darktable 5.6 ships its first AI features: an AI object mask that turns a single click into a vector mask around any subject, and a neural restore module for ML-based denoise and upscale. Our focus was on building the foundation that loads and runs open computer-vision models locally on your CPU or GPU – so darktable can host AI tasks suitable for photography as the open model landscape evolves. This post is the hands-on tour: what each tool does, how to use it, and where it falls short.
Thanks a lot, I tried out raw denoise with some nightly shot at Stromboli using standard conditions. Worked right away. Happy to share a sample pair of raw file (arw) and the raw-denoised file (dng). 2026-04-29_042347.ARW (19.6 MB) 2026-04-29_042347_raw-denoise.dng (38.8 MB)
Looks very promising for pictures taken under challenging conditions.
Some people say that the masking capabilities are the greatest feature of darktable. I am not worth a damn at masking, so I’m sure the new AI features will be a boon for me.
What computer resources would be required to use these on Win 11 without waiting and waiting for the module to complete the task? Has someone made an assessment?
This post slipped under my radar and I don’t know why. It looks a real excellent way to introduce new features that are added to DT. I will have to explore the post more fully.