Darktable is an open-source photo-editing software. It allows professional photographers to be a deeper part of the process of editing compared to those who use programs like Lightroom, Affinity Photo, or Luminar Neo. There are some great open-source creative tools, but Darktable is incomparable for the process of editing beautiful imagery.

11 It’s free and open-source

The best benefit for everyone

Darktable is one of the best open-source photo-editing apps you can find. The open-source nature of Darktable means that not only is it cost-free to use or install, but it also comprises a tight-knot community of like-minded photographer developers.

Darktable is made for photographers, by photographers. All the features you find within its beautifully-designed interface — another benefit Darktable has — are created with photographers in mind.

The benefit of open-source software is being able to access the source code and improve your experience with Darktable. If you’re not a developer, you can install Darktable in its most recent stable form and enjoy the fruits of others’ labor.

Due to the open-source nature, you can access Darktable from a variety of platforms. It runs on Linux, Mac OS X or macports, BSD, Windows, and Solaris 11 or GNOME.

You own 100% of your installed version of Darktable. There’s no leasing, renting, temporary ownership, or loss of the program if you stop subscribing. It’s yours. Enjoy it.

10 It’s an experimental laboratory

Learn more as you edit your images

You are easily able to experiment with Darktable. It isn’t a software that only focuses on the end result of image editing. With Darktable, you’ll experiment in a creative laboratory, requiring patience, but invigorating your imagination.

It’s a lot slower in Darktable than other larger brands of image editing software like Adobe Lightroom or Affinity Photo. Patience is what engages photographers who really wish to learn and envelop themselves with the process of creating technically beautiful photos.

You can do a lot within Darktable. You can push it to its limits, and yourself to your own in the process. You can’t do much wrong, so long as you don’t mind experimenting and exploring different tools, effects, processes, and results.

9 RAW and more

Darktable offers many format options

A photographer’s best image-editing software should always be able to process RAW imagery. That’s why Adobe Photoshop and Lightroom are fast favorites in the commercial photography world.

You can open, edit, and process RAW format files easily, as well as other formats like JPEG, CR2 (RAW), NEF, HDR, PFM, RAF, and even more.

The versatility of multiple format options allows you to edit any image you come across without blockades. The quality Darktable provides in its editing process is second-to-none, regardless of the file format.

8 Non-destructive editing

Productive editing that futureproofs the image file

Non-destructive editing should really be the only form of image editing we use. Sadly, there is plenty of software that offers destructive editing as default, and not all even provide non-destructive options.

You’ll thank your past self for using Darktable if you need to revert to original or previous versions of your image without feeling like you’ve wasted your hard work in the editing process.

7 Ability to reorder menu modules

Customize, duplicate, and make the best workspace

Darktable offers a productive way of reordering your menu and workspace. While you can customize your workspace in Adobe programs — one of many great tips in Photoshop that boost your workflow — Darktable offers it in a more personalized way.

You can reorder menu modules. You can also duplicate the modules if you need to apply those features multiple times. This means you can apply the same tool multiple times, and especially using masks or other features, you can be selective as to where they’re applied.

You can search for modules by referencing their names or tags, which helps locate hard-to-find modules throughout the software. You can also switch any module on or off depending on your use case.

6 Control your image processing pipeline

Color and other visual control

There’s a lot more control within the image processing pipeline in Darktable compared to other tools. You can receive unparalleled results if you are patient and learn the program well.

As you build and develop your images into creative masterpieces, you can control many aspects of the image that you don’t retain in other software. The color controls alone are fantastic. There’s split toning, color zones, color calibration, equalizer charts, RGB primaries sliders, and many ways to customize each of those for your image wants.

Editing RAW images already puts you in control of color, but with Darktable’s tools, it’s on another level of creative control.

5 Unlimited masking options

Mask any area for any edits

Not only can you duplicate modules to apply masks separately, but also by using masking tools throughout the software, you can apply many different techniques and styles to your images.

You’re not limited to preset mask types. You can draw masks with shapes or by custom drawn paths. Each mask auto-names itself based on the shapes it’s made from. There’s even a mask manager to give you even more management and control over your masking layers and names.

You can also use mask integration tools to use two masks in one area. These tools are similar to Photoshop’s Pathfinder tools: Sum; Union; Intersection; Difference; and Exclusion.

4 Incredible denoise support

Denoise up to 6400 ISO effectively

Shooting photos in RAW gives you much more support in post-production than other formats. Along with the file format support, using Darktable gives you more support in denoising your images.

While there’s no formal limit on how high ISO you can realistically denoise, most people are not shooting higher than 6400 ISO in normal conditions. And even that’s higher than most photographer’s would need to use.

The good news here, though, is that even shooting as high as 6400 ISO, Darktable’s denoise tools have the ability to smooth out your images effectively, rather than leaving them to be a lost cause.

3 Sharp live previews

Previews show the result at the correct quality

Many photo-editing tools use a machine-based preview that dulls down the image rather than showing the true export result of the image. This is a pointless exercise, as if you were previewing your hard-worked-on image after hours of editing it, you should be able to view the true result.

Darktable offers that ability to its users. The preview image you see is exactly as the exported final image will be. There won’t be able surprises — or disappointments — in the differences between previewed image and final image.

2 No AI features

Everything you create is done with traditional tools

If you’re already a fan of open-source software, you likely have certain feelings about AI features filling creative tools. Although there are some helpful uses of AI within creative software, many photographers who care about their craft would prefer not to apply AI to their original photos.

Darktable — and most open-source software — doesn’t use any AI. You won’t need to question copyright, consent, ownership rights, or scary things that’ll come out in the future as AI continues. The photos you edit and create in Darktable are all yours. With no input from computer intelligence, machine learning, nor AI.