Apply imported style by default in Darktable

Question

I just learned that visualizing RAW images is not as trivial as I thought. As good a job Darktable do to provide good default setting for all camera, those presets are not perfect. I found online some dstyle files optimized for my camera, I imported them and it looks way better than the default presets.

How can configure Darktable to apply this imported style by default to all picture taken with this camera?

Answer 1

Well, a literal answer would be that you could use darktable's embedded Lua scripting to apply a style to each image after import, possibly first checking the image information for camera model...

However, a more typical method would be to create auto-applied presets in each of the modules that you want to enable/disable. If you hover over the name of a style in the lighttable styles panel, a tooltip displaying a list of used modules will be displayed; these are the ones you should create presets for.

Some styles may explicitly set some modules to "off", and you generally don't need to do this with presets, with the exception of the base curve module. Since this module is currently* always enabled on newly imported images, it needs to be explicitly "disabled" by setting it to "linear" with the reset button, and making that an auto-applied preset.

* UPDATE: It looks like darktable 2.8 will have an option to disable the automatic application of the basecurve module.

Answer 2

The step by step process could be like that :

1. Import your styles (module styles in the lighttable)
2. Select a photo
3. Apply your styles (button is bottom left from your photo when you are in the darkroom) and/or adjust your settings in the darkroom.
4. For every module of the darkroom you have customized the settings, store a new preset (3-bars menu top right of each module) an select [✓] auto apply this preset to maching images.
   • You can filter the images on which this preset will be applied by camera brand, model, … (see presets→base curve in daktable preferences for examples)
   • You can know which modules are used in your styles when you hover over the style in the styles module of the lighttable)