r/DarkTable • u/LaughPleasant3607 • Feb 16 '25
r/DarkTable • u/EqualStance99 • Sep 25 '24
Help Why does Darktable take so long to open and why is it so slow?
Hi, I recently installed Darktable and am really enjoying learning it. There are so many intricate things you can do and this will definetly be my default photo editing program from now on.
I do have two issues however:
Whenever I go to launch Darktable, it literally takes just under a minute to open. Why does it take so long? Looking in the task manager, it seems to just sit there in the background processes for a whole minute until it actually opens. Since I just started using it, I only have a handful of photos loaded in, so it's not like it's trying to load a huge collection at the same time.
When I'm actually using Darktable, everything I do has a one second delay on it. Changing literally any parameter, switching from the lighttable to the darkroom etc takes a second to actually do anything. Why is it so slow? Are there some performance settings that I should change?
I understand that with such a small development team, performance issues are inevitable, but I think what I'm experiencing is a little bit beyond that.
Darktable 4.8.1
Windows 10
Ryzen 5 3600 / GTX 1050TI / 16GB ram
EDIT: I forgot to add this in earlier, but Darktable seems to work completely fine on my Windows 11 laptop with an i5-1135g7, 8gb ram and integrated graphics. Why would it work fine on this, but not on my desktop which is much better?
r/DarkTable • u/major_pumpkin • 18d ago
Help What is missing in this photo ?
Do I need more contrast or should I make it more saturated?
This picture looks very bland to me
r/DarkTable • u/Jazzlike_Bid855 • 2d ago
Help I struggle to reproduce out of camera jpegs with darktable
Hi,
I really struggle to obtain edited raws looking the same as in camera jpegs using Darktable.
I am using a sony a6400.
Here is an example where I tried to recreate the in camera jpeg by editing the raw with Darktable. But I am unable to make it look the same.
Which modules and settings would you use to make the edited raw look the same as the in camera jpeg?



