General

• So, I have seen a bunch of different ways to spell darktable. Which one is right?¶

  There is only one way, and that is “darktable”. All lower case, in one word, except when starting a sentence.

• What’s the best way to contact the developers/report bugs?¶

  For fast discussions and short questions it’s best to visit us in IRC (on irc.oftc.net, channel #darktable), especially in the Western European evening hours. If you don’t want to use IRC, don’t know what it is or want something less transient you can use our mailing lists. See our contact page. For Issues/bugs, please use GitHub Issues

Click on a image to get it in full resolution.

darktable’s lighttable mode showing a collection.

Notice how the collection module (left panel) is used to narrow down a bunch of images by using different metadata attributes. In the left panel we have the image information module currently expanded. It shows you information such as focal length, exposure, resolution about the image you are currently hovering.

Some commonly asked questions can be found in our FAQ. Please read it before reporting bugs or feature requests.

Community maintained packages for Linux/Unix

Linux/Unix Binary Packages

From Your Package Manager

If your unix-like operating system is capable of running a graphical session, darktable is likely available. Check your package manager or software center.

Frequently Asked Questions

Some commonly asked questions can be found in our FAQ. Please read it before reporting bugs or feature requests.

User manual

Version 4.6

• English html/epub/pdf
• Brazilian Portuguese html/epub/pdf
• Dutch html/epub/pdf
• French html/epub/pdf
• German html/epub/pdf
• Polish html/epub/pdf
• Ukrainian html/epub/pdf

Version 4.4

The user manual was incomplete for version 4.4 – you are advised to refer to the v4.2 or v4.6 manuals instead.

Version 4.2

• English html/epub/pdf

Please note that the following translations are not complete (and will not be updated) for new features in version 4.2 – untranslated portions of text will be presented in English.

Contributing

If you feel like contributing to this project, here are a few suggestions.

Testing:

Just use it! And afterwards let us know how you like it. Send your bug reports, feature requests, suggestions or just your personal opinion to our mailing list. You can file a bug to our bug tracker as well – but you want to discuss it first (on IRC or mailing list).

If you found a bug or managed to crash darktable, please submit a helpful backtrace! Instructions are below.

Social Media

Facebook – Flickr –

How to get in contact

Help/forum: discuss.pixls.us

Report issues or feature requests: github issue

Code contributions or translation: open a pull request

IRC: irc.oftc.net, channel #darktable or use the web interface

Matrix: #darktable room (bridged with the IRC channel mentioned above)

Developers / darktable Team

Here are some members of our community:

photo	irc nick	real name	project role	homepage	gallery
	hanatos	johannes hanika	project founder / developer	homepage
	houz	Tobias Ellinghaus	developer / translator	homepage
	LebedevRI	Roman Lebedev	RawSpeed library maintainer / camera support / CI	GitHub
	pegelow	Ulrich Pegelow	developer / OpenCL expert / documentation author		gallery
	peterbud	Peter Budai	Windows maintainer
	Boucman	Jérémy Rosen	developer / Lua		gallery
	pobry	Pascal Obry	developer / miscellaneous	homepage	gallery
	pmjdebruijn	Pascal de Bruijn	color management / Ubuntu PPA	homepage	gallery
	McBofh	James C. McPherson	Solaris package maintainer / miscellaneous	homepage
	alicvb	Aldric Renaudin	developer (masks, multi-instances)
	schenlap	Stefan Schöfegger	miscellaneous
	darix	Marcus Rückert	packager for various platforms
	supertobi	Tobias Jakobs	Lua scripts
	patdavid	Pat David	website designer / community	homepage
	elstoc	Chris Elston	user manual maintainer / developer

darktable Translators

The translations of darktable are brought to you by:

Dear all,

yesterday we entered the feature freeze stage for the upcoming darktable 2.0 feature release: no more new features will be allowed in. The coming months will be used to stabilize and fine-tune the code base.

As usual we don’t make any definite statements about a release schedule, but we suggest to stay tuned towards the end of the year.

the dt team

Due to the heated debate lately, a short foreword:

We do not want to harass, insult or criticize anyone due to his or her choice of operating system. Still, from time to time we encounter comments from people accusing us of ignorance or even disrespect towards Windows users. If any of our statements can be interpreted such, we want to apologize for that – and once more give the full explanation of our lacking Windows support.

We are happy to announce that darktable 1.6.4 has been released.

The release notes and relevant downloads can be found attached to this git tag: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-1.6.4 Please only use our provided packages (“darktable-1.6.4.*” 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’s the direct link to tar.xz and dmg: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/download/release-1.6.4/darktable-1.6.4.tar.xz https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/download/release-1.6.4/darktable-1.6.4.dmg

this is another point release in the stable 1.6.x series.

