sometimes difficult lighting situations arise which, when taking photographs, result in unappealing pictures. for instance very uniform lighting on a cloudy day may give dull results, while very contrasty illumination (such as back lit) may require to compress the contrast to embrace both highlights and shadows in the limited dynamic range of the output device.
refer to the following two shots as examples:
modern sensor capture an astonishing dynamic range, namely some sony sensors or canon with magic lantern’s dual iso feature.
this is in a range where the image has to be processed carefully to display it in pleasing ways on a monitor, let alone the limited dynamic range of print media.
using the graudated density iop works well in this case since the horizon here is more or less straight, so we can easily mask it out with a simple gradient in the graduated density module. now what if the objects can’t be masked out so easily?
[update 2016/07/31: there was a section about intermediate export to csv and manually changing that file. this is no longer needed, exporting the style directly from darktable-chart is fine now.]
for raw photography there exist great presets for nice colour rendition:
unfortunately these are eat-it-or-die canned styles or icc lut profiles. you have to apply them and be happy or tweak them with other tools. but can we extract meaning from these presets? can we have understandable and tweakable styles like these?
we’re proud to finally announce the new feature release of darktable, 2.0!
the github release is here: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-2.0.0
as always, please don’t use the autogenerated tarball provided by github, but only our tar.xz. the checksums are:
$ sha256sum darktable-2.0.0.tar.xz
d4f2f525bbbb1355bc3470e74cc158d79d7e236f3925928f67a88461f1df7cb1 darktable-2.0.0.tar.xz
$ sha256sum darktable-2.0.0.dmg
1019646522c3fde81ce0de905220a88b506c7cec37afe010af7d458980dd08bd darktable-2.0.0.dmg
and the changelog as compared to the 1.6.x series can be found below.
when updating from the currently stable 1.6.x series, please bear in mind that your edits will be preserved during this process, but it will not be possible to downgrade from 2.0 to 1.6.x any more.
we’re proud to announce the second release candidate in the new feature release of darktable, 2.0~rc2.
as always, please don’t use the autogenerated tarball provided by github, but only our tar.xz.
the release notes and relevant downloads can be found attached to this git tag: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-2.0rc2 please only use our provided packages (“darktable-2.0.rc2.*” tar.xz and dmg) not the auto-created tarballs from github (“Source code”, zip and tar.gz). the latter are just git snapshots and will not work! here are the direct links to tar.xz and dmg: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/download/release-2.0rc2/darktable-2.0.rc2.tar.xz https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/download/release-2.0rc2/darktable-2.0.rc2.dmg
hi all,
as most of you probably noticed already, we published a point release, 1.4.1. the tarball is here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.1.tar.xz/download
make sure you check the signature:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.1.tar.xz.asc/download
the macintosh computer disk image with signature here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.1.dmg/download https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.1.dmg.asc/download
this is just a point release, so not really any new features. detailed release notes are as follows:
the darktable release plus ppa is being phased out: https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-release-plus
wouldn’t it be great if you could judge sharpness of your images in lighttable mode? this mode is limited to small and medium sized thumbnails of your images, so we can deliver the required speed to browse a lot of them.
to tell whether or not you got the focus right during the shoot, we would like to look at the full resolution. the most you get out of lighttable mode will look like this:
the purpose of the basecurve is to make the otherwise scene-referred linear (linear raw rgb) color look good on your output devices. this is done independently of any color managed transforms which are also done in the pipeline, so we can establish a certain look independent of the devices. this will affect how highlights and shadows are balanced against each other, the overall contrast of the image, as well as color saturation. it basically boils down to:
just a quick plug for torsten’s great new service which allows you to calibrate your lens for lensfun. this will enable you to use darktable’s lens correction module with your lens if it hasn’t been calibrated by others for you yet.
all you need to do is take some sample images and upload them here:
http://wilson.bronger.org/calibration
the page contains some more detailed instructions about which images are useful and which aren’t.
we released the next feature release (1.2):
as a feature release, it comes with a lot of new goodies:
this is the list of cameras supported for profiled denoising in this tarball:
we just released a new tarball for the second release candidate:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.2/darktable-1.2~rc2.tar.xz/download
here is the macintosh disk image:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.2/darktable-1.2~rc2.dmg/download
and this time it comes with an updated usermanual:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.2/darktable-usermanual.pdf/download
thanks all, and enjoy the release!
we just released a new tarball for the first release candidate in the next feature release (1.2):
as a feature release, it comes with a lot of new goodies:
translations:
hi,
there is a new point release with a couple of smaller updates.
source tarball:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.3.tar.xz/download
mac disk image:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.3.2.dmg/download
and the usermanual is still the same.
darktable wouldn’t be where it is now if we weren’t able to depend on the great work of others, in particular we’d like to thank:
we released a patch release:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.1.tar.gz/download
along with an updated usermanual:
this resolves a couple of issues with 1.1. so no new features here, but:
darktable wouldn’t be where it is now if we weren’t able to depend on the great work of others, in particular we’d like to thank:
[update 02/05/2018 The information how to create camera noise profiles is outdated please read this tutorial instead!]
[update 20/12/2012: ‘how to profile your camera’ includes instructions with the new gen-profile script]
[update 15/12/2012: no more recompile needed, updated the instructions in the benchmark section and how to run make.sh.]
to summarize the current situation in dt: we have a lot of cool tools wrapped around great algorithms with almost all the knobs you need to get perfect results. while you can actually get really great results it’s this sheer number of knobs that makes finding a good parameter set quite a time consuming task. even creating per-iso presets is not straight forward, as most of the current modules depend on a lot more stuff early on in the pipe (whitebalance, exposure, basecurve, etc).
