Only my second time editing in dark table, inexperienced editing altogether. Realizing how much I didn’t learn my little time with Lightroom too, so I’m most certainly a beginner. Unedited/ edited photos from the badlands

This is more of a general application question but in this specific case, I have this bright traffic cone I want retouched out using the grass by it as a source. I know how to do an AI mask in DarkTable in reference to the exposure module but I don't see a way to do the mask with retouch (so I can just use the mask to cut out around the flowers). I feel like I could be missing something and I barely touched masks prior to the AI masking updates.

Running MacOS M2 Mac DT 5.6.0, AI modes enabled are in last slide.

I usually face the task of shifting a specific hue "area". For example a purple-ish red to a warmer/more yellow-y red. There are different tools to achieve that but I felt all of them had some inconveniences. Disclaimer, I am neither professional nor expert so I might just have missed something. What is your process for that issue?

Color Calibration (Channel Mixer): powerful but needs a lot of knowledge about color mixing. I watched some content but it still is hard to wrap your head around

RGB Primaries: Easier to use but not that great for individual control. I feel like it affects other colors too much, which you didn't want to modify in the first place.

Color Equalizer (hue tab) : Colors are easier to target but the controls just feel a bit awkward.

Color balance rgb: mostly for changing the hue in specific areas, but not for specific colors.

I don't have experience with the color lookup table yet. Would that be a good approach? I am interested in all workflows

Which darktable application do I need to grant access for safe files in bitdefender so that darktable is able to work properly? I get the following two entries above in bitdefender. Why are there even two entries? Thanks again for any help!

It was one of my favorite things to do in high school. I found out that they don’t make kodalith film anymore, nor do I shoot with film either 😅. But I’m wondering how I can achieve the effect in DT. TIA

Hey,
I am new to darktable. I have some cr3 files I shot on a canon c50. Darktable says the color matrix is missing and the picture ends up all black in the editing tab. Is there a way to fix this myself? Maybe a way to manually choose the demosaicing algorithm and normalization?

Is it possible to have multiple workflows/history stacks on one folder? If I want to edit some photos in two ways, I would like to keep the history of both edits. For example I'm playing with bw/analog like edits and comparing results and I would like to be able to return in both history stacks. Without a duplicating folder, of course

Having just had heaps of problems with Darktable 5.6.0 (it crashes on some CR2 files) I luckily had a copy of the database from before I upgraded, so I could go back to a previous version,

BUT it started me wondering how you can backup all the little changes you have made, particularly the presets for all the modules, but everything else as well, that you will want to restore, if you ever have to reinstall darktable from scratch?

Based on the recents comments on my previous video on summer looks that was not explaining enough the how - I put together this video during the week-end. Hope you will like it.

I’m pretty new to photography and recently started shooting RAW photos on my Nikon D3400. Right now, I use Darktable for most of my editing, but I also recently got access to Affinity with Canva Pro.

I’m trying to figure out the best workflow between the two programs without unnecessarily editing every photo twice.

Would it make the most sense to do the full RAW edit in Darktable first, export as a 16-bit TIFF, and only use Affinity for advanced masking, retouching, object removal, or artificial lighting effects?

Or is there a better workflow using only one of the programs?

I’d also appreciate any module recommendations, tutorials, or examples of your editing process. I’m using a Surface Pro 7 with 16 GB of RAM, so I’m also trying to avoid a workflow that is unnecessarily heavy or slow.

Hi Everybody,

I've decided to learn how to use DarkTable, and I have a question regarding file manipulations.

In the Composite module, I have to slide an image from the Filmstrip, so that means the image I want to add must be in the same physical directory as the image I am editing, or is there a way to create a collection that contains images from different physical directories? I don't really want to start copying images left and right when I want to try an overlay. For example, I am trying to add a mist overlay on a forest image. Ideally, I would apply a few mist overlays to see which one I like the best. I keep all my overlays in a single main folder, and I'd like to be able to use them from there, and not have to copy every file I may want to use in the folder where my edited image is.

Another quick question : normally, I would use the blending modes. Is this an option in Darktable, or do I use the Opacity slider in the Composite module?

Thank you!

I noticed this when applying a style to a picture in darktable 5.6.0 on my Nobara 44 linux machine.Observe that the values for all the adjustments are reported as 0 even though the sliders are clearly not in the center (default) position. If I drag the sliders from the position shown in the image the values are changing but with respect to the "new zero position". The "reset parameters" button does not bring back the sliders to the center position so I wonder if this is just a UI bug where the actual adjustments are zero but the sliders get their position from some dirty state? I'm not sure what is going on here so I figured I'll tap the reddit knowledge base regarding this. Does anyone have a clue of what is happening? Is this perhaps a bug in darktable or have I enabled some setting to make it behave like this?

