear"
s/not /non-/
"control on"
s/on/over/
"to familiarize with"
s/to familiarize/to become familiar/

-Nicolas Dade

Subject: [Darktable-users] Darktable book comments
Date: Sat, 28 Jan 2012 00:22:29 +0200

Hello!

I'd like to submit some comments to the Darktable pdf book v 1.1.1 (Digital
photo development with darktable).

(Taking the opportunity, I'd like to thank the authors of the book - it is
really well-written and helpful!)

So, here are the issues I've found:

In some places, the name of the application is Darktable, in others -
darktable (in lowercase). I believe it should be only one of the two,
perhaps lowercase, because it's mentioned as such on the official site, and
in the "About" window.

And furthermore, I'd put it into document properties as Subject (File -
Properties) and then used in the document via Insert - Fields - Subject.
Document name can also be specified there and then referenced enywhere in
the document. This is a good practive, because we'll be able to change it
in one place only if needed.

The following images are embedded into the document, instead of being just
linked to it:

Tutorial:

Figure 5: darkroom mode window (/tutorial/images/ui_darkroom_mode.png)

Chapter 1:

Figure 3: listing and filtering options (/1/images/topbar.png)

Figure 5: metadata panel (/1/images/metadata.png)

Figure 6: metadata editor menu (/1/images/metadatamenu.png)

Figure 8: navigation module (/1/images/navigation.png)

Chapter 2:

Figure 17: import from camera settings

(/2/images/import-from-camera-settings.png)

Figure 22: image information module

(/2/images/image-information-module.png)

Figure 23: select module (/2/images/select-module.png)

Figure 24: selected images module (/2/images/selected-images-module.png)

*Chapter 3:
*

Figure 28: geometry lens corrections: original, rectilinear, fish-eye,

panoramic, equirectangual (/3/images/lenscorrection-fisheye.jpg)

Page 7: As far as I can see (in Ubuntu 11.10), darktable doesn't show
this text in console when starting. And especially it doesn't show the name
of this book :)

Starting darktable...Digital photo development with Darktable

Page 15: There are extra spaces after Figure 11: white balance filter,
which shift the next chapter 1 page futher.

Page 18: *
*

_Those who come from analog photography is _probably already familiar

"is probably" -> "are probably"

_and _color-label with color* our photos
*

"color-label with color" -> "color-label"

Page 20: _It is also possible to flag a picture as rejected *_pressing
the small
*

"rejected pressing" -> "rejected by pressing"

Page 47: Why is the photographer addressed to as "she" is the following
sentences?

The photographer can show emphasis through framing choice, whether
sheuses a vertical or horizontal format. Or
she might show emphasis by the placement of the subject. Or she might use
selective focus to simplify the background or by drawing the viewers
attention to a certain spot within the frame using perspective.

"she uses" -> "they use" (this is a polite form to address someone, when
you don't know their gender)

Page 52:

This may cause the image to lose it's* drive*

"it's" -> "its"

Page 55: Lens correction plug-in

"plug-in" -> "plugin_"_

Page 59: crop with a fixed aspect ration

"ration" -> "ratio"

Page 71:* this plug in *can be used

"plug in" -> "plugin"

Page 74: _with the plit _tone plugin

"plit" -> "split"

Page 89: A part of someone's email has trapped into the text (in Installing
on Fedora):

Building darktable from the source code giveit's only needed if you use
gconf. else removing
~/.config/darktable/darktablerc would do the trick (sorry for short *
emails btw, time is pretty packed here atm..).* *
s an additional useful command: darktable-faster. This is a faster version
of darktable that copies the database
in memory to speed up the operations.*

**

It should be: Building darktable from the source code give__s an
additional useful command...

There's also some problem with sections in Table of Contents, some of them
are duplicated as parent items:

Darkroom
view..............................................................................................................................22
Darkroom
modules....................................................................................................................23

Navigation............................................................................................................................23

Snapshots..............................................................................................................................23
Snapshots
..................................................................................................................................23

Metadata...............................................................................................................................24

History..................................................................................................................................25
History
.......................................................................................................................................25

Histogram.............................................................................................................................25
Histogram
..................................................................................................................................25

Plugins..................................................................................................................................25
Plugins
.......................................................................................................................................25
More
plugins.........................................................................................................................26
More plugins
.............................................................................................................................26

Best regards,
Dmitry Litvin

From a user:

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Leonard Evens [email protected]
Date: Tue, Oct 4, 2011 at 12:28 AM
Subject: [Darktable-users] I am having trouble with the way darktable names exported files.
To: [email protected]

After I've worked on each image in a directory with darktable, I
selected a bunch of them and then exported them.

