Free Lightroom Alternative Darktable Gets Better Than Ever With Update

The remarkably good and fully open-source (free to use) photo editing app Darktable has been updated with crucial features that make it better than ever.

Ina a recent blog post about its major new updates, Darktable developer Pascal Obry explains what’s new in the desktop app and how it can help photographers handle their editing better than ever.

Among other things, he mentions an improved editing history user interface, a better color correction system and improved sophistication of color and light editing. He also adds that the app now performs better in general.

Most importantly, he explains that the editing history now periodically auto-saves itself every 10 seconds or at customizable intervals. Auto-save can however also simply be disabled.

As for color processing, Darktable version 4.6.0 now has a new module called rgb primaries, which lets photographers handle delicate color corrections while also being able to do more intense, creative color grading.

In reference to rgb primaries, the blog post states,

“This module can be used for delicate color corrections as well as creative color grading. It allows the red, green and blue primary colors to be moved around using “hue” and “purity” controls. The underlying pixel operation is essentially the same as channel mixing.”

A primaries section in the “sigmoid” module of Darktable has also been added which lets a photographer precisely tune their image parameters even if they were captured in poor or difficult lighting. According to the post,

“Modifying these parameters can provide pleasing sunsets, improved skin tones etc. This feature can only be used with sigmoid’s per-channel mode and is loosely based on ideas from Troy Sobotka’s AgX and related work in the Blender community. The included ‘smooth’ preset should provide a good starting point for further corrections using this feature,”

In terms of performance enhancements, the newest version of Darktable loads faster than ever according to Obry, and also lets you export certain image types much faster.

Another useful new improvement in Darktable 4.6.0 is its broadened camera support. The application is now also specifically compatible with several newer cameras from major brands.

These include Leica’s SL2, SL2-S and M11-P; OM System’s TG-7, Nikon’s Zf and compatibility with several of Sony’s newest cameras including the a7C II, ZV-E1 and the a6700 (as well as older a6000 series cameras.

Unlike Adobe’s software products, Darktable also works with Linux machines in addition to being available for Windows and MacOS.

The whole post is worth reading and I also recommend giving Darktable itself a try to any photographers who haven’t done so.

If you’re really settled into using Adobe’s Lightroom and Photoshop products, you might find them superior, but many photographers do swear by Darktable for its quality despite it being completely free to use.

Part of the reason why the app is widely praised might be because it was developed by actual photographers.

As the darktable.org site states, “Darktable is created for photographers, by photographers. Having developers that are also avid photographers as part of the target audience is good for understanding the real world problems, challenges, and workflows.”

Extensive tutorials for using the application are of course also available on YouTube if you’re completely new to this software.

You can also check out our own review of the application, though it’s worth mentioning that it was written before this latest update.

What’s more, photographers can browse an online forum called Pixl.us in which the app’s main developer and photographers who heavily use Darktable contribute regularly with tips and advice.

Overall, Darktable is already considered by many photographers to be the best free photo editing app available today. Its newest update only makes it better and the app is certainly worth taking for a spin with your own photos.

You can download the app in any of its editions for different operating systems either through the Darktable website here, or via Github here.

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