Darktable is divided into 5 modules: Lighttable, Darkroom, Map, Slideshow, and Tethering. This is done in order to conveniently group the functions. In general, the Darktable and Lightroom’s interfaces are almost identical, so you should not have problems when switching to Darktable. Convenient Way to. Darktable is a bit younger I think maybe 2 – 3 years. RT is a bit more complete as a pure editor, and that’s also the Achilles heel: editor only. As a complete package, Darktable is far out better than RT, and therefore the best – I’m not even saying alternative for LR – it is the best image editing program out there!

Darktable review 2019

Price: Free

Supported Platform: Windows, Linux, Mac, Fedora, openSuse, Arch, Funtoo, Rhel, and FreeBSD

Pros

• Update features frequently
• Free to use
• Advanced raw developer
• User-friendly interface
• High-speed image processing
• Non-destructive image editing

Cons

• Unable to use it on mobile
• Don’t allow to edit image online
• Little bit slower than Lightroom

What is Darktable?

Darktable is a free open-source photo editing software and a raw developer. It has a virtual light table to see the raw images and a true darkroom to edit and process the photos. The Darktable comes from the two words Darkroom and light-table.

This open-source photo editing app has specially made for photographers to organize the photos perfectly. It lets them develop the raw files and enhance the photo quality by offering a lot of editing tools.

Moreover, it offers a non-destructive photo editing workflow. That means you can change the photo effect without losing the original photo.

You can find a ton of raw developer alternative apps on the web. But, Darktable fills up the gap between those apps and offer the same features as Lightroom does. That’s why it is considered that Darktable is the best free alternative to Lightroom. In some cases, Darktable performs better than Lightroom.

Now, a question may appear on your mind- Darktable vs Lightroom: Which one is the best? In our next post, we will describe it with details.

Darktable Overview

Like Lightroom, Darktable is a raw developer and photo organizing software. It can process raw files fast as Lightroom does. Unlike Lightroom, it is free and open-source. That’s why you don’t need to pay for using it.

Though it is an open-source and free image editor, it is capable of doing the same thing, in some cases, even perform better than Lightroom.

When you first open Darktable, you can see no difference with the Lightroom interface. On top of the panel, you can find Lighttable, darkroom, and Other. These are the main panel in Darkroom.

The lighttable opens up the images on the screen. With the help of this option, you can start your editing workflow.

Unlikely, Darkroom is the key panel which lets you edit the photos and enhance them. Another panel named Other hides several options including map, slideshow, and tethering.

On the left side panel, you can find Import, collect images, recently used collections, and image information. The import lets you import photos in Darktable by image, folder, or other devices. Using the collect images, we can filter images by film roll, folder, history, date, focal length, ISO, aperture, and so on.

On the right side screen of Darktable, a bunch of basic image editing tools is available including styles, history stack, and many more.

The styles are similar to the preset module inside the Lightroom. However, Darktable styles are less powerful than Lightroom presets.

The natty gritty information on Darktable is ended. Now, let’s dig into this article and know the core features of Darktable.

Review on Darktable Module

There are three main modules in Darktable including Lighttable, Darktable and other. Let see the details each of the module.

01. Lighttable

Using the Lighttable, you can open up the images. Lighttable is a file management module where you can organize photos.

In the center of the windows, it lets you preview photos with the zoom features. Dynalink others driver download for windows 10. Also, the zoom control tool lets you change the thumbnail size.

The Lighttable panel consists of import, collect images, recently used collection, and image information. All these lighttable subpanels can be found on the left-side screen. Frontline test equipment driver download for windows 10.

Inside the lighttable panel, you can find also a lot of basic photo editing tools on the right-side panel including history stack, styles, metadata editor, tagging, geotagging, and export.

Using the Import, you can open photos into Darktable by image, folder or using other supported devices. In contrast, the collect images let you filter the photos by fill roll, camera, history, time, date, and so on. Besides, you can filter the photos using ISO, aperture, exposure, geo-tagging, and many more.

On the other hand, in the lighttable module, there are also available several basic photo editing tools on the right side of the screen.

The history stack lets you save the workflow you apply on an image by a preset. Unlikely, the styles let you edit photos with a single click. It works as the same as the Lightroom preset. However, I don’t think Darktable style is powerful than the Lightroom preset.

Besides, you can sort images using the tag, geotag, and by keywords. Therefore, you can organize photos by rating.

Darktable Vs Lightroom

02. Darkroom

Darkroom is the second module which you can find next to the lighttable module. Also, you can get it pressing the keyboard shortcut d.

In essence, Darkroom is a photo development module which lets you enhance the photo quality. It works very similarly like the Lightroom Develop module.

In fact, it is the most important aspect of Darktable. It has many photo enhancement tools. As it has featured many tools, it seems complicated to the beginner. However, Darktable offers many tutorials to learn how to use this developer module. You can master on it using a few days.

The left side of the panel, you can find history stack, color picker tool, snapshot, image information, and tagging. On the right-side panel, histogram and lots of module available to adjust images.

Most importantly, the mask feature offered by Darktable is very powerful. It lets you edit photo non-destructively.

