[pizza234]

The problem is UX, so it's not missing something in the sense that it's not possible to achieve something, rather, that something is very easy to achieve for somebody who's not an expert.

The last time I've tested Darktable was quite some time ago, but, on top of my head:

- dehazing is super-easy and very effective in LR

- pano stitching

- auto retouching; experts clearly don't care about this, but for a non-expert, it produces an easy base to work on (assuming it has a very solid implementation)

- I remember LR making it very easy to straighten photos by drawing a line with a tool.

I'm sure all of the above "can be done" in any software (in particularly, the last one), but that's not really the point - the point is how easy it is for a non-expert to effectively use all of them. I remember just going through each panel, and applying effects by moving sliders. That's a great UX experience for non-experts - experts can use Photoshop.

[bayindirh]

I understand for what you saying, but when I started to use Darktable (>=2.4.x and 3.x to be exact), giving an hour of poking allowed me to understand most of its basic operation. So latest iterations of Darktable is not obscure like earlier versions of Blender. It's much more discoverable.

> dehazing is super-easy and very effective in LR

Darktable has a dehaze filter and it works very well, but didn't compare with LR TBH.

> pano stitching

Didn't need it yet, so no comments here.

> auto retouching;

Darktable auto settings for some tools, but I didn't dig deeper since I don't use auto stuff much, TBH.

> I remember LR making it very easy to straighten photos by drawing a line with a tool.

It's exactly the same in Darktable. Plus it has a very solid perspective detection and correction tool.

I'm not a photo pro. Just an enthusiast if you're eager to put a level. I explored Darktable exactly the way you've told. Just open an image, open a category and play with sliders, that's all.