Darktable manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.

Features

  • Non-destructive editing throughout the complete workflow, your original images are never modified.
  • Take advantage of the real power of raw: All darktable core functions operate on 4x32-bit floating point pixel buffers, enabling SSE instructions for speedups.
  • GPU accelerated image processing: many image opertions are lightning fast thanks to OpenCL support (runtime detection and enabling).
  • Professional color management: darktable is fully color managed, supporting automatic display profile detection on most systems, including built-in ICC profile support for sRGB, Adobe RGB, XYZ and linear RGB color spaces.
  • Cross platform: darktable runs on Linux, macOS / macports, BSD, Windows and Solaris 11 / GNOME.
  • Filtering and sorting: search your image collections by tags, image rating (stars), color labels and many more, use flexible database queries on all metadata of your images.
  • Image formats: darktable can import a variety of standard, raw and high dynamic range image formats (e.g. JPEG, CR2, NEF, HDR, PFM, RAF ... ).
  • Zero-latency, zoomable user interface: through multi-level software caches darktable provides a fluid experience.
  • Tethered shooting: support for instrumentation of your camera with live view for some camera brands.
  • Speaks your language: darktable currently comes with 21 translations: Albanian, Catalan, Czech, Danish, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian and Portuguese), Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Ukrainian.
  • Powerful export system supports G+ and Facebook webalbums, flickr upload, disk storage, 1:1 copy, email attachments and can generate a simple html-based web gallery. darktable allows you to export to low dynamic range (JPEG, PNG, TIFF), 16-bit (PPM, TIFF), or linear high dynamic range (PFM, EXR) images.
  • Never lose your image development settings darktable uses both XMP sidecar files as well as its fast database for saving metadata and processing settings. All Exif data is read and written using libexiv2.
  • Automate repetitive tasks: Many aspects of darktable can be scripted in Lua.

Modules

Currently darktable contains 61 image operation modules. Many modules support powerful blending operators offering blend functionality that works on the incoming image information and the output of the current module or be used with drawn masks.

Basic image operations:

  • Contrast, brightness, saturation: Quickly tune your image using this simple module.
  • Shadows and highlights: Improve images by lightening shadows and darkening highlights. Read Ulrich's blog post on this.
  • Crop and rotate: This module is used to crop, rotate and correct the perspective of your image. It also includes many helpful guidelines that assist you using the tools (e.g. rule of thirds or golden ratio).
  • Base curve: darktable comes with general enhanced basecurve presets for several models that are automatically applied to raw images for better colors and contrast.
  • Exposure controls: Tweak the image exposure either by using the sliders in the module or dragging the histogram around.
  • Demosaic: You have the choice between several demosaicing methods when editing raw files.
  • Highlight reconstruction: This module tries to reconstruct color information that is usually clipped due to information not being complete in all channels.
  • White balance: A module offering three ways to set the white balance. You can set tint and temperature or you define the value of each channel. The module offers predefined white balance settings as well. Or just pick a neutral region in the image to balance for that.
  • Invert: A module inverting colors based on the color of film material.

Tone image operations:

  • Fill light: This module allows the local modification of the exposure based on pixel lightness.
  • Levels: This module offers the well-known levels adjustment tools to set black, grey and white points.
  • Tone curve: This module is a classical tool in digital photography. You can change the lightness by dragging the line up or down. darktable lets you separately control the L, a and b channel. Read in Ulrich's blog post how to make use of this feature.
  • Zone system: This module changes the lightness of your image. It is based on the Ansel Adams system. It allows to modify the lightness of a zone taking into account the effect on the adjacent zones. It divides the lightness in a user-defined number of zones.
  • Local contrast: This module can be used to boost details in the image.
  • Two different tone mapping modules: These modules allow to recreate some contrast for HDR images.

Color image operations:

  • Velvia: The velvia module enhances the saturation in the image; it increases saturation on lower saturated pixels more than on high saturated pixels.
  • Channel mixer: This module is a powerful tool to manage channels. As entry, it manipulates red, green and blue channels. As output, it uses red, green, blue or grey or hue, saturation, lightness.
  • Color contrast
  • Color correction: This module can be used to modify the global saturation or to give a tint. Read Johannes' blog post.
  • Monochrome: This module is a quick way to convert an image to black and white. You can simulate a color filter in order to modify your conversion. The filter can be changed in size and color center.
  • Color zones: This module allows to selectively modify the colors in your image. It is highly versatile and allows every transformation possible in the LCh colorspace.
  • Color balance: Use lift/gamma/gain to change highlights, midtones and shadows.
  • Vibrance: For a detailed description read Henrik's blog post.
  • Color look up table: Apply styles or film emulations. You can also easily edit the changes done. For more information you can read this blog post
  • Input/output/display color profile management
  • A useful feature that displays pixels outside the dynamic range.

