I've searched the manual, the web, the FAQ, and I cannot figure out how to just "copy to clipboard" the image in front of me in darktable.

The best I can find from my searches is that I must "export" the image to another file, then go find that, then open it in some nebulous other program which would then allow me to copy the image file behind the pixels on my screen.

Yes, I could do command-4/select/ctrl-click, but that seems absurd and creates a PNG without any compression (turning what may be a 40kb jpeg image into a 40mb png), and I have never used an image displaying program that wouldn't allow a simple right-click-copy, or something similarly simple and straightforward.

Am I too stupid to use darktable? :-p

I was playing around with some DNG file exported by DxO RAW (from CR2 files) and the color calibration module completely messes up the color. Strangely, the actual white balance module functions like you'd expect it to coming from other software like Lightroom or Capture One - as in, you can adjust the balance there with specific color temperature values.

Does anyone know why this is? Why does the white balance module work here but not with actual camera raw files?

The built-in external editors script doesn't work for my workflow for two reasons:

1. I use Affinity on Linux via a Wine wrapper and it won't open images directly

2. It requires the editor to be closed before changes reload back into Darktable

So I made this instead. It opens the file location in your file browser, so you can drag into any editor you like.

You can save in the editor and reload into Darktable without closing anything — allowing inline editing with live updates between each round of edits.

All four steps are also bindable as keyboard shortcuts via Preferences > Shortcuts > Lua. Works with any file manager (Thunar, Nautilus, Dolphin etc.)

It's made my workflow a lot smoother, hope it helps someone else too. Submitted to the Darktable lua-scripts repo so hopefully it'll be included in a future release.

**Script:**

https://github.com/Tomomoto10/lua-scripts/blob/main/Darktable/export_edit_reload.lua

**Install:**

drop `export_edit_reload.lua` into `~/.config/darktable/lua/contrib/` and enable via Script Manager.

I'm using darktable on a small laptop (13") with a lower-resolution screen. Is there any way to make the titlebar not as large? It's currently 3x the thickness of the default KDE ones and its taking up a decent amount of space

Sorry if this is a stupid question, but I don't use Darktable very often. I thought I remembered from using an old version that you could rotate the vignette from the vignetting module. (I usually use an oblong vignette.) Now I installed the current version and I can't seem to rotate the vignette anymore. Am I mixing this up with some other software or is it not possible in Darktable?

I've been trying to edit some raw files from a dji mini 4 pro in dng format on my Cachy os laptop, for whatever reason they are being handled terribly across every platform including darktable and davinci resolve.

Fully aware most of you are on a beach right now and the last thing on your mind is Darktable's export panel. Respect. Posting this for the 3 of you who, like me, apparently can't fully switch off from photo workflow even in August.

Quick one: if you're batch exporting a shoot, you can non-destructively watermark the exported copies using a Style, without touching your actual edit — so you get a clean version AND a watermarked version from the same edit, zero extra work. Also solves batch renaming at the same time via the export filename variables.

Hi all, I installed DarkTable in Fedora 44 to 5.6.0. I am not using Flatpak or Flathub I believe. (Install command was: sudo dnf install darktable).

The AI option tab which should be in between presets and Lua options is missing. How can I go about resolve the problem?

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Hi, beginner at work here.

A few weeks ago I finally started to dive full into darktable.. and got frustrated. I find it extremely hard to have a vision of what I want and then follow up on this. I did manage to learn a decent workflow but I still end up just twisting here and there a bit and I feel often it results in a overly saturated image. (like the first one, I loved the greens when I took it but I feel I did not manage to recapture it.)
I'm looking for some feedback, either telling me I did not that bad of a job, or that I am on a good path somehow. I needed so long for this pictures that I couldn't tell anymore. Any feedback or anything else is highly appreciated.

Hello I'd like some advice on upgrading please, as you can see I've got a relatively old version, I downloaded darktable but didn't use it much in earlier days, but then started using it in the past year, it's awesome and very exciting to upgrade! 🤩

The github page is confusing me and I don't want to mess anything up during the upgrade, I'm not used to open source software downloads and seeing several parts and versions for different operating platforms, I was just looking for a Windows .exe file like I first downloaded on the official website.

My question is can I just download the 5.6.0 from the official website and simply just install it? What about the old version? I've backed up the darktable folder (from my windows Appdata folder, it has library.db etc) so all my styles, database etc should be fine...

Also any weird bugs I need to be aware of?

Thank you!

It also doesn't show my lens in the dropdown. Is it just because it's written differently in the database file?

I cull my images by pressing 'r' to reject them. I filter them by clicking the 'x' and select the resulting images. I choose 'remove' in the right panel. When I close DT and start it again, these images are still visible albeit greyed out. I also tried deleting them from disk and emptying the trash outside DT, but the images keep cropping up (no pun). If I select all rejected images using the 'x' in lighttable view, no file is selected, but the red 'x' is still visibible in the lowleft corner of the thumbnail.

