I shot some photo’s of my neighbor’s car in raw the other day and really like the .jpeg preview image. tried replicating it with edits to no avail, is there a way i can download the image as it appears in the light table?
First image is the lighttable .jpeg preview
Second is darkroom .raw
darktable is there for to get control and decide for yourself how images shall be developed, so as not to be forced to accept the camera maker’s predefined (average) logarithms for developing and compressing the raw data into a jpeg file. Therefore dt just initially performs a minimum of of more technical actions to be able to render an image on the screen, and from there on it’s basically up to yourself.
So you cannot expect to just open a raw file in dt and see the image as you can see it in the jpeg file that the camera manufacturer embedded in the raw file as a thumb-nail picture. (In the next version, (december,) dt may include some camera dependent presets that may enable users to automatically establish a starting point somewhat similar to the camera jpeg.
From what you present as the raw image seen on screen, (which from what we can see of the processing modules employed at the right hand side may possibly have gotten a somewhat awkward treatment), the first starting point is to apply the exposure module and adjust the lightness of the image so that the mid-tones get a preferred exposure. See the introduction to darktable’s workflow in the initial Overview chapter in dt’s manual, or the many introductory dt videos around, for further steps.
(If you just want to download the embedded jpeg (which camera manufacturers embed in varying resolutions) from the raw file, you will need other tools than dt for that. Search for exifviewers.)
In addition to the excellent advice you can also set your camera to RAW+JPEG if it is an option. I did this until I was comfortable with processing the RAW files.
The popular FastStone Viewer comes set to extract the embedded full-size JPEG from a raw file by default, if that is what is meant by “downloading JPEG sample”. It can also be set to attempt to convert the raw if so desired.
If you post the raw file, I can demonstrate …
Free but not Free Software 
If all you have is your RAW image, you can extract data from it using ExifTool (or on GitHub).
I frequently use this command to extract the embedded images as jpegs to compare against my rendition in Darktable.
exiftool -a -b -W %d%f_%t%-c.%s -preview:all DSC07176.ARW
In my case this creates the files:
DSC07176_PreviewImage.jpg
DSC07176_ThumbnailImage.jpg
If you’re curious exif -s DSC07176.ARW will list all of the properties Exiftool can read, and you can look for fields marked as “Binary data” if the command above doesn’t extract what you want.
My understanding is that many cameras include a full size jpeg image in the RAW metadata, however my camera (a Sony a6000) only includes scaled down thumbnails (1616 x1080). Best of luck!
The JPG preview looks very dark as well. Not as dark as the raw shown here. Do you really want that dark JPG look? If you want the image brighter the raw file can do the best job of that.
What?
Donation is optional, FREE to those who do not.
Split hairs if you must.
Free Software is a defined term which is not about money. This is not splitting hairs
Correct, but let’s not sidetrack a technical topic with legal and philosophical discussion. Please open a new topic if you feel more discussion is needed.
Done and answered:
See Welcome to PIXLS.US Discussion - #17 by xpatUSA
FastStone Viewer is certainly not “computer software that allow users to run the software for any purpose as well as to study, change, and distribute it and any adapted versions” so I will edit the offending post.
What happened was that I had already edited all the photos, and then the sd I had them on corrupted. So not wanting to go back and do all the edits again, I figured I’d just pull the embedded jpeg (if that was possible) and maybe raise the shadows a small amount from there.
You can try opening the raw file with Geeqie. Right click on the image and select “Copy image to clipboard.” Now open up Gimp and click “File>Create from clipboard.” Export as .jpg or whatever format you wish.
DSCF7441.RAF (56.1 MB)
The embedded JPEG was extracted from your different capture by FastStone Viewer with no adjustments (posted as-is). The chroma sub-sampling is YCbCr 4:2:0 (2 2). Can’t see the Quality setting in the EXIF.
That recompresses the JPG, whereas with the other tools recommended here one can extract the embedded file with no loss in quality (without recompression).
I see. Would it be possible to put the memory card back into the Fuji camera and render the jpg there? I know I could do that with Nikons.
Don’t know if there are limitations on which cameras support it, but that is effectively what X Raw Studio does.