We are happy to announce the first release candidate for the upcoming darktable 1.6.

In case you are wondering about the versioning scheme: we use odd numbers as development versions and even numbers for stable releases. This means the release candidate, tagged as “darktable-1.5.1”, is an unstable development version – the final stable version will bear the tag “darktable-1.6.0”.

Grab the tarball and OS X package from the github release page:

Dear all,

as we want to release darktable 1.6 some time at the end of the year, it now is the time to announce the string freeze. Please don’t change any UI strings any more, so translators have a chance to catch up.

Translators: your updates should be committed to the master branch, there is no branch-off for a stable 1.6 version yet.

We should have the first release candidate packed up soon!

Dear all,

we updated both the English online user manual and the PDF version to darktable 1.4. The online version can be found at https://darktable.org/usermanual/en/, the PDF document is available from here.

Many thanks to Ulrich and Jérémy for their outstanding work on keeping our documentation up to date!

Another thing worth mentioning is the current status of the user manual translation. We have several contributors working on translating the manual into French and Italian – thanks, Victor and Federico! We’ll inform you once we have something to release.

merry christmas!

we’ve got a new release for you:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.tar.xz/download

since we have quite a lot of new features (masks etc, see below), there is an updated usermanual:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-usermanual.pdf/download

ubuntu packages are already available in the usual place, and there is a new macintosh disk image:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4.dmg/download

more detailed release notes:

• darktable now integrates a lua engine that allows writing scripts to make it easier to use with other image processing software. These scripts can be run when a particular event takes place (for example when a new image is imported) or when a particular keyboard shortcut is used. There are very few scripts available at this point but we expect the community to provide some more during the next release cycle.
• darktable now includes several kinds of drawn masks: brush, circle, ellipse, path and gradients
• exporting in WebP format
• serious speed enhancements of lighttable when using large colections
• focus detection on lighttable
• local cached copies of images for offline files
• a few new blend mode like “HSV lightness”, “HSV color”, “Lab lightness” and “Lab color”
• new modules “contrast brightness saturation”, “color balance” and “color mapping” which replaces the now deprecated “color transfer” module
• new histogram mode “waveform”
• added a setting to automatically collapse modules to only have a single one expanded
• better user experience for bauhaus sliders: the popup now has a blinking cursor to make possible text entry more discoverable
• the text entry for bauhaus sliders and vimkeys’ :set command can now evaluate mathematical expressions
• additional logarithmic mode for editing the basecurve
• many bug fixes and small improvements
• a tool for measuring basecurves from a sample image
• a tool to check the system’s color management setup. call cmake with -DBUILD_CMSTEST=On to build and install it. packagers probably want that.
• updated usermanual
• darktable now requires Gtk+ in version >= 2.24, Glib in version >= 2.30

known bugs

• Ricoh Pentax K-3 PEFs aren’t supported yet (DNGs work fine)
• Nikon D5300 isn’t supported yet

hope you have a couple of days off to enjoy the release!

We just packaged darktable 1.4rc1 for more testing before releasing 1.4 proper in a few weeks. We’ve got tarballs,

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4~rc1.tar.xz/download

debian packages,

https://packages.debian.org/experimental/darktable

a Macintosh DMG,

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.4/darktable-1.4~rc1.dmg/download

and Pascal’s Ubuntu darktable Unstable PPA has been updated, too:

https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-unstable

Preliminary release notes are (also see RELEASE_NOTES in git/tarball):

• darktable now integrates a lua engine that allows writing scripts to make it easier to use with other image processing software. These scripts can be run when a particular event takes place (for example when a new image is imported) or when a particular keyboard shortcut is used. There are very few scripts available at this point but we expect the community to provide some more during the next release cycle.
• darktable now include several kinds of drawn masks: brush, circle, ellipse, path and gradients
• exporting in WebP format
• serious speed enhancements of lighttable when using large collections
• focus detection on lighttable
• local cached copies of images for offline files
• a few new blend mode like “HSV lightness”, “HSV color”, “Lab lightness” and “Lab color”
• new modules “contrast brightness saturation”, “color balance” and “color mapping” which replaces the now deprecated “color transfer” module
• new histogram mode “waveform”
• added a setting to automatically collapse modules to only have a single one expanded
• better user experience for bauhaus sliders: the popup now has a blinking cursor to make possible text entry more discoverable
• the text entry for bauhaus sliders and vimkeys’ :set command can now evaluate mathematical expressions
• many bug fixes and small improvements
• a tool for measuring basecurves from a sample image
• updated usermanual
• darktable now requires Gtk+ in version >= 2.24, Glib in version >= 2.30

Thanks to everybody helping out! please double check your credits in the about dialog and the AUTHORS file and give us a shout if you’re missing.

