Have never tried it myself - but as a user of both DPP (canon digital photo professional) and Photoshop, I have found that the cabin software has an advantage with quality - something about understanding the camera better.
How does darktable match up to DPP and Photoshop?
It doesn't fare that well. Proper RAW encoders have tens of manyears of dedicated work put in, intimate knowledge of the camera sensors (often with the assistance of camera makers), expensive labs for color tests etc, and top it with several patented proprietary techniques for the image processing part (Photoshop has tons of those).
That's frankly bollocks. :)
Caveat: I'm a visual effects professional since 20 years. I know "a bit" about color and image processing. I also use Photoshop since the time when it was called "Barneyscan".
Now, if you tell me what color workflow tools DT lacks and what camera/sensor specific things you think are missing and what secret image processing sauce Photoshop supposedly has that DT is missing, I'm sure I will be able to refute every single one of your concerns.
On a sidenote, one of DT's authors is Johannes Hannika, PhD. Who works at Weta in Wellington NZ as a visual effects professional. Go figure. :)
Those things are all nice but they don't necessarily bring superiority. For example I've found RawTherapee's AMAZE algorithm to be superior to Lightroom and Photoshop when it comes to demosaicing RAW files. It deals noticeably (and consistently) better with moiré on clothing for example.
Can you define what makes a proper RAW "decoder"? We actually discuss about RAW decoding here. Adobe offers the DNG SDK as open source, it gives quite good clue on how to process RAW images, alternatively dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software. Once the CFA bayer (or other mosaicing type) data is available (decrypted as it is crypted for quite a few camera makers), the demosaicing performed and the photo white-balanced and exported with its full dynamic range in a RGB colourspace, you have done most of the technical steps to start working creatively with it.
>Adobe offers the DNG SDK as open source, it gives quite good clue on how to process RAW images, alternatively dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software.
The DNG software is not really relevant, as it's mainly used by smaller camera makers. Yeah, it would be niced if everyone adopted an open standard, but in the real world Nikon, Canon, Sony etc use their own RAW formats, and those are undocumented and proprietary. dcraw from Dave Coffin, on the other hand, is a small, mostly one man, project based on reverse engineering.
>Once the CFA bayer (or other mosaicing type) data is available (decrypted as it is crypted for quite a few camera makers), the demosaicing performed and the photo white-balanced and exported with its full dynamic range in a RGB colourspace, you have done most of the technical steps to start working creatively with it.
Having done "most of the technical steps to start working creatively" and having the best possible image resulting from the decoder is a totally different thing.
Choice of demosaicing algorithm (there's not an 1-1 mapping between a RAW file and that), and steps applied after that, like sharpening, color correction and some basic curves affect the end result in a big way, and are big parts of what makes a photo software good in its RAW handling. RAW images don't just get demosaiced and that's it before we view/start editing them.
> dcraw from Dave Coffin has been online for ages and is the basis (in a way or another) of most of open source RAW processing software.
That is actually not true. Yes, _some_ free/libre apps do use, but if you look closer, they probably make 1/2 of free software, and it's the least capable half.
Actually, it fares really well, depending on how you use it. If you're using one-click, ultra-simple modules like shadows and highlights, temperature, or brightness and contrast, Photoshop & Lightroom will win every time. Doing high-level editing with tone-curve, base-curve, color-zones, color-correction, split-toning, etc. is a different story. Darktable holds its ground. Even if it messes up, you can easily fix any errors with a parametric mask.