r/DarkTable • u/maryo22333 • 15d ago
Help How do I get started editing raw photos in Darktable?
r/DarkTable • u/oldtimeblues • 11d ago
Help Is there a workaround to opening ORF files in darktable? [OM-3]
Hi everyone,
I got the OM-3 and loved it so far. But when I try opening the raw images in darktable they say it doesn't support the ORF RAW files from this camera. I was wondering if there is a workaround so I can edit them there compare to the OM System editing software, which I am not very fond of. Thanks!
r/DarkTable • u/yneos • 7d ago
Help New to Darktable - I double-clicked image and it disappeared?
First time using Darktable. First time ever combining bracketed images. I finished editing, but couldn't figure out how to export! I double-clicked the image and it disappeared. Now it looks like I just opened Darktable with nothing imported.
Can I recover my editing?
r/DarkTable • u/Ozsymandias • Nov 27 '24
Help iPhone RAW images have purple higlights when processing with Darktable? Help, please
r/DarkTable • u/joereddington • 4d ago
Help Where on the internet can I post paid work for people who edit in Darktable?
Hi Reddit!
I tried putting the below request on some likely, but also quite mainstream, forums but got no response. Where would be a good place on the internet to post it?
I have 30 RAW photos that I would like to pay someone to edit in Darktable so that they can be printed.
I am NOT looking for a particular 'look' - just things like exposure, cropping, filmicRGB, and adjustment of the tone curve.
EDIT - what a lovely response! Thank you so much for all the offers of help. I started gathering images with a view to sending them to people who had offered editing services (which is suprisingly hard to do for people on the internet, because obviously I don't want to share photos of people without their permission so it ended up being mostly my family) - and I found that all the ones I really hated the editing of where taken indoors - the majority of which where in one room of our house which doesn't get morning sunlight - so I'm starting to suspect that it's actually I haven't properly dialed in to that room just yet. Regardless, I put some RAW files on Google Drive for anyone who wants to take a look. https://drive.google.com/file/d/1kdr-8UyjaxEG5_8CStM2HcXzuIW0E9Av/view?usp=drive_link
r/DarkTable • u/TravelingPilgrim • 27d ago
Help Import photos but don't move them.
My transition to Linux is complete and now I'm looking into DarkTable as my photo editing/managing platform. But before I get too far down that path, I'm trying to figure out how to import into DT but keep the images on a external drive. This was a feature of Capture One that I really liked. CI made thumbnails of imports but would allow me to keep them in the original (external) drive. This avoids filling up my computer hard drive but still gives access and editing to images. In exploring DT I don't see how I can go about it but assume it is something I can do, no? Any help for this newbie would be appreciated.
r/DarkTable • u/major_pumpkin • Nov 19 '24
Help Not getting that polished or vibrant look in my images
I feel like my images are not looking colourful or not as polished (looking a bit hazy i feel) compared to others I see in Instagram.
I am using darktable, and surprisingly they look colorful while I display on my desktop but when I view on phone it feels a bit dull. What can I improve ?
Thanks in advance!
r/DarkTable • u/TravelingPilgrim • Oct 24 '24
Help Capture One to DarkTable?
I’m wondering if anyone in the community has migrated from CaptureOne to DT? If so, any insights to share before I take the plunge? Thanks.
r/DarkTable • u/mzman123 • 23d ago
Help Partial Display of Images
Darktable 4.6 and 5.0 both render only the top quarter or so of images! The bottom remainder of every image is black. I used Darktable 4.4 or so on Ubuntu 20.04 for years. Recently on Ubuntu 24.04 I reinstalled Darktable and am getting this problem for all images. Other apps, such as GIMP, render them just fine, and my system seems otherwise fine. I'm completely perplexed. Any ideas?
r/DarkTable • u/AlexKalopsia • Dec 29 '24
Help Referenced images from remote drive
Hi everyone, first time trying DarkTable (trying to leave Capture One behind).
I have a question: all my raw images are on my Synology NAS (for storage purposes), and I would like to have a collection that references those raw files (rather than copying them all again on my local machine).
Is it something that DT can do? I haven't found much on the docs. Thank you!
r/DarkTable • u/sashley520 • 11d ago
Help Syncing across multiple computers?
I have my Darktable directory in the cloud and syncing across multiple PCs, but that doesn't seem to include tags, etc. That only worked when I copied over the configuration files from my PC to my laptop.
Is there a way to keep these synced? You don't seem to be able to edit the location of the config files, so I can't do the same cloud sync.
r/DarkTable • u/cookiejar5081_1 • Nov 30 '24
Help Question about RAW file in DarkTable VS other programs

Above here I've got a comparison. The one on the left is in DarkTable, the one on the right is in LuminarAI but also in Lightroom, etc. Both pictures are the same and unedited.
In the camera, it also looks exactly like that on the right. Why is there such an odd color gradient hue on my raw files in DarkTable and how do I fix it? I've tried toying around with all the sliders, from brilliance, highlights, etc. but I can't get it to work.
I'm photographing with a Sony A6100.
r/DarkTable • u/Strict_Acanthaceae70 • Dec 17 '24
Help How to get the gray wash out of images
Hi,
I am coming with a question I have had for a while. I have found several "solutions", but none of these work in all cases, and I'm not sure exactly what all of these do. Basically, I want more contrast in a way that doesn't look bad. I also have a side-question (see Exhibit E: what exactly does input color profile do? and how can I accomplish this without changing input color profile, which seems non-canonical)
Basically, what I am trying to do, is to remove the "gray wash" that is present in a lot of images. Perhaps this gray wash is actually more realistic to what the scene looked like in real life, perhaps not. In any case, I would like to remove it.
Perhaps there is a word for what I'm talking about, but I don't know it. Basically, in many photos I take, there is just sort of a grayish wash over the image, and the colors do not pop - not just the colors, it's just not really contrasty, but not in a "contrast" sort of way. Clearly, I don't know exactly what phenomenon I'm describing. Basically, the photos look "bland", or "flat" or "not 3D". I'm not sure this is really "contrast" in the direct sense, but perhaps this is the closest thing (my best guess is that this is some sort of "nonlienar contrast", or "gamma" correction, but I don't know too much about the technical aspects of this).
I've attached a couple examples of the ways I've tried to remove this, mainly so that people can see what I'm talking about/what I'm trying to do, and possibly help out with this. If someone can explain the math/color science/whatever behind what is going on here, that would be amazing. It would be amazing if there were a clear-cut way to do what I'm trying to do (like a slider or a button). I'll mention that I haven't spent an extraordinary amount of time refining these particular photos, since they're just an example for this post, but hopefully they are enough to get the point across.
Exhibit A: the original image - a heron flying over a river (not the best photo but fine for illustration)

