darktable

darktable

Screenshot of darktable 1.6
Original author(s) Johannes Hanika[1]
Initial release April 2009[2]
Stable release 1.6.6 / April 25, 2015
Development status Active
Written in C
Operating system Linux
OS X
Solaris 11
Size 2.95 MB (tar.xz source)
30.5 MB (OS X)[3]
Available in 19 languages[4]
Type Photo post-production
License GNU General Public License 3 or later[5]
Website www.darktable.org

darktable is a free and open-source photography workflow application and raw developer. Rather than being a raster graphics editor such as Adobe Photoshop or GIMP, it comprises a subset of image editing operations specifically aimed at non-destructive raw photo post-production and is primarily focused on improving a photographer's workflow by facilitating the handling of large numbers of images. It is freely available in versions tailored for most major Linux distributions, OS X and Solaris and is released under the GNU General Public License 3 or later.[5]

Features

darktable involves the concept of non-destructive editing, similar to that of some other raw manipulation software. Rather than being immediately applied to raster data of the image, the program keeps the original image data until final rendering at the exporting stage (the adjustment parameters made by a user are however visible in real-time). The program features built-in ICC profiles, GPU acceleration (based on OpenCL), and supports most common image formats.

Masks

A major new feature in version 1.4 is support for drawn masks, allowing application of effects to manually specified areas of an image. There are five mask types available: brush, circle, ellipse, bezier path, and gradient. All are resizable, allow fade-out radius for smooth blending and can have their opacity controlled. An arbitrary number of masks can be created and are collected into a "mask manager" on the left hand side of the darkroom UI.[6]

Color

darktable has built-in ICC profile support for sRGB, Adobe RGB, XYZ and linear RGB color spaces.[7]

Importing/exporting

JPEG, raw, CR2, HDR and PFM images can be imported from disk or camera, and exported to disk, Picasa Web Albums, Flickr, email, and to a simple HTML-based web gallery as JPEG, PNG, TIFF, PPM, PFM and EXR images.[8]

Scripting

darktable can be controlled by scripts written in Lua version 5.2. Lua can be used to define actions which darktable should perform whenever a specified event is triggered. One example might be calling an external application during file export in order to apply additional processing steps outside of darktable.[9]

Multi-mode histogram

Multiple histogram types are available, all with individually selectable red green and blue channels: linear, logarithmic and waveform (new in version 1.4).[6]

User interface

darktable 1.0 as it appears after installation

darktable has two main modes, lighttable and darkroom. Each represents a step in the image development process. Two more modes are tethering and a map view. Upon launching, "lighttable" opens by default, where image collections are listed. All panels in all modes can be minimized to save screen real estate.[10]

lighttable

The left panel is for importing images, displaying Exif information, and filtering. Rating and categorizing buttons are at the top, while the right-side panel features various modules such as a metadata editor and a tag editor. A module used to export images is located at the bottom-right.

darkroom

The second, "darkroom", mode displays the image at center, with four panels around it; most tools appear on the right side. The left panel displays a pannable preview of the current image, an undo history stack, a color picker, and Exif information. A filmstrip with other images is displayed at the bottom, and can be sorted and filtered using lists from the upper panel. The latter also gives access to the preferences configuration. darktable's configuration allows custom keyboard shortcuts and personalized defaults.

tethering

The third mode allows tethering through gPhoto to some of the cameras which support it.[7][11]

map

The fourth mode can display maps from different online sources and geotags images by drag and drop.

Plugins

Current logo of the Volapük Wikipedia
Old plugin palette with 14 active plugins, of which 2 are set as favorites (in red)
Future logo of the Volapük Wikipedia
Current plugin palette used in darktable 1.2.

As of March 2012, darktable includes 47 image adjustment plugins, which it divides into 5 groups;[8]

Basic group

Plugins for simple well-known photo adjustment operations include crop and rotate; base curve presets, which sets general basecurve presets to automatically improve contrast and colors; exposure controls; highlight reconstruction; demosaic; white balance; and color invert, which allows defining the color of the "film" with a color picker.

Tone group

Plugins related to contrast and lighting include fill light for modifying the exposure based on pixel lightness; levels to set black, grey and white points; tone curve; zone system; and tone mapping.

Color group

Plugins related to hue and saturation include overexposed, to display pixels outside dynamic range; velvia, which mimics Velvia film colors by increasing saturation on lower saturated pixels more than on highly saturated pixels; channel mixer; color contrast; color correction, to modify the global saturation or to give a tint; color zones; color transfer; vibrance; and input/output/display color profile management.