Dear all,

we just released another patch version for the stable branch 1.2. As usual you can find the source tarball here:

• source tarball
• The Ubuntu PPA has already been updated by Pascal (thanks!),
• OS X disk image
• builds for other distributions will hit the respective repositories soon

We collected the following goodies for you:

• Update to RawSpeed r570
• Canon 70D (preliminary)
• Olympus E-P5 (incl. preliminary Adobe Coeff.)
• Samsung NX2000
• Sony RX100m2
• Sony SLT-A58 (updated)

White Balance Presets:

• Sony NEX-5R
• Sony SLT-A58
• Nikon D3200 (updated)
• Pentax K20D

Enhanced Color Matrix:

• Pentax K20D

Noise Profiles:

• Canon EOS 1100D == Canon EOS Rebel T3
• Canon PowerShot S95
• Canon PowerShot G11
• Nikon Coolpix P330
• Sony A580
• Fuji X10
• Pentax K20D

Fixes and improvements:

• Increased maximum cache size to 8GB
• OS X: fix Facebook uploads
• Adjustments to default lowpass blur settings
• Adjustments to dithering slider ranges
• Metadata viewer: fix display of focal length: indicate unit and hide if invalid.
• Chromatic Aberrations: fix segfault for small buffers
• Color pickers: fix various issues, e.g. #9482
• More guides for Crop & Rotate
• Improve light table usability: when viewing images in fullscreen wrap around at line end when pressing right arrow key
• Soften: massive speed improvements by using SSE and OpenMP
• Deleting images from camera is not supported anymore for safety.
• Exposure module now supports multiple instances
• Support for custom meta data burn in (see commit 6ac7ba055440aa27f79f0a67ac112799a0e7785e)
• OpenCL support for nVidia GeForce GT330
• PFM: load timestamp as date & time taken.
• Fix bug prohibiting image rating by mouse
• Update Picasa uploader: references Google+ now
• Some fixes for memory leaks, deadlocks, background jobs
• Fixes of on-screen handles for Crop&Rotate; and GND modules
• 0 bytes files will no longer be imported but ignored

As usual: enjoy the release!

Dear all,

we just released another patch version for the stable branch 1.2. As usual you can find the source tarball here:

• source tarball
• The Ubuntu PPA has already been updated by Pascal (thanks!),
• OS X disk image
• other builds will follow soon

We don’t have too many commits to report but since quite some of those we picked concern support of new hardware we decided to release this version comparatively early making it more or less a “hardware release”:

Dear all,

we just released a patch version for the stable branch 1.2. As usual you can find the source tarball here:

• source tarball
• The Ubuntu PPA has already been updated by Pascal (thanks!),
• the Mac OSX image will probably take a little longer.

We collected almost 150 commits on top of the last release from April, 7 which bring you quite some bugfixes, new noise profiles and white balance settings for several cameras etc.

Dear all,

the online user manual has been updated to reflect the latest release of darktable. This is the html version of the reworked user manual for darktable 1.1 which descibes all major features of darktables and serves as a reference for all image operation modules.

The user manual for the upcoming darktable 1.2 is almost finished and is being proofread right now. Still, any changes and additions for the post-1.2 era are more than welcome!

Dear all,

since March 3 we are in the string freeze phase for the upcoming darktable 1.2 release. This release will be a major new version introducing tons of new features (as you might have guessed by all the blog articles in the last months …).

Please don’t push or provide patches with any new translatable strings to master or change them (that’s the ones in _("…") ).

Dear all,

we just released darktable 1.1.2, a point release (so nothing too fancy) with a couple of bugfixes and better camera support. Additionally it comes with an updated usermanual which is available here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-usermanual-1.1.2.pdf/download

The tarball can be found here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.2.tar.gz/download

and a new disk image for Mac users is provided as well:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.1/darktable-1.1.2.dmg/download

The various packages for your favourite distro are already on their way. The Ubuntu PPA should be updated already for example, and the opensuse package is available from https://software.opensuse.org/package/darktable and will be included in the upcoming opensuse 12.3 thanks to Togan Muftuoglu.

Yes.

As of today we are in string freeze for the next darktable version. Version 1.1 will not only contain bug fixes (that too) but a lot of new features. Some of them long-wanted, some of them you haven’t even dreamed about.

As usual we follow our release procedure:

• String freeze (as of now). Translators get time to catch up and it’s a good means to stop overly crazy development to be merged into master
• A couple of weeks of translating and bug hunting
• Then we’ll release release candidates again, to enable bread testing even from users who aren’t comfortable with “unstable” packages or git.
• … and finally there will be a new stable version of darktable.

Please help us to make this release another success, translate if there is something to translate, test, find bugs and report them to our bug tracker. If you have any questions, join us on IRC or the mailing lists.