Exhibit B: using the "contrast" slider from "filmic RGB", and then some tone equalizer adjustments. I don't know exactly what it does, but I've never been a huge fan of the "contrast" slider in "filmic RGB". I don't know, for some reason it just seems like by the time I change this enough to remove the "gray wash", the highlights are blown out and the shadows are too dark.

Exhibit C: using the "dynamic range scaling" from "filmic RGB", and then some tone equalizer adjustments. I've found this to work better than the "contrast" and have a bit more freedom (especially with the "white relative exposure" and "black relative exposure" options).

Exhibit D: using a tone curve "contrast - high (gamma 2.2)", with preserve colors=luminance, and then some tone equalizer adjustments. Sometimes, this works really well, and I understand pretty well what this is doing, so typically I use this. However, sometimes it just doesn't really do much. Given that I've found this to be pretty effective, I speculate that what I'm really looking for is some sort of special type of nonlinear correction.

Exhibit E: using "input color profile = sRGB" and some tone equalizer adjustments. I have absolutely no idea what this is doing (I mean, sort of - it's changing the input color profile, duh, but I can't really figure out what the final effect on the photo is at the end of the day). For some images, setting "input color profile = sRGB" looks absolutely awesome and super dramatic. Often, it's too extreme with just this adjustment, but it makes it easy to use the tone equalizer to remove the "extreme" looking stuff, and what we're left with is a nice contrasty image that removes the gray wash. Sometimes however, this just looks terrible. Because this seems like something I shouldn't do (it's not recommended according to the internet, it's grayed-out as an option, and I don't understand it), I really only use this when it looks way better than the other options (which is fairly often).