I'm trying to add a radial gradient and then subtract an object from that ellipse mask. I can't seem to get it to work and it always ends up like in the second picture, where darktable just combines the two shapes instead of subtracting the boat from the ellipse. I've tried moving the ellipse over the boat in mask manager, tried different blend modes and tried with the group #8 under/inside group exposure 1 and as an individual group but nothing seems to give the results I want. Any help would be greatly appreciated

Summer is coming - I decided to share my presets to apply on your best memories. Please leave me your comments.

How to crop to a wanted pixel count, all I see is the sliders, and I can't get it perfect.

So I tried shooting HDR for real estate using 5 bracketed photos at 2 EV intervals. I did some testing in my house, but after combining the RAW files, the room is way darker in the HDR image.

I tried tonemapping and messing with the settings, but whenever I get the room looking good, the windows look messed up, and if I fix the windows, the room is too dark again.

When I watch other people do HDR, it seems like their merged image already looks pretty decent, but mine is just way too dark.

I'm going to add the bracketed photos and the final HDR image so you can take a look. Any idea what I'm doing wrong or what the problem could be?

New to Darktable, been using Lightroom in the past.
Using Darktable 5.6.0, on Win11.
I want to compare one master image to many others. In the split view of culling mode both images change when I scroll.
What I need is that the one image (lets say on the left) stays the same all the time and only the other image changes.
What settings do I need for that?
Google and AI have not given any good results.
Thanks

Just to clarify, I use Bitdefender on my MacBook. Bitdefender allows you to designate certain folders as "Safe Files", which are then protected from unauthorised modifications. One of these folders contains the images I import, which leads me to my question: Whenever I import images, I keep getting an error message. Doesn’t this contradict the claim that darktable is non-destructive?

Sorry for what might be a rather silly question, I’m just trying to wrap my head round this.

I have just started using Darktable and some Nikon D100 raw files display this error when I open them in Darkroom:

cannot write XMP file '/Volumes/images/2005/2005-01-08_16-01-04.nef.xmp': [xmp_write] failed to serialize xmp data

Has anyone seen this?

So far my investigation seems to point to non standard characters save in the file EXIF data. I have tried to remove this, but I still get the error...

Hello all,

after I went deeper and deeper into the open source rabbit hole I switched from Lightroom to Darktable about a year ago. I started to get more or less comfy with it but there is one thing that still gives me headaches:

Since Darktable is as powerful as it is there seem to be approaches that seem to do the same thing but are different if inspected more closely. For example:

If I’ve got a slightly underexposed image in which I want to brighten especially the shadows I could use

1. the exposure module in the automatic mode
2. the AgX module
3. the color balance rgb module
4. the Tone Equalizer module.

On first glance every module above does what I want but in the end where always seems to be something that makes the picture feel off or even strongly wrong.

There might be dinging I misunderstand fundamentally or maybe there is just a little thing I don’t seem to understand. Since there I could not find any answer it might be obvious to everyone but me.

Thanks in advance for every input.

Edit:
As an example of what I have already figured out: If I use the shadow slider in color balance rgb to brighten my shadows I often end up with washed out darks.

An other example would be: If I use the contrast slider in color balance RGB or if I create contrast with the Tone equalizer module I seem to loose some way of vibrancy in my colors. On the other hand if I use contrast in the AgX module I create more of something I would compare to saturation.

What's your impression of this photo? I'd love some feedback, I'm still learning!

I'm using Darktable on Manjaro Linux currently. I try to switch to CachyOS. On CachyOS exist some specific kernel packages like LTS, Mainline, Bore and so on. Additionally I can use ​OpenCL with my Nvidia card to speed things up.

Does someone of you use DT and can tell me, if there is any speed difference between using DT with LTS and Bore Kernel?

Hey everyone,

I recently picked up a Panasonic Lumix L10, but I’ve run into an issue when trying to open the RAW files (.RW2) in Darktable.

When I try to load a photo in the darkroom, Darktable fails to open it and throws the error:

I'm currently running Darktable version 5.0.0. Has anyone with an L10 (or older Lumix cameras) encountered this before? Is this a missing camera profile in RawSpeed/exiv2, or is there a workaround to get these files recognized?

Thanks in advance for any help!Hey everyone,I recently picked up a Panasonic Lumix L10, but I’ve run into an issue when trying to open the RAW files (.RW2) in Darktable.When I try to load a photo in the darkroom, Darktable fails to open it and throws the error:"File „XXXXXXXX.RW2“ has no recognized format; switching to lighttable)"

(File "XXXXXXXX.RW2" has no recognized format; switching to lighttable)I attached a screenshot (grafik.png) showing the exact error message.I'm currently running Darktable version 5.0.0. Has anyone with an L10 (or older Lumix cameras) encountered this before? Is this a missing camera profile in RawSpeed/exiv2, or is there a workaround to get these files recognized?Thanks in advance for any help!

Im on CachyOS, Darktable 5.6.0