darktable 4.0: 3763 Days Later

Software darktable
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Translations of this article: German, Spanish.

A little over 10 years since darktable 1.0 was first released, the darktable team is proud to present darktable 4.0!

For a complete changelog, please see the release notes. The latest version of the user manual is here. Ukrainian and Polish translations are currently available and we expect to add more over the coming months.

Color and Exposure Mapping

A new “spot mapping” mode has been added to both the exposure and color calibration modules. This mode can be used, for example, to perform white balance (chromatic adaptation) against non-grey objects of known color, or to ensure color and exposure consistency of an object across a series of images. A “sampling” mode allows you to pick a reference color in a source image, recording the output exposure/color after the current exposure and color calibration modules respectively. The “correction” mode then mode computes the relevant exposure and color calibration settings so as to match the color selected from a matching sample picked from the target image. The target can also be manually defined by direct input of the appropriate CIE Lab 1976 color coordinates.

This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://www.darktable.org/2022/07/darktable-4.0/
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Congratulations and thank you to the entire darktable team for all of your hard work. Your efforts are greatly appreciated!

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It’s impressive to see how dt evolve.
As a simple user I can simply say “thank you very much to all involved in making this happen!”

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Even in July, it always feels like Christmas when a new darktable version is released! Thanks to all the devs, translators and other darktable team members who are delivering such a wonderful photographic tool.

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The translators are some real unsung heroes. Being an English speaker I am spoiled and not forced to deal with this aspect of learning and using DT. Those that spend the time to open up the UI and documentation should be applauded in abundance

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Thank you everyone involved! I’m new to this forum, but just want to say how much I appreciate all the work that goes into DT. It’s great.

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Congratulations to all involved, really appreciated. Best version yet!
Filmic v6 + Colour balance RGB presets = instantly nice looking, natural vibrant results with no unwanted surprises. Wonder how many complaints we will get that it is difficult to get good results with darktable now?

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I love how the “no” preservation mode in Filmic v6 works!

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Once again my deepest respect to everybody working on this.
Thank you very much!

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I love all the new stuff in DT4, including the collection filters which to me make sense (I like the “pin/unpin button” to show/hide them above the pictures grid). Brilliant work ! Greatest respect to the devs who spent their free time giving to the community for free. Special thanks to the maintainer, the doc writters, the bug fixers, the packagers, and all those who are involved in this incredible and amazing project !!
And long live respectful debates, collaboration, mind openness. And this from a software engineer having more than 40 years of experience, so I think there is a possibility that I may have some ideas about what is good design or not, although I recognise that software design is NOT a science.

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Yes! I’m noticing that too. Much better!

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THANK YOU, to everyone who made this 4.0 version happen. Can’t wait to starting playing with it!

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Thank you Darktable team for your dedication and knowledge. This has produced a great product for many of us to enjoy.

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Thank you to all of the dev team for all of the hard work on this new release!

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I built the 4.0 yesterday and while I haven’t had that much time to play with it yet, my initial impression is that filmic v6 is an improvement over the previous iterations and Guided laplacians mode for the highlight recovery is a nice addition for highlight recovery arsenal in DT, which has sometimes felt like a bit of a weak spot for it.

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Thanks to the developers for another great step forward in developing images. Tonight I am off to teach my photography students about Darktable. Filmic has become so easy to use. For most images I just use the auto tune levels and then move on to tools like tone equalizer. The preset “add basic colorfulness: skin tone” is a nice addition for color balance RGB module. The denoise (profiled) defaults are very good for most images. All these small improvements add up to a great program.

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Yes I find the No option gives more natural looking images especially with skin tones. Perhaps it might not be technically correct but I prefer the look of slightly desaturated highlights.

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But those desaturated highights should be scene highlights, not necessarily the brightest parts of your image. One of the issues I had with filmic is what happens to e.g. close-ups of flowers (esp, yellow) : you could either accept them going partially white, or keep the brightness below maximum.

And “screen white” != “scene white”, if only because a screen (let alone paper) has a very limited dynamic range compared to most scenes, as soon as there’s a bit of direct light (and shadow).

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I believe this very issue should be now addressed fairly well with filmic v6. Just choose a norm that you like (requires a bit of experimenting). I find myself liking the Euclidean norm for rose pics.

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Just want to add my thanks to everyone involved with darktable. I enjoy and appreciate the advances in each new revision.