Love this! In the photography community, we had MIDI2LR (MIDI to Lightroom) (https://rsjaffe.github.io/MIDI2LR/)
I used Behringer Xtouch Mini mapped to Lightroom. This allows tactile controls, and also lets you keep your eyes on the photo being edited, instead of the constant back and forth between the controls and the photo.
Darktable also supports Midi controls, I played with it with a korg nano kontrol back in the day.