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.tar.gz/download
this is a feature release, so there is a lot of new stuff:
enjoy!
i just uploaded the tarball for the second release candidate for 1.1:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1~rc2.tar.gz/download
packages for your favourite distros should be in the usual place, mac dmg is here:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1~rc2.dmg/download
i know there are still translations coming, but something has to be left for the final release after all :)
changes since rc1 aren’t many as to be expected, but we’ve got:
enjoy!
as commits are easing down a little lately it seems appropriate to push out the first release candidate of the new version:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1~rc1.tar.gz/download
[update: mac package is available from https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1~rc1.dmg/download ]
That doesn’t mean this tarball is final or perfect by any means. we’ll probably go on releasing a couple of these on our way to the final release in a few weeks. This will be a feature release, as opposed to the bug fixing point release series 1.0.x, so we’ve got a huge bunch of changes for you this time. The changelog is not the final one either, but here it is:
in an ideal world, an image is piecewise smooth. it has soft gradients, some detail and edges. in particular there’s no noise and the edges are sharp. given these assumptions, you can do a lot of cool things to your pictures, using techniques like frequency space editing, wavelets, or local histograms.
darktable’s equalizer module demonstrates some of this, using the wavelet approach. you can use it to sharpen and denoise, enhance or attenuate certain frequencies in your image, while keeping the edges intact.
It’s our pleasure to announce that darktable-1.0.5 has been released. Find the tarball on sf.net:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.0/darktable-1.0.5.tar.gz/download
The Ubuntu PPAs have been built already, you should get them with your next update automatically if you subscribed to Pascal’s PPA.
This has a good chance of being the last one in a series of stable releases (with stuff backported from our latest and greatest). Thanks to Pascal for maintaining it! As such, it comes with a short list of maintenance things as change log:
false color highlights seem to be an issue frequently, so here’s some quick faq about it. alexandre, please excuse all the outward references ;)
that’s how the sensor works. it collects a couple of photons, at some point it fills up and rejects to deliver any more useful information past this point. unfortunately that doesn’t happen at the same time for all color channels.
usually digital cameras come with a color filter array (CFA) of absorptive filters in front of an array of CCD or CMOS sensor which collect electrons proportional to the incoming photons according to the photoelectric effect.
this is one of the oldest modules in darktable. it appeared to me that it probably lacks an example to discover how useful it can be … so here goes the example.
this started off to be a wrapper around the gegl:whitebalance operation, which works in Lab color space and is able to give dark and bright colors a different color tint, interpolating between the two for mid tones.
so suppose you have the following image:
disclaimer: this is only to tease you and will not make it into the next release, but the one after …
when reading gui-guidelines, most of them seem to be too general, or too specific for a certain kind of programming environment (gnome and gtk, qt, etc).
for our purposes, i found the fundamental principles of the bauhaus school to be more appropriate. radical simplicity, no unnecessary shape or line, such as a pseudo 3d-bevel-border around ui elements. the underlying grid should be visible because all elements are aligned, not because it is drawn. only simple shapes are allowed, and everything should integrate seamlessly into the background of the panel.
sometimes i’m surprised by what kind of data is hidden in my raw images, and i want to pass this on to those of our users who happily take pictures in jpg. actually it’s just a short story about a typical communication problem between me and my camera and the way darktable moderates that, after the fact.
As most of you probably noticed by now, we released 0.9.3. The tar file can be found here: https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/0.9/darktable-0.9.3.tar.gz/download
Pascal updated his ppa for ubuntu here: https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-release or https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-release-plus (with Exiv2 0.22, and Lensfun 0.2.5 + lens data from svn).
and made great new screencasts explaining a couple of features and differences to 0.9.2. You can find them on our resources page or Pascal’s website
It is a comparatively minor update to our stable 0.9.x series. It does not contain many very cool new features and big changes we have in git, because we don’t consider them stable enough yet. Nontheless, it contains 272 commits over the previous release 0.9.2, mainly containing:
you might have noticed our equalizer tool, and been confused by it and the many controls. that’s probably partly because you didn’t see a similar thing before, we had to develop it first.
behind the ui is a powerful frequency domain processing technique, based on wavelets. the most commonly used wavelets are based on the lifting scheme [swe97], work in a data-independent way, and are decimated (i.e. the coarse coefficients are much more sparse than the fine ones). while this allows for very fast implementations, data-independent wavelets can lead to blurring or ringing around edges (depending on what you do to the coefficients during image enhancement). raanan fattal had quite an inspiring paper at siggraph 2009 [fat09] introducing edge weights into the lifting scheme to overcome this. while the method is fast, produces okay results (the legacy equalizer version I was based on this), it has some problems caused by the decimation. in particular, decimated wavelets are not shift-invariant, which means your results will change if you slightly crop the image for example. actually the same author also had a solution for that earlier already [far07], in a different context, and not quite as fast.
since i probably tend to make this more technical than any reader would like to, here’s the take home message:
darktable’s light table mode shows you your image collection in arbitrary order and filtered by arbitrary queries to the underlying database. that means that there is quite some uncertainty about which thumbnails you are going to need in the next second. so we rely on a caching mechanism that stores a few thumbnails, regenerates them as needed, and evicts not so frequently used thumbnails from the cache.
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