darktable Blog

If you haven’t tried ansel: https://ansel.photos/en/ or darktable: https://www.darktable.org/ I’d recommend trying them out - they are the current open source raw editing apps that perform well that are out there. It could be that this app is competitive with them, but I haven’t had a chance to try it out yet - but both ansel and darktable run well on my M1.

https://www.darktable.org/ is a great RAW editing software which runs on macOS

Darktable is an excellent RAW developer. I learned it without ever knowing lightroom since I was a full-time Linux home user before I got into DSLR photography. I learned by following this playlist of tutorials and am amazed at the possibilities of creative expression in the digital darkroom. https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLsks-zRRM1ZVN_g7P6ZAsYVqTltmXyB… https://www.darktable.org/

I don't use it often but on Linux I found https://www.darktable.org/ great. They also have a Mac Version. Maybe something worth looking into.

> good raster photo editor with non-destructive editing capabilities RawTherapee and DarkTable are both excellent (I prefer DarkTable), and in some cases have much better plugins and algorithms than Adobe has to offer in Lightroom or Photoshop. Which one works best mainly depends on your preferred UI set-up, but I'd say they're easily at Adobe's level: http://darktable.org/ http://www.rawtherapee.com/

When GIMP happens to be not the best tool for photo editing (Photoshop definitely has an edge in this department), I turn to the excellent darktable (http://www.darktable.org/). Since I don't do any paper printing pre-processing that requires CMYK support, the duo above completely replaces Photoshop for my tasks.

Writing this from a Lenovo X1 running Linux... The keyboard is great so if you do a lot of writing (e.g. you are a developer) this is a very good machine. But if you are doing other stuff then maybe this is not the machine for you. With that said, checkout darktable (http://www.darktable.org/ ) which was discussed a few days ago on HN.

Using Safari 8 on Yosemite. Clicking on the curve points doesn't do anything. I just retried it thinking maybe I had done something wrong, but still no love. Re: correction profiles, I'm not sure. Darktable has some, though not as many as Lightroom, so there must be some public source for some of them. This is actually a pretty big deal (for me at least). I'm not a photographer, but I publish a digital/ipad magazine and do most of the retouching work. http://www.darktable.org (Not a fan of darktable, but they do some things pretty well).

I agree on some points, but for the non destructive photo adjustment there is an excellent open source alternative caleld darktable which you should check out if you haven't: http://www.darktable.org/ Arguably, they don't support none of the vector layers, but thats something you could do in Inkscape. Agreed that it might be more convenient to stay in one tool, though.

Darktable, which is mentioned in passing in the article, is really a great application already. For those who haven't yet seen it, I would highly recommend checking it out. IMHO its development community could benefit from some more voices, and there are definitely some annoying 'features', but it's truly an excellent tool for producing finished images from digital photography. http://www.darktable.org/

GIMP is not meant for Raw management, that was not a good recommendation. Try http://www.darktable.org/ or http://rawtherapee.com/ . Both free software.

I have been focusing on film-based photography for 15+ years - mostly printing in the darkroom, but also often scanning - and can wholeheartedly recommend Vuescan on Linux. About 6 years ago, however, I switched exclusively to the open-source XSane [1] and it operates my old scanner(s) beautifully, with all features including the transparency unit. Try it out if you don't have a highly unusual scanner with driver issues. My workflow involves: 1. XSane for scanning (to 16bit TIFF) 2. exiftool [2] to tag my images with full metadata from my notes: camera, lens, aperture, film, datetime etc just like your digital camera would 3. Darktable [3] to manage my library, cropping, sharpening, adjustments, and tagging It's a little bit of work - but nowhere near as much as taking and processing 4x5in photographs, and the "digital end results" are very satisfactory. If I may, an example image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/dawidloubser/35944112383 [1] http://www.sane-project.org/ [2] https://exiftool.org/ [3] https://www.darktable.org/

I use and love DigiKam[0] for organizing my ≈230k RAW & JPG media library, and both RawTherapee[1] and Darktable[2] are great for more specific editing (though I haven't settled on an ideal workflow yet). One cool thing about DigiKam is that you can have it use a remote MySQL server for its db, theoretically allowing you to work with your library from the road (I think... it's been several months since I've spent a weekend working on my photo libraries). Adobe's Lightroom truly is a great and powerful tool like so many of their other apps, but I just can't stomach having years' worth of work locked up in a proprietary subscription-model app. And I just consider Apple Photos untrustworthy, though I do like to use it + iCloud shared photo albums to publish my edited "selects" instead of my full library. Now if only there was a real F/LOSS contender to replace FCPX... [0] https://www.digikam.org/ [1] https://rawtherapee.com/ [2] https://www.darktable.org/

