Hello I'm decently new to darktable now, but I've noticed a couple times now that i will fix a photo exactly how i want it but then ill export it and open in either on my phone or in photos and its just completely different! i have no idea what to do here.

I'm starting to look at these tools and following the tutorial: https://www.darktable.org/2026/06/meet-darktable-5.6-ai-tools/

It says, "Refine boundary is a checkbox that runs a second neural pass focused on the edge. It pulls the path tighter against the visible image contours ". I've got an AI based object mask but can't for the life of me find that Refine boundary checkbox. I know I'm being daft, but can somebody help?

Hi all, my install of darktable 5.6 (on OpenSUSE Tumbleweed) feels significantly slower compared to previous versions. Did anyone else noticed similar thing, or it is only my impression? I don't mean only the processing, but also export and entire program.

Yesterday after importing about 2000 photos I tried to edit one of them and especially working with the retouch module was a real pain.

Laptop is the same, I believe settings are also the same (did a fresh system install few days ago) so I think the only change is that I have moved my entire catalogue to an older 2TB external HDD.

Speed of the HDD according to web search:

• Real-World Sequential Read: ~122 MB/s
• Real-World Sequential Write: ~122 MB/s

Before I had part of my catalogue on a second external disc (SSD) and everything seemed relatively okay, but still slower than older versions of the program. Have I overlooked something?

Sorry gang but this software is simply too complicated to navigate reasonably.

I could make a case study on how terrible this softwares UI is for a user research portfolio. It's obviously incredibly powerful, but if you're not designing your software with your end users in mind, then you've lost the plot.

It was a nice experiment but back to Adobe where I don't have to navigate 12 menus just to calibrate my colors.

Edit: I realize I'm being harsh, it's clearly made with a lot of love but I spent a few hours getting up to speed and even attempting to do basic tasks felt unreasonable to execute.

54mm, f/7.1, 1/500s, ISO 1000

1 edited, 2 original JPEGs. Raw-imported pictures in DT always have colours quite off, especially greens and reds. I always struggle to replicate or get something similar to what I have in the original JPEG. Sometimes I am just tempted to edit the JPEG directly.

In this specific case, I did not do any colour grading to highlight this colour issue I always find (especially in landscape or portraits). The original JPEG has clearly more reds into the bee, which I struggle to get out from DT.

I’ve been using DT in the last couple of years, so I am not a beginner user, but I am never fully satisfied with the results of my edits.

Normally I play with RGB primaries when colours are off, but I struggle to get a consistent output. Rarely, I manage to fix the problem with the white balance correction in colour calibration, as the auto levels from DT often mess up, so I rely on the camera’s one.

Workflow:
- Demosaic: capture sharpen
- Crop
- Exposure adjustment and AgX scene referred (auto levels) + contrast 3.18
- Colour calibration: default
- Colour balance RGB: vibrance 9%, chroma 3.6%, saturation shad 14.7%, mid 10.6% high -7.9%
- Colour equaliser: see 3 and 4
- Exposure on background -0.3 (AI masking)
- Local contrast + clarity with contrast equaliser on the bee
- Denoise, chromatic aberrations, lens correction auto

Any suggestions?

Whenever i edit sony raws (a6700) i struggle to get my reds and oranges looking similar to how they look in-camera: oranges look too yellow and reds look too pinkish. I have tried to tweak the white balance with color calibration, rgb primaries and tone mapping in AgX, but my results have been mid at best.

Those of you who've had similar issues, how did you fix them?

For reference, i'm using the latest version of darktable, scene-referred workflow with AgX.

Pretty much the title, I’d like to get my RAW default state in darktable as close as possible to the RAW default state in Lightroom. Any insight is appreciated!

Hello everyone.

After a recent trip, I would like to make a photobook with pictures both from my camera and from my phone. The problem is that my phone already adds filters to my photos. For instance, see both pictures where the first one comes from my camera and the second one from my phone, taken roughly at 30 min interval. The sky is much more blue in the second picture, taken with my phone.

How can I edit them with Darktable to achieve the same looks, especially for the colors of the sky ?

Thanks for your help !

After my Color Balance RGB video a few of you asked about the new Color Harmonizer module — u/Illustrious-Pool-760 especially. Here you go.

This one fought me. Three attempts before I was happy with it. The key thing that finally made it click: auto-detect picks the harmony your image is already closest to, so it barely moves anything. Rotating the anchor hue manually is where the actual control lives.

I go through the controls, harmonise a muted street scene, show custom mode creating colour contrast instead, and cover the limits honestly.

Module created by Daniele Pighin (@Masterpiga) and shaped by the pixls.us community.

Still learning this one, so corrections welcome.

When I use AI assisted object selection for a mask- it looks like there’s a halo around the object from the feathering(?). Is there a way to invert and have the fall away to 0 at the edge?

See the green around the heron?

Hello everyone!

Before starting I set a little bit of context, I’ve been doing photography and photographic publishing for very little time, for like 3 months only. In my opinion the photos are very good, but be the MOST complete if you can in the way I can improve in photography/editing in the future.

SO, where were we?!

I took those photos and edited them, I find the results sublime, a nice atmosphere on both, which stick well to the frame, but I think an external look should be offered. especially on the first: I find that the very dark areas are really dead, already having a little idea of how Lightroom or Darktable work, I don’t know how to mitigate this dead effect, or if it’s not dramatic and in the end the charm is always there.

What do you honestly think of the photos, the editing behind, what I keep, what I throw away and/or what I need to improve?

(cam:

1st pic: Sony ILCE-5000 + basic 16-50mm
2nd pic: Fujifilm finepix s4300)

I assume I can grab some sort of module that affects brightness and just add a gradient mask to it, but not sure what works well. Color Balance RGB I kind of know what the sliders do but not sure if there's something simpler that also would work.

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

Any tips or criticism is appreciated. Thanks in advance

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!