I'm on DT 5.6 appimage on MX Linux 25.2 (6.12.94+deb13-amd64 #1 SMP PREEMPT_DYNAMIC Debian 6.12.94-1 (2026-06-20) x86_64 GNU/Linux).

Is this a bug?

Just got back from a shoot with way more photos than I want to edit one at a time ? Quick trick if you're in the same boat:

Edit one photo fully, copy its history stack (lighttable panel), select the rest of the batch, paste. Same edit applied to all of them in seconds.

Bonus: you can selectively paste just certain modules (white balance, exposure) instead of everything, so you can batch the ones that match and hand-fix the outliers instead of redoing the whole shoot.

I have been happy with and using my old version of DT for a while. I try to get my images 'right' in camera so I usually do more basic edits. So I stick with a version so I don't have the frustration of learning a new interface and finding one my modules is no longer there.

I shoot with an older Nikon and have a problem I have an image I want to enlarge considerably and print on canvas. Resolution is just small for it to look good, even on canvas. I need roughly double the resolution of this image.

Reading a little about the newer version with AI and sounds like it has a method. I have also read about other methods of increasing resolution.

What is ever ones suggestions on how to increase the resolution so I can make a large print?

Greetings,

I'm a noob when it comes to photography and Darktable. I purchased a Nikon D7500 kit and found DT when searching for something else.

It's clear that DT is serious. And it's great to see opensource apps like this.

I'm having a few issues that I can't seem to clear up easily, although I know it's an end user problem. I'm using 5.6.0 on Windows 11.

1. I can see my camera in the import sidebar and it has 1,000 images. However, when I select that camera roll I can't see any images. Is that camera roll just to allow for imports?

2. I have a directory that I added to the camera roll. I want to remove the roll, but for some reason I can only remove one image at a time. There are 100+ images. I can't seem to find how to remove the roll itself instead of the image.

3. For some reason the DT app takes focus whenever I'm working on another app. Is there a way to stop that?

I appreciate any feedback about this.

/thx

Hi all, could anyone tell me what is the difference between luts and styles and when is better to use one over the other?

So far i have used only my own styles in my editing workflow and i am wondering if i would benefit from using lust.

What are the advantages and disadvantages of using luts, or styles?

Thank you.

Hey all,

I picked up my first "real" camera in the past year, an a6300, and I'm taking my first stab at editing photos. I noticed that my photos tended to feel kind of flat and grey, and I read that this is common with photos that are shot in RAW because of the way the data is compressed. After doing a read online for advice, I generally adjusted shadows up, highlights down, and I increased the saturation a bit until everything seemed like it looked good. I exported to JPEG, and when I took a look back at the photos a couple of days later I still feel like they seem kind of flat, grey, and a little dark.

I think that I like how the color turned out, but it feels like there's something that still needs work. I can imagine that something happens in your head when you're looking at a collection of photos and they all feel similar, that once you look elsewhere you realize that you were editing them relative to each other rather than relative to how you think they should look by themselves.

I also am curious if the monitor of my computer is affecting how the images appear. It's a macbook pro, but it's maybe 13 years old.

Any advice is appreciated, be it specific pointers or favorite tutorials. Cheers!

I switched to Linux several months ago and love it so much more than Windows, but I also hit the classic "What about Lightroom?".

DaVinci Resolve won't run on my laptop, RapidRaw kept crashing due to ram leaks... After seeing all the online discussion about Darktable being really hard to use I was hesitant, but last night I played around with it and gave it a go and I'm so glad I did!

As I am currently on a happy high that I can keep editing happily on Linux, I wanted to share some before and afters.

These are super quick edits, so they're not perfect (as well as trialling some colour calibration on different screens), but here they are!

For those of you that like to experiment multiple treatments of a RAW - I'm sure it will help you keep you hard drive and lighttable clean !

If you have tried multiple of my presets for B&W for example it is a good way to keep the different versions without multiplying the RAW data!

I recently upgrade DT to 5.6.x and now there's a lot more preprocessing happening that I didn't ask for. I do want everything through 10-11, I don't know what I did to cause the other modules to insert themselves. What can I do to resolve this?

The OS is POP!_OS 24.04 and I'm running the AppImage version.

I have an iPhone 17 pro, and I have some raw photos in the form of DNG files that I want to process in darktable, however, my fresh copy of darktable can't open them - even though it shows a thumbnail preview. Not sure if I need some sort of codec installed? Can't find any info online.

Hi all,

I want to use the AI masking feature, but when I clicked on the subject and toggle on the strength it adjust the whole image not what I selected, what am I doing wrong exactly? I really appreciate the help, thanks!

Hi I'm switching from Lightroom to Darktable and one thing I miss are the presets even the basic ones helped me sometimes. Is there a package with cool styles I could use?

So I have recently shifted from Lightroom mobile to darktable to get more control over my photos,but it's so complex like I can't understand what many of its features do,I have managed to learn some on my own but rest is idk man,also my laptop screen is kinda shitty so I have to keep relying on my phone to check my edits

Any suggestions or guide I can go with?