This is certainly a Matryoshka doll of wrappings: - At root there is dcraw [1], which is Dave Coffin's sometimes inscrutable but massive and high-functioning CLI utility to read virtually any raw file from virtually any camera. - On top of this, we have LibRaw [2] which "librarizes" dcraw so it can play nice with other C programs. LibRaw is big and complicated (like dcraw) but incredibly helpful. - On top of that, there is rawkit [3] (with which I wasn't formerly familiar, and looks interesting), which provides a Python cffi interface to LibRaw. - And now we have a REPL built on top of rawkit! Somewhat perversely, I hope someone makes a CLI interface to rawkit, and then we could call it, er, dcraw? One caveat here is that dcraw and its prodigies, though amazing, do just the initial steps in tuning up a RAW file -- the demosaicing and just a few other niceties such as white balance. If you want to process the image in a sophisticated way (e.g. curves, local contrast adjustment, shadows/highlights, sharpening, masks, etc.) you'll need to switch to a different tool, such as darktable [4] or RawTherapee [5]. Or use ImageMagick, as mentioned by another commenter. Note that darktable now can be scripted via lua, which could be another source of flexibility. And also that darktable ditched LibRaw for RawSpeed [6], which is more elegant than LibRaw, as it was written from scratch as library to load RAW files (and do nothing else), rather than, like dcraw, accreted over the…

Darktable (https://www.darktable.org/) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.

darktable[1] and Spektrafilm[2]. [1] https://darktable.org [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47761280

>> Only thing holding me back is Adobe Lightroom. You might be interested in Darktable or the less common fork called Ansel. https://www.darktable.org/ https://ansel.photos/en/ These have Windows versions you can try before moving your world to Linux.

It isn't alternative to photoshop though, what about darktable (https://www.darktable.org/)? I could be wrong but it is more of an alternative to lightroom afaik. Have you used?

There are actually a number of more-or-less node/graph-based image editors: # chaiNNer Fully node-based image processing. https://github.com/chaiNNer-org/chaiNNer # vkdt Node-based raw and video editor. Sort of the evolution of darktable, by the original developer. https://jo.dreggn.org/vkdt/readme.html # darktable The graph is strictly linear (single input, single output), but you can change the order of the processing and insert new nodes as you want. https://www.darktable.org Pretty sure there are some others, but those are the three I can remember right now.

https://github.com/ktgw0316/LightZone https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.darktable.org/ https://www.pinta-project.com/

Darktable is decent (in my experience). https://www.darktable.org/

I'm pretty new to photography. I understand a lot of the basics (ex-wife shot as a professional hobbyist for a few years) but never really paid much attention to her editing workflow. Adobe already gets me for $20/mo for Illustrator (because designers) and I looked at alternatives. I've been using darktable http://darktable.org since I got my camera about a month ago and it's nice enough for me.

I can't speak to high DPI screens, but I've certainly had display issues out of the box. Usually they just required installing the right proprietary drivers (which surprisingly the graphics card company supplied). Have you tried Raw Therapee or Darktable? I'm not sure how well they would work first-hand, but they sound promising for photo editing and might have some overlap with Capture One https://www.rawtherapee.com/ https://www.darktable.org/

DarkTable - https://www.darktable.org/ - is a free and opensource alternative to Lightroom but the UI takes some time getting used to.

I tried and used Lightroom for a while. I didn't want to keep paying Adobe so I tried to switch to darktable[0]. https://www.darktable.org Maybe I'll give lightroom another try.

The devs are actively anti-folder structure handling within Darktable[1], which is why I still have to use Digikam or a file manager and then leave my computer for a few hours to re-import my entire collection every so often. Re. UI, open source programs almost always end up on the side of technically correct rather than user friendly. So we're served a bunch of jargon with no easy way to find out more other than searching the web and hoping that whichever term they use has a single meaning, is only used in this context, and is used universally rather than some other term. These things are rarely all true at the same time. All that said, Darktable is great for my simple use, and it's my main photo developing application. [1] https://www.darktable.org/about/faq/#faq-rename-files

"If a decent enough quality version of lightroom that works with Linux comes on the market" It's called Darktable. https://www.darktable.org/

Affinity doesn't run on Linux, so it's not a replacement for GIMP as a Unix hacker's art tool. I like Krita (https://krita.org) as a painting tool. Darktable (https://www.darktable.org) does photo editing, although I haven't used it myself.

I am in the process of switching from Lightroom to Darktable [1]. Lightroom seems to have better lens aberration fixing algorithms but I'm still learning Darktable, so, I might be doing something wrong. Also, I do miss the styles selection from LR... There is a community around Darktable styles [2], but it doesn't seem to cover everything LR does. On the bright side, Darktable seems very very fast (compared to LR) and the overall process (when you know what to do) is really satisfying. [1] https://www.darktable.org/ [2] https://dtstyle.net/

As suggested in another comment, the best way would probably to shoot in RAW (so you get the data directly from your camera's sensor) and then use postprocessing tools made for negatives. Darktable has a new module called "negadoctor" for this, see https://www.darktable.org/2020/08/darktable-3-2/ (ctrl+f negadoctor). Darktable also supports Lua scripting, maybe that could be used to automate a workflow.