Yes and no. Darktable is an alternative to Lightroom the same way any other raw editor is, since it edits raw files, but it would be a mistake to think it’s a direct replacement. Other than both being raw editors with photo library management, and looking somewhat similar, they have very little in common. While Lightroom aims at making raw processing accessible to anyone, regardless of technical skills, darktable is a powerful and flexible raw processing toolbox that leaves the user in charge of their workflow and provides a level of control that few others can match, often by exposing the full power of the underlying algorithms to the user. This also means that the initial learning curve can be steep, since very little workflow and tool knowledge can be transferred from other programs.
Heh, seems like some automated system finally realised I have been overhauling and updating the darktable FAQ over the past several months. And I have a few more updates planned for the near future.
It’s now much better organised and has a lot of new entries aimed at new users. It’s also linked directly from the front page now, so those same new users and “reviewers” have a better chance of finding it (but who am I kidding ).
I am wondering if it would make sense to have an entry about installation. Eg
most distros have version of darktable, but it may not be the most recent. this is generally sufficient unless you want the latest features.
if you want to most recent version, you can use Flatpak or install from source. Flatpak may have various problems, eg with GPU acceleration. Installing from source is pretty straightforward and should be the recommended method.
).