Afterwards I found I wasn't happy with the results for individual
images, so I went back and did some more work on them. I then wanted to
export them again. I would be satisfied if if the previously exported
file were replaced or if I got another copy with the previous file name
and an extension. Instead I seem to be getting totally unrelated names.
My (default) file naming rule is
$(FILE_DIRECTORY)/darktable_exported/img_$(SEQUENCE)
The first two parts of the path are fine, but I don't know how SEQUENCE
is determined. A search of the book only tells me that it means
sequence number, but I haven't figured out how it is determined. Any
clues?

Also, how do you suggest I do it so I can figure out which file is which
from their names?

Hi,
yes, the behaviour has slightly changed (in better IMHO) in 0.9.3; when you press enter, DT commit the crop box, but keeps showing you the cropped area. If you collapse the crop plugin, the crop takes place. In this way you can always reshape the crop just expanding the plugin; before you had to reset it.

I will open a bug to the book issue tracker.

HTH
Ste

On Sun, Dec 4, 2011 at 5:01 PM, Henrik Andersson [email protected] wrote:

Im pretty sure 0.9.3 got the new crop behavior which left out the step
with "commiting"
the crop with enter, just leave the crop module and the image is cropped.

/Henrik

2011/12/4 Leonard Evens [email protected]:

The Darktable book says that to produce the desired crop after selection
I should press enter. That used to work and I think double clicking on
the image also did it. But now nothing happens when I press enter. If
I close the crop plugin, then the crop shows up.

I am using the Fedora 14 latest version which is 0.9.3

Here is a collection of feedbacks received from the community. I am attaching the file, after review we may want to add specific items.

General note: throughout the book we have "plug-in" and "plugin" (and sometimes even "plug in") used interchangeably, one form should be decided upon

*** Page 7

Preface

• 2nd paragraph: "search our photograph collections in an easy and intuitive way", "allows you to post-process the images without losing the original picture", "Photos can then be exported in the most..."
• 3rd paragraph: "Darktable is not_,_ however, a photo painting software"
• 4th paragraph: not sure why "workflows" is between parenthesis?
• 5th paragraph: "The book was written using", "are valid for earlier versions" [also maybe you mean "later" rather than "earlier"? Like it will also be valid for 0.9.2, which is a later version]

Conventions

• 3rd paragraph (on italics): "which illustrates what in darktable" [also maybe get a smaller text to illustrate italics? :) perhaps removing the "your mileage may vary" part]

*** Page 8

Starting darktable

• 1st paragraph: "go to the Applications/Graphics menu"

*** Page 9

Importing a film roll

• 1st paragraph: "and start to develop our digital negatives"
• 3rd paragraph: "Darktable will import the pictures" [or lighttable for the mode (but with two 't's), not sure what you meant]

*** Page 11

Darkroom mode

• 1st paragraph: "covered in detail in Chapter 1"
• 4th paragraph: "crop and rotate plug-in will be shown"

*** Page 13

Cropping

• 2nd paragraph: "type button of the crop and rotate", "a list of guide styles will be shown"

*** Page 16

• 1st paragraph: the export tab is now on the right side of the interface, but I'm not sure if you want to update this to the current version yet (maybe that'll be part of a new version and not this revision)
• last paragraph: "The following chapters explain in detail all features", "and how to get the best from your photos" [or "how to get the best out of your photos"]

*** Page 17

• 2nd paragraph: "this chapter will describe in more detail how to..."

Lighttable view

• 1st paragraph: "Those who come from analog photography are probably already familiar... but those coming from digital photography..."
• 2nd paragraph: "this view is where we group, rate, tag and color-label our photos"

*** Page 18

The light table

• 3rd paragraph: "In addition to displaying a small version", "when the mouse moves over one of the images"

*** Page 19

• 2nd paragraph: "It is also possible to flag a picture as rejected", "Clicking again on the reject button will make the picture unstarred so that it can be rated again"

*** Page 20

Left and right panels

• 2nd paragraph: "The goal of this section is instead to familiarize you with the basic..."
• 5th paragraph: "the examples given in this section are quite simple" [or "in these sections" of course]

*** Page 22

• last paragraph, last sentence: "even if only one of them can be selected at a time."

*** Page 23

Metadata

• "The metadata module shows metadata information"

*** Page 24

History

• 1st paragraph: "It always starts with the original"
• 2nd paragraph: "We can also turn the same effect on and off multiple times, making the stack grow but without actually affecting the image."

