Ansel is fantastic photo editing software which is a recent discovery for me. It is a fork of Darktable, and is similar in many ways, but, the UI has been considerably simplified. The maintainer has removed many of the duplicate modules and the result is a far simpler and easier to use version of Darktable.
Darktable has perhaps been a little too permissive with allowing new features. I do like it, but I find it completely overwhelming. I would often fluke an OK result, and when editing something a few weeks later be at a loss to remember which modules I had used.
While Darktable is a very powerful tool for advanced users, and not designed to be as simple to use as Lightroom, it is extremely intimidating for newbies or infrequent users. Coupled with a general dislike of post-production work on my photos, I started to realise that Darktable’s complexity making me reluctant to edit my photos.
While searching for an alternative to Darktable I came across Ansel.
Ansel has been a revelation for me, and I don’t just enjoy using it, I love using it.
Even though Ansel’s UI is much cleaner than Darktable, if I had not watched a few explainer YouTubes by Aurélien Pierre first I would have struggled.
Like Darktable, Ansel is incredibly powerful and has features that I am unlikely to ever use — I prefer shots as close to how they come out of the camera. My recent need to edit is due to shooting small fast moving targets in poor light, requiring high shutter speeds and high ISO, resulting in images that are either well under exposed or noisy, or both.
Ansel is alpha software and comes with the usual warnings, but so far with my simple needs it’s been stable and requires very few workarounds.
