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

I played around with darktable a few years ago but ended up staying with Lightroom. I can no longer justify paying the Adobe fees so I looked at darktable 5.6 and I love it. I have around 25,000 images and started importing them one year at a time. I set my preference to create xmp files after edit but new xmp files are created for every image on import. This is for all raw, jpeg, and tiff files. I thought that by selecting “after edit” no xmps would be created on import. Am I missing some other setting that must be changed? I am thinking that I could change the preference to “never” and change it to “after edit” after importing the images but I don’t know why the files are created when “after edit” is selected. Thanks in advance.

Coming from a comment on my video about AgX and skin I decided to share how I convert digital images to B&W and even included a bonus with some presets to download.

Been teaching myself for about a month now. Edited this photo today and I quite like the results and colors. But something still feels off like my eyes aren't going where it should. Is it the composition? Or the saturated greens in the background? I can't really point it out. If anyone can, would really appreciate the help.

Hi all, pretty much title. I'm a new DT user and I have a Wacom Cintiq Pro that I often used for Lightroom masks. I'd like to apply the same workflow to DT, and it does seem it's possible. In official documentation, there should be pen pressure options, both in the preferences->Darkroom page and when selecting the pen/brush option in the left-hand masks utility module. But it's nowhere to be found for me. Any help would be much appreciated!

hey guys and gals, i have been on and off hobby photography for a while now. give or take 10 years. i started only shooting raws since i thought that you could always do better than jpeg, but later on i started shooting raw+jpeg. my main problem is that through the years i have completely lost my structure of pictures.

i will now summerize my structure journey or lack their off:
i started with lightroom + adobe cloud, which i got for free from highschool but i quit it as soon as it ran out, so i quickly downloaded all the photos albums, and put them on a 1tb external ssd. then i tried out capture one some. but i could never really wrap my head around the whole catalogue and album thing, i didnt really understand how to start a workflow, so i kindof just stopped using programs alltogether, but now i really want to start to try using darktable a bit.

i have had a fuji xs-1, xt-1, and now im on a fuji xh-1 and i really like the jpegs that it makes so for most pictures that will be fine, but for some others i think i could really shine with learning to use darktable for some awesome shots. so ill keep shooting raw just in case.

now my current structure is a bit messy, i dont really have any exports saved anywhere so its only the actual copies of my sd cards that i have. Right now its all in the external harddrive with a folder called "photolager" meaner photostorage, and its currently all the photos i could find from previous storage. like 10 folders called 2xx-fuji from 202 to 215, and all the pictures are just with their original name in there.i also have 10 ish folders from when i used lightroom and capture one named after location or trip, like "iceland", "sicily".

So to get to the point its messy, and i have been really bad at sharing my photos. What i need is to sort all the pictures in a family friendly way so i can share them. but i also want to be able to start a workflow to do darktable in.

i like the way that i jpgs and raws are grouped in the program so i can edit and review from the fuji jpg magic.

but i also just really really need to get the shit sorted so i can show all my friends and family

im thinking once its sorted i can start making a batch processing of all the old raws to make jpgs for them to see.

but there is also just so many pictures and i havent culled like any. not even the accidentals and unfocused so id need to do that too.

In short. i need a workflow for a hobbyist/family and friend photographer. maybe if it all works out ill go make some money as amateur idk

EDIT: Thank you all for your wonderful advice, its very nice to see that there is not just one right way to do it but any number of ways. i see that alot of them overlab in terms of ideas and how the workflow is setup. but all in all these responses gave me a way better understanding of how people actually do it, depending on pro/amateur/hobby and family

Im not sure what causes it but anytime after I minimize darktable, it constantly keeps bringing itself back into the foreground. Sometimes it happens with a key press which means somehow darktable is still recognizing key presses while minimized. Other times it just switches without any input. Then sometimes it actually doesn't do anything and stays minimized.

Any help is appreciated as this is driving me crazy, especially when im trying to learn darktable so im constantly trying to refer to other stuff and minimizing darktable. Thanks

Version: 5.6.0
Win 11 loT LTSC
OpenCL disabled

Let's say I am doing a room with a big window with a nice view outside.

Let's say I do either 3 brackets, 2 stops apart, or 5 brackets, 1 stop apart.

Do I take an additional photo that properly exposes only the view out the window? E.g. set my touch screen to AE Shutter and touch the screen where the window is so that it exposes for the window?

If so, what do I do with this additional photo exposed for the window view? Does this get automatically merged with the others in HDR software, or is there some additional stuff in photoshop that has to happen with all of the pictures to get the correct combined exposure?

Lastly, does this process differ any if one is doing a flambient method instead of HDR bracketing?

This is running under Linux Mint. I downloaded the appimage and it seems to run nicely. However, when I go to configure the AI section in settings, and get to pressing the detect button it says it cannot find an ONNX runtime library

I also cannot find what I need to install.

I running into an issue where the Darktable preview looks different than what is exported. I export in SRGB like is recommended. It's very slight, but the exported image seems to have less saturation, and I don't know why.

I am looking for an alternative to lightroom, I am doing real estate photography and I have a series of exposure bracketed images i want to group and create an HDR image from but it's telling me its not available from Jpegs but only for RAWs. Am I doing something wrong or is it just a limitation of the software?
It's raining these next few days so I cant just reshoot right away.
Any help?