Plugins

• 3rd paragraph: "To switch a plugin on/off, just click"
• 4th paragraph: "will be described in detail in chapter 3"

*** Page 25

More plugins

• 1st paragraph: "use the more plugins module"

*** Page 26

• 1st paragraph: "and what tools are used to do the job"

Importing

• 1st paragraph: "darktable remembers where the photos are stored in its own database"

*** Page 27

• 2nd paragraph: "Below the tab, the button import from camera brings up"

*** Page 30

Working with collections

• 1st paragraph: "we may wish to group and organize them in collections."
• 2nd paragraph: "The first selection box is used to choose the filter criteria"

*** Page 31

Working with selections

• 2nd paragraph: "Select film roll is more interesting: if there are photos from different film rolls on the light table (for example if we selected more than one film roll in the collect images module)"

*** Page 32

• 2rd paragraph: "The two buttons with a curved arrow change the image orientation counter-clockwise and clockwise"
• last paragraph: "This means that they will go back to their originals, without applying any plugin." [or "without any plugin applied", maybe this is better], "Darktable provides two ways to do so"

*** Page 33

• 1st paragraph: "Clicking the button opens the standard file chooser so we can choose the file"

Exporting table

• file on disk: "This will be described in more detail later"
• flickr webalbum: "and the photoset into which you wish to upload the pictures"
• picasa webalbum: "if tags should be included in the export and the album into which you wish to upload the pictures"

*** Page 34

• last sentence: "The extension is picked up by the chosen file format"

*** Page 35

• second paragraph: "After selecting where to store the generated pictures and selecting the proper format, pressing export will do the job.

*** Page 36

Global options

• 1st paragraph: "Independently of where to export"
• max size: "Maximum width and height", "The other side will be resized by darktable keeping the aspect ratio.", "specifying 1024 to both max width and height"

*** Page 39

• 1st paragraph: "tags are also used to select which pictures show on the light table"
• 2nd paragraph: "those can be filtered thanks to.."

*** Page 40

• 1st paragraph: "many darktable plugins are explained in detail"

White balance

• 1st paragraph: "objects that are white in the real scene appear white in the photo."

*** Page 41

• 2nd paragraph (after info box): "Most cameras provide a few white balance presets"

*** Page 47

• 2nd paragraph: "there is no silver bullet rule that makes a well composed photo."

Center of interest

• 1st paragraph: "otherwise they become disturbances"
• 1st info box: "this is not the case in most good pictures"

Placement of the subject

• 1st paragraph: "the most known of them being the rule of thirds."

*** Page 48

• 1st paragraph: "three rows all of the same width and height."
• last paragraph: reference to Figure 18 is broken

*** Page 49

Simplicity

• 4th paragraph: "first select a subject that allows a simple arrangement"

*** Page 50

Shapes and lines

• 1st paragraph: "Shapes and lines are important elements"
• 3rd paragraph: missing period in the end

*** Page 51

• 3rd paragraph (vertical lines): "Objects such as buildings and people represent horizontal lines" <- shouldn't it be vertical lines?

*** Page 52

• 1st paragraph: "for example by positioning it following one of the composition rules seen earlier and carefully controling the depth of field so that the breaking pattern is at the maximum level of detail."

Lighting

• 2nd paragraph: "Also pay attention to areas that are too lit. White and bright strongly attracts the human eye and therefore can distract the viewer's attention from the main point of interest"

Framing

• 2nd paragraph: "is how the camera should be turned"

Perspective

• "Another way to see at perspective [not sure what you mean here?] in a photographic composition is the way a three-dimensional scene is reproduced on a two-dimensional plane.

*** Page 54

Lens correction plug-in

• 2nd paragraph: "The reason why there is a lens correction plugin is because all lenses are imperfect"

*** Page 55

• 1st paragraph (after the image): "(thanks to the fact that darktable detects the equipment", "If instead the camera and/or the lens are not detected correctly"

*** Page 57

Crop

• 1st paragraph: "for example to follow one of the composition rules"
• 2nd paragraph: "cropping means removing pixels from the image"
• 4th paragraph: "more of a disturbing element than an element that supports the main subject"

*** Page 58

• 2nd paragraph: "The default is free, which allows a free aspect ratio of the crop"
• 3rd paragraph: "To do so, select image aspect ratio"
• last sentence: "Digital development makes it very easy to apply this kind of processing to an image, but it is important to remark that even though technology helps" (or "that despite the fact that technology helps")

*** Page 59

Rotate

• 1st paragraph: "Keeping vertical lines... seems like an easy task; instead, even professional photographers"
• 2nd paragraph: "drag the mouse until where necessary"
• 3rd paragraph: "the image will be rotated"

Distortion

• 1st paragraph: "It can be easily noticed when an image is projected on a plane which is not perfectly parallel to the plane of the projector", "this effect is quite common when taking a picture", "the lens is not parallel _ _ with the plane of the building any more. As illustrated in Figure 35"

*** Page 60

Black and white

• 2nd paragraph (after info box): "Capturing black and white photos forces a different point of view"
• 3rd paragraph: "Why would someone want to shoot in black and white?"