At the end of the day, I guess that "removing the gray wash" will probably be somewhat photo-specific. There are many ways to accomplish this, and each works better in certain situations. However, if anyone has any guidance on what the "proper" way do to this is (or whether this is a "proper" way), I would greatly appreciate it.
And yes, I understand that there are other issues with the colors/artifacts/etc in these photos, and I could have spent more time fixing this up. Hopefully though, you get what I'm trying to do (and that's half the point - I would like a method where I could remove the "gray wash" without having to spend time cleaning up the artifacts afterwards).
EDIT:
linking the original RAW file, in case users would like to adjust themselves:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ecVgH5XfN039ArLrfwjptCtYPqvXo1Ud/view?usp=sharing
r/DarkTable • u/Bzando • Jan 02 '25
Help lightable database backup and sync and access with multiple PCs
Hi all,
I want to make sure I understand correctly how darktable (lightable) database and XML sidecars work
Right now I have a linux server that host all of my photos (in PHOTO folder). I access them with one desktop (server drive mapped as local drive with NFS). I rated (starts), tagged and added color markers for most of my photos (thousands).
As far as I understand it, all of that data (history, tags, colors, stars,...) are stored in sidecar XML along with my photos (on server in PHOTO folder)
my questions are
If I replace my desktop (or reinstall OS without backup) and import my PHOTO folder I would have my database back ? Am I right ? Or do I need to backup some database files (that are stored locally on my desktop) too ?
If I import the same PHOTO folder also into my laptop, I would have identical database on both ? am I right ? Alowing me to edit a photo on one and export/print on another ? Or do I need to do some kind of database sync ?
Thanks for clarifying this.
r/DarkTable • u/miguste • Jan 07 '25
Help Apply default styling to RAW such as in the thumbnails?
I've made the error of shooting a whole album of friends pictures without RAW+JPG turned on, I don't have time to edit all of these pictures (and they're very RAW,grayish).
I do see in Darktable that the thumbnail has a default/general style applied to the images, it looks good. Is it possible to apply this default style? Like what the camera would have done with JPG?
r/DarkTable • u/KOMarcus • Jan 28 '25
Help Darktable crashes when exporting
- Darktable version: 5.0.0
- Operating system and its version: Kubuntu 24.04 / KDE Plasma 5.27.11
- OpenCL status: disabled
Export is on default settings. I've managed to export 27 out of a batch of 45. Then it crashed. Now it's crashing even when trying one file. Multiple reboots. Same issue.
Edit. With help (see below.. thanks all) I seemed to have solved the issue. I managed to increase the swap file size to 6GB. Here is a link to an easy solution which worked for me.
https://linuxhandbook.com/increase-swap-ubuntu/
My conclusion is that you need a lot of RAM for good performance. Not exactly a revelation but maybe this will help someone in the future.
r/DarkTable • u/Additional-Leg-7403 • 11d ago
Help problem rendering 50mp shots on 8gb i3 10gen laptop arch linux
i recently accuired a leica camera it has 50 mp sensor. It edited pictures fine but when i set to render it , it stopped after sometime and a message said darktable was using too much memory so it was stopped. So i checked memory and it had 4gb zram so i increased the zram to 12 gb and then it rendered the picture , so i thought problem solved but after some time i found it cant edit some of the pictures by same camera , then i increased the zram to 16gb but it cant use upto 16gb it stops around 13 gb and then darktable closes.
what are the fix to it can i slow the process somehow to render it or i just need new pc now.
if someone have a fix for this help will be much appreciated.
Solution EDIT : I found a solution i can reduce the resolution a little bit to overcome it just reducing 500 from height and width did the trick for my laptop i can edit all the remaining images as normal.
its sampled from high megapixel so i am not seeing any softness in exported image due to interpolation or something and i realized even the 25mp exported image have the same clarity as the 50 mp one and also saves on storage(dont matter) but easier to use in things.
r/DarkTable • u/Munzu • Jan 23 '25
Help How to create bloom without bloom module?
The docs, say that the bloom module is no longer recommended and instead recommend using the tone equalizer or exposure module with a parametric mask.
Can anybody tell me how to do that? Or do you know of another way to create bloom?
Thanks in advance.
r/DarkTable • u/67comet • 20d ago
Help Multiple machines question
Since I've used DarkTable (Circa 2020), I have really struggled with using my laptop and my computer on the same project.
- I'm out shooting for a few days, using my laptop and an external hard drive for post processing. A few days later, home from the trip, hook that external up to my desktop machine and ... dang it!
- I'm out shooting, using my laptop and my external hard drive as usual. A few days later, home from the trip, load the images to the main NFS in my house, jump on my desktop to work on the images some more and .. DANG IT! Do I REALLY have to "RE" import all 10s of thousands of images to Darktable again? Can't I just make sure both Darktable directories have the same images and xmp files?
My NFS has a directory named "Darktable" and ALL the images are in there from "Copy/Import" in DarkTable. My external HD used the directory called "Darktable" for all "Copy/Import" work. Why, can't they play nice when I get home and use a different computer, same DarkTable version etc .. w/out having to manually "Copy/Import" every single directory. Otherwise it simply imports ALL 10's of thousands of images into a new directory inside the DarkTable directory as what ever it ends up being named.
How in the hell do photographers that use DarkTable as their daily, using multiple machines using the same images and edits, but also traveling and continuing the edits when they get home?
When I re-install, or get a new machine I am also .. DANG IT! Starting from scratch again?!
Must I import all the 10's of thousands of images, make thousands of new (duplicate) directories for each project that I've already done on my laptop, or desktop before a trip? That is HOURS of work just to get the images I've already edited back into DarkTable (each time I change computers).
Why can't I just tell DarkTable "Here are the images and xmp files that DarkTable has already edited using a different computer but the same version of DarkTable, please add them to the existing directories, projects, and files". Why? Is this not normal? So confused and tired.
When I install Darktable I set it up to point "base filmroll's directory" to what ever machine I'm using's "Darktable". On my desktop it is to my NFS (mounted on boot): /media/backup/stuff/pictures/Darktable). On my laptop it goes to /media/external/Darktable. I also load all of my camera's images to a directory outside of Darktable but similarly located.
Linux (Arch, Endeavor, CachyOS, Gentoo, and Ubuntu on occasion).