darktable is an open source application that provides both amateur and enthusiasts photographers with a virtual lighttable and darkroom that allows them to manage their digital negatives in a single and handy database. It has been designed from the ground up to be used for developing RAW images from digital cameras.
Features at a glance
Key features include an astonishing graphical user interface designed for the modern computer user, support for importing single image files, folders, and scan for devices, ability to categorize images by numerous filters, such as ISO, color label, rights, creator, publisher, camera, date, time, title, lens, aperture, etc., as well as to access recently used collections.
In addition, the application lets users to view detailed information about an image, if available, such as lens, exposure, aperture, focal length, focus distance, ISO, model, maker, filmroll, image id, filename, version, full path, width, height, copyright, local copy, date, time, title, creator, latitude, and longitude.
It also features fully non-destructive editing, 4×32-bit floating point pixel buffers, GPU acceleration via OpenCL, built-in ICC profiles (sRGB, XYZ, linear RGB and Adobe RGB), zero-latency fullscreen mode, tethered shooting, flexible search functionality, powerful export system, and many translations.
The program is capable of importing a wide range of standard, RAW and HRD image formats, among which we can mention JPG, CR2, HDR, and PFM, and can export images to Picasa and Flickr, as well as to export to low dynamic range (JPEG, PNG, TIFF), linear high dynamic range (PFM, EXR) and 16-bit (PPM, TIFF) images.
Under the hood and supported platforms
darktable is a platform-independent application that runs on GNU/Linux, BSD, Solaris, and Mac OS X operating systems. Officially supported distributions of Linux include Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora, openSUSE, Arch Linux, Gentoo, Funtoo, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, CentOS, and SUSE Enterprise Linux.
It works well on both 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, but the developers recommend to use the application only on the 64-bit hardware platform for better performance.
Bottom line
darktable is a superb and powerful application for editing images under any GNU/Linux operating system. It is very similar to the Photoshop Lightroom software from Adobe, but it’s completely free and open source.
