Whether you want personnalized help for your workflow and style, or you need pointers to get started with Ansel, don't stay alone with your issues.

Training sessions & editing classes are given through video-conferencing with screen-sharing, using your own photos, and either Ansel or Darktable.

Appointments

Contents

The course of the session can be adapted by mixing any of the following:

  • Ansel & post-processing matters :
    • Lecture on image processing, signal processing, color science, etc.
    • Demonstration of Ansel/Darktable on raw photos provided by the student,
    • Reproduction of visual results (from another software or reference images),
    • Retouch by the student analysed and commented, with advice for improvement,
    • Eye training (color casts and mismatches detection),
    • Mitigation strategies to recover damaged pictures (bad lighting, noise, out-of-focus),
  • General photography matters :
    • Editing and culling series of pictures,
    • Image reading and analysis (lighting, composition), artistic direction at post-processing time,
    • Visual narration and photo essay projects building,
    • Printing and framing advice (choosing paper, printing process, retouching for reflective media, etc.),
    • Specialized retouching technics (beauty, HDR, monochrome, color-grading, etc.),
    • Custom-taylored and comprehensive scene-to-printer photographic workflow.

The typical and suggested process is 1 h of presentation on the teacher’s computer, followed by 1 h of guided retouching on the student’s computer, through screen sharing. But anything is possible, really. Some commited students came for specific answers on the software and keep coming back to improve their photography skills at large.

Over the years, I have also designed a large body of teaching resources (color charts, schematics, graphs) to help explaining how things behave and work.

Benefits

With individual training, you get :

  • Advice adapted to your particular photographic practice, education, background and skills,
  • First-hand information about the software and how it is intended to work,
  • Technics adapted to your visual style,
  • Theoretical complements directly related to your practice, on a need-to-know basis.

And then, I get :

  • Direct feedback regarding the application usability,
  • A better understanding of users needs and challenges,
  • GUI and documentation improving hints,
  • Ideas for new modules.

Your teacher

I am a portrait and studio photographer  turned into image-processing developer, obsessed with color expressivity and light shaping.

I have been using Darktable since 2010, and started making tutorials in 2016. In 2018, I began working on improving Darktable code, especially regarding the color pipeline reliability in HDR settings (color constancy through HDR tone mapping). In 2022, I forked Ansel from Darktable 3.8/4.0 because Darktable has taken huge backwards steps in terms of GUI, basic usability, overall stability and maintainability.

I am the designer of the scene-referred workflow in Darktable, and the author of the following modules: filmic, color balance RGB, tone equalizer, color calibration, blurs, diffuse or sharpen, censorize, negadoctor. I have created the Darktable UCS 22 color space , to allow color saturation manipulations that don’t degrade to neon colors.

I am trained in mechanical engineering, where I specialized in computer simulation of thermodynamics, hence my involvement in some of the most maths-heavy topics of image processing. I play 3 music instruments  (piano, nyckelharpa, Irish whistles), I compose, improvise and have taught on-and-off the piano for a decade.

Music and photography share more than you would think : we operate a medium through technics, guided by theory, hoping to create something personal and touching at the end. From this, we should separate the goals from the means, learn to master the instruments through relentless training, and break free from the useless dichotomy between technics and arts. The point of mastering technics is to stop thinking about it and achieve the results we have in mind. Now, photography being non-performative, the lack of technical craftsmanship can be hidden by trial-and-errors processes and careful culling/editing, but that can end up being very unreliable and the feeling of constantly battling against hardware and software can be very frustrating.

I build Ansel as I would like my music instruments to be built : with state-of-the-art technics and science serving artistic expression, such that the creative process could focus on expressivity and get the technical concerns mostly out of the way.

Testimonials

Ricky Moon
USA — rickymoon.com
It’s my custom to seek out and learn from only the very best in any field of study. The numerous and ongoing private consultations with Aurélien not only meet but exceed my expectations. In Aurélien there is a rare and wonderful balance of expertise spanning the full spectrum from the technical to the aesthetic. His eagle eye for detail, combined with a passion, and caring demeanor is inspiring. Deep discussions of putting "how" in the service of the "why" keeps me fueled to iterate my photography in the pursuit of excellence. If that resonates with you, then I highly recommend booking Aurélien time.
Anna Kowalska
Poland
I am a hobby photographer and use to edit JPEGs from camera using ACDSee. When I understood that JPEGs were limiting me, I wanted to take a leap and use RAWs for editing but I was lost with no starting point in darktable. After trying to watch videos and read articles, I was getting somewhere but it was still daunting. I took a lesson with Aurelien and it was all I needed to understand to get good results. Now all my photos are edited in darktable from RAWs.
Hubert Kowalski
Poland
I knew about darktable for a long time, but only used it a couple of times a year. After watching several hours of videos on Youtube, my results were ok-ish but it sill was neither as easy nor as fast as expected. I asked Aurelien for a lesson, where I managed to quickly understand concepts and principles guiding processing. Now my edits take far less time than previously and I am able to produce consistently good results.

Prerequisites

  1. Internet access allowing HD videoconferencing (minimum 1 Mb/s, ideally 4 Mb/s, up and down),
  2. Have photographs as raw files to edit,
  3. Upload the pictures to edit on my private cloud  at least 24 h in advance,
  4. A working account for a videoconferencing service, among Skype, Jitsi Meet, Google Meet, Element call, Discord (your choice).