[uds-announce] Darktable experience

[Thomas Bushnell, BSG]

If there is someone at UDS with expertise in using Darktable (or, actually,
Shotwell) for photo handling, I'd love to pick your brains and have a
conversation about what's most effective. As a prelude, I can give you some
of the topics that I would love to hear more about:

1) Shotwell gives me the choice between the camera's jpeg "developing" and
its own, and almost always I find my camera did a much better job. (It's a
pretty high-end prosumer model, so this does not surprise me.) Is there a
way to get darktable to give me that choice? It seems to simply treat the
raw and jpeg files as two separate images.

2) Is there a way to get the Shotwell photo handling and have darktable as
a backend, without dealing with lots of files and constant important
back-and-forth myself?

3) If I use shotwell or darktable, their non-destructive editing seems
all-or-nothing, when what I'd love is a sort of "tree" of changes, where
the whole history is kept in some way. Am I missing something here?

4) My understanding is that if I run the Canon software on Windows, it
would present me with a lightroom/darktable sort of interface, and it would
show me the file as it was "developed" by the camera, and then let me tweak
from there. Can darktable do this? Of course, that means that the Canon
software has exactly the same algorithms as are in the camera, and
presumably darktable does not. What's best?

5) What is the best way to have fun for a decent photographer, but a total
noob at digital photo editing, to learn how these tools to make photos
better?

Please don't fill the list with replies, but if you'd like to have a
conversation this week--maybe more than one--I'd love the chance to learn
from some more experienced users.

Thomas
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