Export Thumbnails to PDF script on Mac

Software darktable
1

Hello folks!
I get an error ‘problem running pdf latex’ when I try to generate contact sheet via the script. I have installed the package version of BasicTex, and check the scripts are up to date.

I know very little about how these packages work, and the documentation just sats pdflatex should be installed.

If any Mac users or compassionate Linux users could confirm it works, or throw some light on what I might need to do, it would be appreciated.

Thank you!

I’m on a Mac OSX 26, running DT 5.3.0 +915

2

Are you running pdf_slideshow or selection_to_pdf?

3

Hi,

PDF_slidshow doesn’t appear in Exports, when I activate it from Script manager. :confounded:

I was using ‘selection to PDF’ which does appear, but generates the error

CleanShot 2025-11-22 at 8 .24.02@2x
CleanShot 2025-11-22 at 8 .24.02@2x874×2072 93.5 KB

4

This is new functionality? I don’t see it in version 5.2.1 on Mac?

5

It’s a lua-script.

6

Can you run darktable in a terminal with the -d lua flag?

/Applications/darktable.app/Contents/MacOS/darktable -d lua

and then try the script and see what error messages appear in the terminal

1 Like
7

Compile options:
Bit depth → 64 bit
Exiv2 → 0.28.7
Lensfun → 0.3.4
Debug → DISABLED
SSE2 optimizations → DISABLED
OpenMP → ENABLED
OpenCL → ENABLED
Lua → ENABLED - API version 9.6.0
Colord → DISABLED
gPhoto2 → ENABLED
OSMGpsMap → ENABLED - map view is available
GMIC → ENABLED - Compressed LUTs are supported
GraphicsMagick → DISABLED
ImageMagick → ENABLED
libavif → ENABLED
libheif → ENABLED
libjxl → ENABLED
LibRaw → ENABLED - Version 0.22.0-PreRC1
OpenJPEG → ENABLED
OpenEXR → ENABLED
WebP → ENABLED

8

CleanShot 2025-11-22 at 7 .27.36
CleanShot 2025-11-22 at 7 .27.36907×952 144 KB

after running export thumbs to PDFs

9

The error says you don’t have a default PDF reader in your desktop environment. Calling xdg-open, which uses the default PDF reader, is failing. The PDF seems to be produced, and you can fish it out of the location listed in the log file.

2 Likes
10

Thank you !!!

Do I need to install additional tools to poke it into launching the PDF?

It seems strange it dumps it there without giving me an option to locate the export.

Is it a permissions issue with Apple’s hideous security policy?

thank you so much for the response.

11

Ah, macOS probably doesn’t have xdg-open, as that is a Linux desktop thing. The script can probably just do open name.pdf on macOS.

12

ah. thanks. So I’ll just have to dig it out of that directory. :relieved:
My fallback is exporting to apple Photos as it spits put a nicely formatted contact sheet, with tags, etc. But rather keep it open source!

13

Opened an issue on the scripts repository to fix it more macos (and probably windows too).

1 Like