Correction group

Plugins for repairing visual imperfections include sharpen; equalizer; denoise (non-local means); denoise (bilateral filter); lens correction using the LensFun library; spot removal; chromatic aberrations; raw denoise; and hot pixels for the correction of defective pixels.

Effect group

Artistic postprocessing plugins used for visual effects include watermark; framing; split toning; vignetting; soften; grain; highpass; lowpass; monochrome; lowlight vision; shadows and highlights; bloom; colorize; and graduated density.

Development

Google Summer of Code

In 2011, the darktable team participated in the Google Summer of Code (GSoC). The main goals were to remove libglade dependency from darktable and to make room for more modularity. The input system for handling shortcuts was also rewritten and incorporated into version 0.9.[12][13]

Distribution

darktable is released under the GNU General Public License (3.0 or later) as free software.[14] The current version of darktable works on Linux and OS X. Many Linux distributions include darktable in their default repositories, including Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, and Gentoo Linux. Windows is not natively supported.

darktable also runs on Solaris 11,[15] with packages in IPS format available from the maintainer.[16]

Version history

Version ReleaseDescription
0.1 (alpha) April 12, 2009 First publicly available version was uploaded to SourceForge.[17]
1.0 March 15, 2012 First stable release. New modules, added support for new cameras, a Chinese localization.[18]
1.0.5 June 24, 2012 Update to RawSpeed r438 and LibRaw 0.14.7, added white balance presets and Standard Color Matrices for new cameras.[19]
1.1 November 25, 2012 Added white balance presets and support, similarity matching search for images, geotagging, OS X package, Facebook export, reworked user interface, live view for tethered shooting.[20] OpenCL GPU-based hardware acceleration added for many modules.[21]
1.2 April 7, 2013 Added profiled denoising, Lightroom import, multi instance support, improved usability for distorting modules, selective copy/paste of image processing, new more intuitive keystone correction tool, jpeg2000 support, GraphicsMagick import, much faster thumbnail loading.[22]
1.2.1 May 28, 2013 New noise profiles and white balance settings for several cameras etc.[22]
1.2.2 June 28, 2013 Support of new hardware.[23]
1.2.3 September 13, 2013 Support of new hardware and bugfixes.[24]
1.4 December 26, 2013 Major new release, new features like masks and basic lua scripting.[25] Three new filter modules: "contrast/brightness/saturation," "color balance," and "color mapping." New utility scripts for camera profiling.[6]
1.4.1 February 15, 2014 TIFF read/write, overwrite option for image export, multi-style import, support for new hardware and bugfixes.[26]
1.4.2 April 29, 2014 Cleanups and bugfixes in: large image support, masks, TIFF read/write and map view. Tonecurve no longer clamps the gamut. Import uses filesystem timestamp for images lacking EXIF. Experimental support for Nikon D5300 and D3300, Samsung NX1100 and NX30, and very experimental support for Olympus E-M10 cameras added. Lens detection and focus distance detected better on some Olympus cameras. New white balance presets for Nikon D610, Olympus E-PL5 and E-PM2. SSE2 optimization for AMAZE demosaic algorithm.[27]
1.6 December 7, 2014 New sticky preview mode. New defringe iop. Automatic mode for levels module. Whitebalance can now be disabled. New "color reconstruction" highlight recovery mode. Slideshow view. Soft boundaries in all sliders. High DPI monitor support. Audio note playback support. New crawler that syncs all xmp files on start. Support for arbitrarily huge images (on 64-bit platforms). Rewritten TIFF support, now supports 32-bit float. PPI metadata setting for exported images. Signed OSX packages. Map view can be restricted to show images from current collection only. Darktable-cli no longer requires running X server. Lens iop settings copy/pastable between images. Linear Rec2020 color profile. Embedded ICC profile support for PNG and TIFF file (read/write). Lots of new LUA scripting features, speed improvements, internal improvements and bugfixes. Lots of new cameras supported, many new noise profiles and initial X-Trans sensor support added. [28][29]
1.6.1 December 21, 2014 Bugfixes (such as a crash with images greater than 134 megapixels). [30]
1.6.2 January 31, 2015 Better names for key accelerators, web gallery limited to JPEG/PNG/WebP, brush size now controllable with keyboard, default X-Trans demosaic is now markesteijn (single pass). Bugfixes, additional camera support, improved support for some existing cameras, and white balance presets for additional cameras.[31]
1.6.3 March 1, 2015 Support read/write of chromaticities in EXR, allow to default to :memory: db in config, add mime handler for non-raw image file formats, add improved lens model name detection for Sony SAL lenses. Raw support and white balance presets for Panasonic LX100 (all aspect ratios), TZ60 and FZ1000. Raw support for Kodak EasyShare Z1015 IS; Canon 1DX sRAW, A630 and SX110IS (CHDK raw). Added standard color matrix for Canon Rebel T3 (1100D), enhanced color matrix for Nikon D750, noise profiles for Canon EOS 1DX. Expanded list of sliders featuring the soft boundary feature. Bugfixes.[32]
1.6.4 April 4, 2015 Facebook exporter update to support new auth API; first run OpenCL benchmark only enables OpenCL if GPU is faster than CPU; lua updated to 5.2.4; large rawspeed library update; GCC 5 build support; new camera support for Canon Digital Rebel (300D), Nikon D5500 (experimental), Olympus E-M5 mark II (experimental), Samsung NX500 (experimental); white balance presets for Sony a77 II, Fujiflim X-E2, Olympus E-M5 mark II; Noise profiles for Canon 7D mark II; bugfixes for lensfun, masks, zonesystem, spots, UI language selection.[33]
1.6.6 April 25, 2015 Fix Olympus E330 support (broken in 1.6.4), fix white balance reading for the Canon Powershot SX50 HS, add white balance presets for RICOH GR, minor assorted bug fixes (masks, lens correction, profiled denoise, etc).[3]