*** Page 61

• last paragraph: "different part of the visible spectrum: the three types of cones" (or "visible spectrum. The three types of cones"

*** Page 62

Sensors, filters and colors

• 3rd paragraph: "However, in most digital cameras", "One of the most used filters is the Bayer filter"

*** Page 63

Conversion to black and white

• 1st paragraph: "all images are captured in color"
• 4th paragraph: "There is no silver bullet", "so that there is enough contrast to pop up all points of interest"
• 5th paragraph: "Getting rid of colors lets the photographer focus", "the absence of colors is an invitation to the viewer"

*** Page 64

• 4th paragraph: "The lesser the diameter of the circle", "This is useful to emphasize a detail which had a particular color in the original image."

Info box

• 1st paragraph: "but there are also square shaped ones."
• 2nd paragraph: "Among the most used filters, especially in the digital age, are the UV filter and the polarizer"
• 4th paragraph: "So if a sunset has the clouds illuminated in red by the sun, a red filter will lighten those clouds"
• 5th paragraph: "A nature shot can be enhanced" (shoot also works, but in this context shot makes more sense I think)

*** Page 65

Using the channel mixer

• 1st paragraph: "One of the most used ways of converting a color picture"

*** Page 66

• last paragraph: "By default"

*** Page 69

• last sentence: "a simple conversion to black and white provides the result"

*** Page 70

• 1st paragraph: "In the following paragraphs we will see"
• 2nd paragraph: "its content becomes similar to figure 56"
• 4th paragraph: "On the horizontal axis_ are_ the L channel values"
• last paragraph: "the greater_ the slope_ angle of the curve the higher_ the_ contrast between the tones"

*** Page 71

• 2nd paragraph: "the result can be checked in real-time."
• 3rd paragraph: "The best way to familiarize yourself with the tone curve plugin"

*** Page 72

• 1st paragraph: "we can darken the background a bit", This can still be done easily by darkening _ _ the low-L tones of the image more like illustrated"

*** Page 73

• 2nd paragraph: "which defines_ _ whether the shadows tone or the highlights tone gets a larger share", and I'm not sure about what you mean with the last part, perhaps "which defines how tinted the shadows and highlights will be" ?

*** Page 77

White balance

• Description: "There are three ways _ _ to use it"
• Usage: "Set the tint from ," is wrong, but I'm not sure if there's something missing or just the extra "from". Also "Choose one of the following presets:"

*** Page 78

Velvia

• Usage, Vibrance: "This increases the amount of vibrance the plug-in applies."

*** Page 80

Color correction

• Description: "or to give a tint to the entire image."

Color zones

• Description: "It is very useful and allows every change"
• Usage: "The horizontal axis represents the different values", "For both horizontal and vertical axes you can work"

Unbreak input profile

• Description: "So, it's fine to hide it"

*** Page 81

Crop and rotate

• Description: "It also includes many guidelines that help you use the module."
• Usage, Angle: "draw al line along the horizon;"
• Usage, Guides: "recompose your picture when cropping."

*** Page 82

Lens correction

• Usage: "The lens used to take a shot is usually detected"

*** Page 83

Chromatic aberrations

• Usage: "This plug-in corrects the chromatic aberrations"

*** Page 84

Split Toning

• Description, 2nd paragraph: "which leaves a gap that is untouched by the effect"
• Usage, Balance: "The balance is presented as a ratio bar."
• Balance and Compression titles should be Bold

Vignetting

• Description: There's an extra reference to Appendix C

*** Page 86

• end of the previous page's table: "the desired location"

Graduated neutral density

• Usage, Compression: "Controls how progressive the gradient is from the more dense side to the less dense side."
• Usage, Split: "Percentage of the available area that will be affected by the filter"

Appendix C

• Installing on Ubuntu, Step 4: "You're almost done!"

So, I just checked out the book again and it seems like it's specific for dt 0.8, because it says so at the beginning. I think we should check out dt again, and update some stuff if necessary. If not, just update the version numbers...