Photo editing workflow
Why using Darktable ?
Darktable is one of the first tool of choice when you want to post-process photo:
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It is performing well: preview of your modifications mostly in real time
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It has the most tools: on par with lightroom, maybe even better
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It handles RAW, HDR from multiple exposures
Order of the editing process
Search for what you want to improve
The first step is to take a good, overall look at the picture, and decide what could be changed to your taste or to the public liking. Don’t overthink it but be aware of what spontaneously comes to your mind when you look at it, characteristics you would like to change, improve or correct.
Then I suggest you proceed through the tools listed in the recap table above, from left to right and top to bottom. Once you become familiar with most tools they will come naturally.
Starting from the table left is about taking care of lighting from the beginning, because light affects visibility of elements composing the picture, it is affecting how you will perceive everything else. Then colors are adjusted according to your taste but also given the impression, message and mood.
Performance in mind
Details should be altered last, as your final editing touch. One reason for that is the two previous qualities (lighting and colors) will be affected by details much more than the other way around, and the other reason is because post-processing details is often resource intensive on your computer and so will slow down any further editing step.
Qualities stands out
At any time, I would say that a good edit step reveals details and brings your attention to part of the image you had not noticed before. This can especially be the case when you reduce saturation and alter exposure.
Some photos might appear bland, blurry or too dark, anyway it is always possible to improve an initial render, and sometimes you will be amazed by the qualities hidden in shadows or details that were waiting to be pushed up a little bit.
When you are unsure
When you are unsure about increasing or decreasing a particular slider, max them out and reduce them to 0%, while noticing how the features are affected along the range. By pushing sliders to their limit, you will decide by excluding what you don’t want, rather than what would be better, which is often a very subjective matter.
Come back to it
Like with any piece of work requiring your creative input and focus, it is good to leave your edit aside for a few hours or days before coming back to it in order to discover it again with a fresh perspective. If you spend too much time on one particular edit, you will be too absorbed in its context to be able to notice when things go out of hand.
Also working at different times of the day may impact the external lighting condition at your desk (natural sunlight vs artificial lighting at night), this in turn will make your screen colors and brightness look different, sometimes as much as using a different screen, which in itself is a good idea to do in order to validate the good balance of your post processing.
Frame of references
You may want to collect impressions from looking at the work of other photographers in order to get inspiration for what you want to achieve with your own post-processing work.
The more you do photo editing in general, you will start to notice your own pattern while doing it, such as characteristics you prefer to change and alterations you like to do. It could be that your style is warmer, colder, more contrasty, vivid or on the contrary you might prefer to do black and white.
Never settle for what you already know and always try to be curious about tools you haven’t tried yet, experience with them. Sometimes trying absurd or random changes can lead to amazingly good unexpected results and discoveries, especially if you try to analyze what is changing during the process.
Also getting a photo edit or piece of graphic content from another creator (or even your own previous work) and using it as a frame of reference can be a good idea to assess where you want to go, what kind of render you want to achieve, it will also prevent the pitfalls described above (come back at it) when focusing for too long on a single image.