After the progress reported in the latest blog post on the OS X port of darktable we now have something new for the Mac users:

parafin just released an experimental DMG image of darktable!

Please be aware of this being an experimental OS X build as well as experimental software in general – it’s based on the latest development version of darktable that will be darktable 1.1 someday in the future.

Pascal was so kind to tend to a stable branch, the next incarnation of which we have the good fortune to announce.

The changes over darktable 1.0.3 are:

• More robust OpenMP compiler detection code

• New warming/cooling filter presets for color correction plugin

• Lighttable thumbnails should be slightly faster and sharper

• Correctly restore panels when using Tab.

• Checking if an export target directly is read-only

• Writing of hierarchical tags in our .xmp has been improved

We heard quite some voices from users requesting better possibilities to contribute to the project. Here they are.

In our dev meeting (or if you had a closer look: even before) we decided to ditch the old bug tracker in favor for a new one: Redmine, hosted by PolarFox, just on the same server as our website lives. This comes with some long-wanted features – and more liberty in configuration.

Pascal recorded some new screencasts using the latest stable version of darktable, 1.0.4.

The first is (one can start speaking of “as usual”) dedicated to the changes and new features of darktable 1.0, giving an overview over improvements, new UI elements and workflow changes.

The second one is a bit more general. Pascal elaborates on raw file archiving and backups, about the pros and cons of DNG and Vendor formats and whether you want to embed your metadata or not.

Pascal de Bruijn did some good work backporting some of the progress from git master to the 1.0 release. We packed that into a tarball, here it is:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.0/darktable-1.0.1.tar.gz/download

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.0/darktable-1.0.3.tar.gz/download

(We had a problem packaging sources, so 1.0.3 is now on air. Please use it instead of 1.0.1)

As usual we have Ubuntu Packages are readily available on Pascal’s PPA, for Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise:

https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-release

https://launchpad.net/~pmjdebruijn/+archive/darktable-release-plus

And these are the major changes:

We are about to move our website to a new server. This will give us a performance boost (e.g. in terms of page loading speed) and might give us the chance to provide some more services in the future.

Due to this the comments are closed as of now until everything is in place again. We hope everything runs smoothly – if not, be patient. :)

… and I take this as an opportunity to thank PolarFox again for hosting darktable’s website and taking care of all technical server stuff!

Our second release candidate is out! We have had a couple of tiny bugfixes, better translations, new rawspeed (brings support for the new Canon 5D Mark3), and slight consistency fixes in the GUI since rc1.

You can get the tarball from here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.0/darktable-1.0~rc2.tar.gz/download

Getting closer!

There are still bug fixes coming, which is good. But nevertheless we just released a release candidate tarball, available for download from here:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/darktable/files/darktable/1.0/darktable-1.0~rc1.tar.gz/download

which will hopefully help us to get rid of the last couple of remaining bugs before 1.0. For install instructions have a look on how to compile from source.

This is a rough outline of the changes since 0.9.3 (quite sure we forgot something, it’s been > 1000 commits):

We are in string freeze for the master branch now. Translators might now update their translations for the upcoming release of

darktable 1.0

There will be tons of new features, stay tuned!

If you’re willing to help getting this out of the door soon you might want to install the development version and help out to track down some bugs. You can find an installation guide here and some informations for contributing backtraces for bugs here.

Mukund Sivaraman from banu.com held an interesting interview with Richard Hughes, the maker of the ColorHug colorimeter:

The ColorHug is a colorimeter that can be used to calibrate computer displays. It was created by Richard Hughes (hughsie). It is a fully open hardware project, and the design, drivers and firmware are available on the Gitorious code hosting website.

Read the full interview here: https://banu.com/blog/41/interview-of-colorhug-maker-richard-hughes/

Thanks to Mukund for the excerpt!

More information on the ColorHug can be found on Richard’s website: http://www.hughski.com/.

Pascal de Bruijn wrote an extensive article about color management on Linux systems, covering basic explanations as well as the description of some tools.

There seems to be a lot of confusion about what color management is, what it is supposed to do, and most particularly how to use it on Linux.

Find the article here:

https://encrypted.pcode.nl/blog/2012/01/29/color-management-on-linux/

Stefano Fornari has just released a new version of the book Digital photo development with darktable.

Version 1.1.1 is a maintenance update. The release fixes a number of typos and other small editorial changes suggested by the community.

Check out the pdf or packaged version and, as usual, send your comments and feedback to the darktable user list.

We are in string freeze for the master branch now. This means that only tiny bugfixes can be accepted, which don’t change any strings, to make sure they don’t break translations.

That should lead us to another stable point release, 0.9.3, hopefully in a week or two.