Correction modules:

  • Dithering: This helps with banding in smooth gradients in the final image.
  • Sharpen: This is a standard UnSharp Mask tool for sharpening the details of an image.
  • Equalizer: This versatile module can be used to achieve a variety of effects, such as bloom, denoising, and local contrast enhancement. It works in the wavelet domain, and parameters can be tuned for each frequency band separately.
  • Denoise (non-local means): Denoising with separated color / brightness smoothing.
  • Defringe: Remove color fringes on high contrast edges.
  • Haze removal: This module allows to remove the low contrast and color tint coming from haze and air pollution.
  • Denoise (bilateral filter): Another denoising module.
  • Liquify: Push image parts around, grow them, shrink them. More information can be found in this blog post
  • Perspective correction: A great module to automatically un-distort shots with straight lines. See our blog post for an introduction and examples.
  • Lens correction: lens defect correction using lensfun.
  • Spot removal: Spot removal allows you to correct a zone in your image by using another zone as model.
  • Profiled denoise: By measuring the typical noise of cameras at the different ISO levels darktable is able to remove a lot of it. Read this blog post for more information.
  • Raw denoise: Raw denoise allows you to perfom denoising on pre-demosaic data. It is ported from dcraw.
  • Hot pixels: This module allows you to visualize and correct stuck and hot pixels.
  • Chromatic aberrations: This module automatically detects and corrects chromatic aberrations.

Effects/artistic image postprocessing:

  • Watermark: The watermark module provides a way to render a vector-based overlay onto your image. Watermarks are standard SVG documents and can be designed using Inkscape. The SVG processor of darktable also substitutes strings within the SVG document which gives the opportunity to include image-dependent information in the watermark such as aperture, exposure time and other metadata.
  • Framing: This module allows you to add an artistic frame around an image.
  • Split toning: Original split toning method creates a two color linear toning effect where the shadows and highlights are represented by two different colors. darktable split toning module is more complex and offers more parameters to tweak the result.
  • Vignetting: This module is an artistic feature which creates vignetting (modification of the brightness/saturation at the borders).
  • Soften: This module is an artistic feature that creates the Orton effect also commonly known as softening the image. Michael Orton achieved such result on slide film by using 2 exposures of the same scene: one well exposed and one overexposed; then he used a technique to blend those into a final image where the overexposed image was blurred.
  • Grain: This module is an artistic feature which simulates the grain of a film.
  • Highpass: This module acts as highpass filter.
  • Lowpass: This module acts as lowpass filter. One use case is described in Ulrich's blog post.
  • Lowlight vision: Low light module allows to simulate human lowlight vision, thus providing the ability to make lowlight pictures look closer to reality. It can also be used to perform a day to night conversion.
  • Bloom: This module boost highlights and softly blooms them over the image.
  • Color mapping: Transfer colors from one image to another.
  • Colorize
  • Graduated density: This module aims at simulating a neutral density filter, in order to correct exposure and color in a progressive manner.

What's New

Performance Improvements

  • Fixed some OpenCL code paths that could produce garbled or unprocessed output without reporting the issue back to the pixel-pipe.

Other Changes

  • Image discovery from the import dialog is now performed asynchronously. This means that a long parsing (due to using recursive mode in a directory with a huge number of sub-directories and files) can be interrupted by selecting another place/directory or un-checking recursive mode.

Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with importing images in recursive mode. Using this mode without having first selected a directory could freeze darktable due to it having to parse the whole disk (though it would recover eventually). When importing images in recursive mode, the thumbs for images discovered in sub-directories are now properly displayed.
  • Fixed memory and resource leaks in the QOI image loader.
  • Fixed RGBE image loader.
  • Fixed possible issue with guide lines not being displayed in the Rotate and Perspective module.
  • Fixed non-persistent zoom level in culling mode when switching images.
  • Fixed crashes related to details mask when running low on GPU or system memory.
  • Fixed incorrect rendering of an initial snapshot after creating a second snapshot.
  • Keep selected styles in the style dialog after editing them.
  • Fixed collection selection for ISO, aperture and aspect ratio to work in all locales (independent of any locale-specific decimal separator).
  • Fixed RAW Chromatic Aberrations module, which could crash due to a rounding issue while computing an internal buffer size. This could cause a buffer overflow and possibly crash darktable.
  • Avoid undershoots while interpolating in Lens Correction, Rotate and Perspective, Retouch and Liquify modules.
  • Include LibRaw fix for artifacts when decoding high-ISO Canon CR3 files.
  • Fixed possible incorrect module name when applying styles, whereby the module name was showing garbled text.
  • Fixed possible incorrect default value initialized in Lens Correction legacy parameter migration from version 2.
  • Fixed garbled output and possible OpenCL errors for very dark regions in Color Balance RGB.
  • Fixed OpenCL startup for various cards.
  • Fixed issue where the right-click-and-drag rotation line was not being displayed on the image when a darkroom module was expanded.
  • Fixed lighttable scrolling freeze when using a track-pad.
  • Fix compatibility issues with HDR created DNG files.
  • Fix possible crash when using the capture's live view mode.
  • Fixed a zooming bug in lighttable culling mode where some images' area could be plain grey or having a very small thumb.
  • Fixed some missing pipe recomputing making processing modules' graph (Tone Equalizer for example) not properly updated.
  • Fixed several mouse scroll-wheel issues on macOS when used in combination with the Shift modifier key (color harmonies width, module height, geotagging date/time, ...).

