Photoshop remains the golden standard for photo editing tools, though it’s a tad overkill when you just want to modify the color balance or make minor corrections to your images. That’s where Adobe’s Lightroom app shines with its insanely easy learning curve and limited yet useful set of color correction tools.

But with Adobe’s constant anti-consumer practices and astronomically high subscription prices, not everyone is willing to spend $60 on the Creative Cloud subscription. Fortunately, there are a couple of free alternatives to Lightroom that can serve you well, though none of them is as robust as Darktable.

4 It's available on Linux

An open-source app on an open-source OS

One of the complaints many users (including myself) have with Adobe is that their Creative Cloud apps aren’t available on Linux, and the only way to use them on any Penguin-scented distros is to spin up a Windows VM and hope everything works as expected.

The situation is largely the same for most free alternatives to Lightroom: the Microsoft Photos and Apple Photos applications are restricted to their respective operating system lineup. Pixelmator Pro, despite being a solid alternative to Lightroom, has a similar (yet affordable) subscription for advanced features.

This leaves us with just two decent options: Darktable and Rawtherapee. Both of them are available on Linux and work just as well on macOS and Windows. But as you’ll soon see, Darktable manages to surpass Rawtherapee in most cases.

3 Decent user interface

That's neither simple nor overly complex

If there’s one demerit to using open-source apps, it’s that their UI is overly complicated, especially compared to the simple and elegant interfaces in premium applications. I’ll admit that Darktable is somewhat guilty of these charges, as the app has a higher learning curve for newcomers.

But its UI is not terribly complex once you throw in its biggest rival, Rawtherapee, into the ring. Difficulty-wise, I’d place Darktable between Rawtherapee and Lightroom, and while it’s certainly more complex than Microsoft/Apple Photos, it’s vastly superior to Rawtherapee’s cluttered UI.

2 Great masking provisions

That are even better than what you'll find on Lightroom

Masks can be a lifesaver when you only need to make modifications to select aspects of an image. Technically, Lightroom and Rawtherapee also support masking, though Darktable surpasses both apps when it comes to applying masks to your images.

For instance, you have drawn masks, which involve tracing shapes over the portion of the image that you need to modify. Then there are the parametric masks, which use blending factors to provide precise control over the color balance. You can use it in tandem with the drawn masks, and the final result is saved as a raster mask that you can reapply to other modules inside Darktable.

1 Solid tool kit that isn't overwhelmingly difficult to use

All you need to do is sink in some hours

Sure, Darktable can be a bit overwhelming for someone used to Lightroom, but it offers a lot more flexibility when editing images. Of course, one might argue that its biggest rival, Rawtherapee, supports better metadata editing facilities, though Darktable has a wider set of color calibration tools. From the color look-up table and contrast equalizer to blurring filters and high/low pass filters, Darktable has better options if you’re only into color management. And that’s before you include the more miscellaneous facilities like watermarks and censor filters.

Should you switch to Darktable from Lightroom?

Despite its many pros, Darktable has its fair share of drawbacks. If you just want to touch up some photographs on your smartphone, Lightroom is still the best option. Plus, Darktable is a little slow in the rendering process and can take more than a few seconds to export the final image.

Due to its extensive toolkit, you’ll also need to sink hours of practice into the open-source software to familiarize yourself with the basic features. But if you’re looking for a powerful image editing tool that doesn't cost a penny, you won’t be disappointed if you switch over to Darktable.