If you are a beginner and find this panel complicated, you can read this article on darkroom chapter. Hope you can easily understand the darkroom panel after reading the guideline.

03. Other

Dark souls nintendo switch sales. The other module in Darktable is another module which is available next to the darkroom module. The Other module hides three subpanels including map, slideshow, and tethering.

The map lets you organize the photo by using the location where you captured the photo. This is done if your camera has a GPS. Also, you can manually input the location name to find the photo on the map.

In contrast, the slideshow lets you see the photos one by one. Another subpanel named tethering lets you import or edit photos by connecting your camera with Darktable.

Review on Darktable Features

Below I have made a shortlist of Darktable’s features which impacts to increase the photo quality. Plus, it lets you make high-quality photos effortlessly.

General Features

Like other raw developer apps, Darktable also offers the following common features.

• The first general feature of Darktable is it lets you edit photo non-destructively. Whatever adjustment you make on your photo, it ensures to keep the original photo unmodified. In short, it never affects the original photos.
• Advanced raw processor and process the raw files fast
• Upgraded color management tool
• Darktable can read several types of image format including raw, HDR, jpeg, jpg, PEM, and RAF.
• Featured with advanced export system
• You can effortlessly edit with this software as it comes up with 21 translations.
• Another feature is the modules it has to blend photos. It has almost 61 modules to improve photo editing workflows.

Basic Photo Editing

Quick color correction tool: To correct the photo color, it has three sliders including saturation, contrast, and brightness. Using these sliders, you can easily adjust the color of an image.

Shadow & highlight sliders: These two sliders let you lighten the shadow area and darken the lighted area.

The rotate and crop tool lets you correct the perspective error, cut out the unwanted image area, and gives a professional look to your photo.

Also, you can control the image exposure using the histogram or the sliders. Besides, you can adjust the white balance using the tint and temperature sliders. I find Darktable better than Lightroom when it comes to adjusting the white balance.

Advanced photo editing features

You can also do advanced photo editing including detailed color correction, lens correction, perspective correction, spot removing, and so on using Darktable.

If there have any imperfections related to lens, you can fix it using lensfun. The spot removal tool lets you erase spots, blemishes, and other imperfections to give an eye-catching look to your photo.

Equally, the sharpen feature is remarkable that lets you fix the distorted photos and give a detailed look to your photo. Using the Unsharp Mask tool, you can easily make photo sharp.

The Liquify tool is another remarkable tool that performs better than Lightroom. It lets you shrink the photo, expand the photo, and also cut out the image parts.

Besides, these features, Darktable also offers a ton of features. To see the complete list of features, you can visit the Darktable features page.

Darktable Alternatives

Darktable Download

On the web, a ton of Darktable alternative is available. Check the following apps that you can use as Darktable alternatives. The apps I have listed below have the same functionality and offer the same features as Darktable does.

RawTherapee

RawTherapee is also an open-source raw photo editor app. As it is a web-based software, so it is completely free to use. It is a powerful raw developer app and loads the image thumbnail quickly. The best feature I love most is its batch processing feature. Now, you can edit a ton of photos at once which saves a huge amount of time.

Features

Darktable Delete Preset

• Offer non-destructive photo retouching workflows
• Updated color correction tools
• Easy-to-use interface
• Supports a range of camera including DSLR
• Enable batch photo editing
• Enable to edit an image on GIMP directly
• Support almost all types of standard file format

Pros

• User-friendly interface
• Batch or group image editing
• Update frequently

Cons

• Less powerful than Darktable
• Haven’t enough video tutorials

digiKam

Darktable Tutorial

digiKam is a versatile open-source photo editing software. It has perfectly made for importing, exporting, and sharing the image file. The capability of digital photo processing is excellent that’s why it is considered as the best alternative to Darktable.

Features

digiKam is an advanced photo organizing software. You can manage thousands of photo using this software effortlessly. You can organize the photos by name, date, tags, labels, and face.

Also, the importing system of this software is standard. Using this software, you can quickly import raw files, photos, and videos.

Apart from, digiKam has featured with the advanced search system. It is a second of matter to find out the specific image files from the thousand of photos. This online raw developer lets you find photos by name, location, tag, and even by the face.

Darktable Update

Moreover, the photo editing tools it includes let you edit photo flawlessly and efficiently. DigiKam has featured with many advanced photo processing tools to bring out the best look of the photos.

The negative side of this app is the windows version of this app doesn’t perform better.

Conclusion

The review on Darktable I have described has come from the user experience. I used this software multiple times to develop my raw files. It is very simple to use and offer the best option to edit photos, organize those better ways, and also allow creating new effects.

The only problem I have faced is the first time I can’t understand the darkroom panel completely. Then after using some days, I found it easy and better than Lightroom. The best feature of this app is the advanced mask tool. It performs better than LR. However, Darktable styles are not worked better as LR preset does.

As it is an open-source photo, it is ten times better than its alternative apps if we compare it list by list. In some cases, it is better than Lightroom. So, I recommend you use this software to develop your raw files.