Camera Support

  • Canon EOS Kiss F
  • Canon EOS Kiss X50
  • Canon EOS Kiss X90
  • Canon IXY 220F (dng, chdk)
  • Canon PowerShot SX220 HS (chdk)
  • Fujifilm FinePix SL1000
  • Fujifilm GFX100 II (compressed)
  • Fujifilm X-S20 (compressed)
  • Hasselblad CFV-50c
  • Hasselblad CFV II 50C
  • Hasselblad CFV 100C
  • ImBack ImB35mm (chdk)
  • Leica M (Typ 262) (dng)
  • Leica M-D (Typ 262) (dng)
  • Leica M10-D (dng)
  • Leica M10-P (dng)
  • Leica M10-R (dng)
  • Leica M11-P (dng)
  • Leica Q2 Monochrom (dng)
  • Leica S (Typ 007) (dng)
  • Leica S2 (dng)
  • Leica S3 (dng)
  • Leica SL2 (dng)
  • Leica SL2-S (dng)
  • Leica T (Typ 701) (dng)
  • Leica TL (dng)
  • Leica TL2 (dng)
  • Leica V-Lux 4 (4:3, 3:2, 1:1, 16:9)
  • Leica V-Lux 5 (3:2)
  • Leica X (Typ 113) (dng)
  • Leica X Vario (Typ 107) (dng)
  • Leica X-U (Typ 113) (dng)
  • Leica X1 (dng)
  • Nikon Coolpix A1000 (12bit-uncompressed)
  • Nikon Z f (14bit-compressed)
  • OM System TG-7
  • Panasonic DC-TZ200D (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-TZ202D (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-TZ220 (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-TZ220D (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-ZS200D (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-ZS220 (3:2)
  • Panasonic DC-ZS220D (3:2)
  • Panasonic DMC-G10 (3:2, 16:9, 1:1)
  • Panasonic DMC-GM1S (4:3, 3:2, 16:9, 1:1)
  • Pentax K-3 Mark III Monochrome
  • Pentax KF
  • Pentax Q-S1 (dng)
  • Pentax Q10 (dng)
  • Samsung EK-GN120
  • Samsung G920F (dng)
  • Samsung G935F (dng)
  • Samsung GX10 (dng)
  • Samsung GX20 (dng)
  • Samsung NX3300
  • Sigma fp (dng)
  • Sigma fp L (dng)
  • Sigma sd Quattro (dng)
  • Sigma sd Quattro H (dng)
  • Sinar eVolution 75
  • Sony ILCE-6700
  • Sony ILCE-7CM2
  • Sony ILCE-7CR
  • Sony ILME-FX3
  • Sony ZV-E1
  • White Balance Presets
  • Leica M (Typ 240)
  • Olympus E-P7
  • Olympus TG-6
  • Phase One IQ180
  • Sony ILCE-7CM2
  • Noise Profiles
  • Canon IXY 220F
  • Nikon Z 8
  • Nikon Z f
  • Olympus E-P7
  • Pentax *ist DS
  • Sony ILCE-6700
  • Sony ILCE-7CM2
  • Missing Compression Mode Support
  • Adobe enhanced DNGs (JPEG XL flavor)
  • Apple ProRAW DNGs
  • CinemaDNG lossless (Blackmagic, some DJI, etc.)
  • Fujifilm lossy RAFs
  • Nikon high efficiency NEFs
  • Samsung Expert RAW DNGs (JPEG XL flavor)
  • Sony downsized lossless ARWs ("M" for full-frame, "S" for full-frame & APS-C)

Suspended Support

Support for the following cameras is suspended because no samples are available on raw.pixls.us:

  • Creo/Leaf Aptus 22(LF3779)/Hasselblad H1
  • Fujifilm FinePix S9600fd
  • Fujifilm IS-1
  • GoPro FUSION
  • Kodak EasyShare Z980
  • Leaf Aptus-II 5(LI300059)/Mamiya 645 AFD
  • Leaf Credo 60
  • Leaf Credo 80
  • Minolta DiMAGE 5
  • Olympus SP320
  • Panasonic DMC-FX150
  • Phase One IQ250
  • Sinar Hy6/ Sinarback eXact
  • ST Micro STV680