Bibliography

Вейч, Ник (2010). "Darktable". Linux Format, русская редакция (in Russian) (Saint Petersburg, Russia) 130 (4): 97. ISSN 1062-9424.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "contact". darktable.org. Retrieved March 16, 2012.
  2. ↑ "darktable main repository". darktable.org. Retrieved August 23, 2012.
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 "github release notes for 1.6.6". Retrieved April 26, 2015.
  4. ↑ "LINGUAS". darktable.org. Retrieved August 23, 2012.
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 "about". darktable.org. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 "Darktable 1.4". Nathan Willis. Retrieved April 30, 2014.
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 "Darktable For Open-Source Photography". Michael Larabel. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 "features". darktable.org. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  9. ↑ "Darktable user manual chapter 7". darktable.org. Retrieved April 30, 2014.
  10. ↑ "A RAW Feast on the Linux Darktable (Photo Editor)". Carla Schroder. Retrieved April 28, 2012.
  11. ↑ "How to Remote Control Your Camera with Darktable on Linux". Carla Schroder. Retrieved April 30, 2014.
  12. ↑ Who’s New in Google Summer of Code: Part 7 - Google Open Source Blog
  13. ↑ Glade Removal Complete, Moving on to Keyboard Accelerators
  14. ↑ "GNU General Public License". LICENSE. Free Software Foundation. June 2007. Retrieved August 23, 2012.
  15. ↑ "Darktable and Solaris: It Just Works(tm) .... and there are some nifty benefits too". Retrieved August 23, 2012.
  16. ↑ www.jmcpdotcom.com/Packages
  17. ↑ "Virtual Lighttable and Darkroom". darktable.org. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  18. ↑ "darktable 1.0 released". darktable.org. Retrieved March 15, 2012.
  19. ↑ "darktable 1.0.5 released". darktable.org. Retrieved August 23, 2012.
  20. ↑ "released darktable 1.1". darktable.org. Retrieved November 29, 2012.
  21. ↑ "Darktable 1.1". Nathan Willis. Retrieved April 30, 2014.
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 "released 1.2". darktable.org. Retrieved April 7, 2013.
  23. ↑ "released 1.2". darktable.org. Retrieved July 8, 2013.
  24. ↑ "released 1.2.3". darktable.org. Retrieved September 13, 2013.
  25. ↑ "released 1.4". darktable.org. Retrieved December 26, 2013.
  26. ↑ "released 1.4.1". darktable.org. Retrieved February 25, 2014.
  27. ↑ "released 1.4.2". darktable.org. Retrieved April 29, 2014.
  28. ↑ "Florida State University press release: X-Trans support". Retrieved February 3, 2015.
  29. ↑ "released 1.6". darktable.org. Retrieved December 8, 2014.
  30. ↑ "github release notes for 1.6.1". Retrieved December 22, 2014.
  31. ↑ "github release notes for 1.6.2". Retrieved February 3, 2015.
  32. ↑ "github release notes for 1.6.3". Retrieved March 2, 2015.
  33. ↑ "github release notes for 1.6.4". Retrieved April 8, 2015.

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to Darktable.