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Looking for a free Lightroom alternative, check out the new Darktable 3.0.0

by 24 Comments

Darktable is an open-source alternative to Lightroom, and it seems to be growing in popularity, especially since it became available for Windows.  The new version is now available for Windows, iOS, and Linux, and just like the previous ones, it’s completely free.

 

The new version of Darktable brings some changes and new features, both big and small. First, the graphic user interface has been completely reworked. You can choose between different themes, and there are eight of them. Also, new shortcuts have been introduced in the 3.0.0 version to speed up your workflow. Then, a new timeline view has been introduced in the lighttable, as well as a new “culling” mode. Since the lighttable view has been rewritten, it’s now made usable on 4K and 5K monitors.

Many existing features have been improved, and a dozen bugs have been fixed. According to Darktable’s website, these are the fixes in v. 3.0.0:

  • The color picker support has been fixed by a complete rewrite. It should now give correct values in all cases.
  • Fix overexposed display.
  • Do not disable SSL for storage modules.
  • A long standing bug on mask distort in Liquify module has been fixed. This was visible when a liquify mask was used together with the perspective correction module activated.
  • A bug on mask distort from crop & rotate when using flip and some angle has been fixed.
  • Fix manual crop in perspective correction module when not in default orientation.
  • The modification of date/time is now stored into the XMP. This ensures that removing the picture and reloading will keep the changes.
  • Fix orientation to support all cases as exposed in these examples: https://github.com/recurser/exif-orientation-examples
  • Store the panel states for each lighttable mode.
  • Fix crop&rotate and orientation in the lightroom importer.
  • Fix ProPhoto RGB profile.
  • Fix exif lens metadata parsing containing comma.

You can check out a very detailed list of improved features and bug fixes on Darktable’s website. If you’d like to download it and try it out, head over to the Install page and follow the instructions. In case you’re new to Darktable, here’s a great, comprehensive introduction to the software if you want to start using it.

[via Reddit]

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  • May want to try this time.

  • Alexander Frolov

    IMO coolest feature in new release of Darktable is the new Tonal equilizer module. It does really nice looking tone mapping which is easy to adjust using mouse scroll right on parts of the image instead of side panel’s bars.

    Darktable’s cool!

  • No cloud sync and no edit on-the-go across multiple devices.
    Because Lightroom is not just a raw converter….. Stop saying “lightroom alternative”

    • Gregoire Labadens On the other hand there are still a lot of people that only edit on their desktop…

    • Lightroom alternative :P

    • Handing your raw files over to a multi-national, profit seeking cooperation is considered a bad idea by some…

  • No one edits on your phone if you are serious!😂

  • I have a previous version installed on Mac, I was not satisfied indeed. Perhaps this new version is better: I will give it a try for sure.

    • Lorenzo Morgoni ver 3 is way faster on my old Mac mini than version 2 was, and no it’s not an Lightroom alternative but for me its an Apple Aperture alternative since Aperture is totally dead now

    • Peter Gustafsson thank you for your kind reply! Yea, I agree with you about the purpose of this software; and I miss Aperture so much, in fact, ’cause it was a very good one. I will download ver. 3 right now.

  • I use ON1 and its beyond amazing!

  • Noah Tahl

    The new version is now available for Windows, iOS, and Linux, . . .

    Really? IOS? Do tell. That would be a very interesting development. Care to show a link to that bit of information, unless you meant the Mac OS.

    • No, not iOS… macOS, yes.

  • JP dJ

    I installed 3.0 on Win-10-64 to see what it would do with lossless compressed not formally supported Nikon Z 7 14 bit raw files (~45MP).
    Nothing. It crashes or gets killed by MS for stack overflow or so.
    A simple destructive bitmap editor like IrfanView has no problems with it.
    I understand open and volunteering, and appreciate the people doing it. But, uninstalled.

    • So not shocking that a file that is specifically not supported crashes? What did you expect to happen?

  • JP dJ

    In the open developers community, who are the architects?

    • The people with the knowledge!

  • krc

    Does it have panorama and hdr merge?

    • No, but there are other Free Software tools for this, such as Luminance HDR, Hugin, and HDRMerge.

      • krc

        It’s more about convenience. In Lightroom I select my files, right click and the panorama/hdr is done in 10 seconds. The end result is a raw dng that I can immediately edit in Lightroom. If these devs worked together on a similar integration it would worth a try.

        • It sort of out of scope for darktable, and integrations for other tools already exist for darktable. Adding all teh features is what lead Adobe to develop Lightroom because Photoshop was no longer about photos…

          • krc

            I don’t see why it should be out of scope? These are very relevant features, all these open source projects would mutually benefit from it, and it really wouldn’t be that much work to make it happen – all the pieces of the puzzle already exist after all to make a decent, open Lightroom alternative.

          • > and it really wouldn’t be that much work to make it happen

            I think it’d take quite a bit of work. If it were easy & quick, it’d probably already be done, no?

            darktable isn’t supposed to be a “decent, open Lightroom alternative.” darktable is its own application with its own, powerful features.

  • Rudra Banerjee

    For those who are not biased and trained by the paid propaganda, lr is a bad alternative to dt. Stop saying it other way.

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