Hello everyone, and a happy start to 2026 for you, your families and friends.
After the holidays, I’m thinking about updating to 5.4, but I did a little research beforehand and found the following
AgX vs. Filmic/Sigmoid: Darktable 5.4 defaults to the new AgX tone mapper for new edits. Old photos will keep their original modules (like Filmic RGB or Sigmoid), but you must manually switch to AgX if you wish to use the new processing pipeline*
Am I understanding this correctly? So the new AGX is added to my existing Filmic settings and they somehow mix together? Won’t that cause some side effects, and how can I solve that?
Of course, I don’t really feel like checking and adjusting all my edits.
What’s the best way to do this?
I’m afraid that everything is becoming more and more complicated, and since the new modules are getting more and more settings that unfortunately also require more and more explanation, I’m no longer so sure whether DT is really suitable for the average consumer.
In any case, I would appreciate any explanations that might allay my doubts.
If you upgrade, your existing choice of default tone mapper should be preserved. You can check in preferences->processing->auto-apply pixel workflow defaults. I believe that scene referred Sigmoid is the default for new installations.
Basic policy of darktable is to keep existing edits intact. So those will still use the tonemapper you selected for them.
And in any case, none of the workflows or defaults will add two tonemappers together. That would just not make any sense, you’re supposed to use at most one of them at a time. They are not just tone curves, and the extra transformations (needed!) should be applied only once.
You may want to check your preferences to make sure the selected workflow is still the one you want. It’s that workflow setting that will determine which tonemapper (if any) will be applied to new edits.
If you don’t want to switch to AgX for old edits, you don’t have to do anything. Personally, I’ll have to experiment with AgX before I decide to make it my default…
The information was from a quick search in the web, maybe some KI answer???
So it’s a good information that it isn’t an automatic setting, but what happens if I switch to AGX Workflow in the future, and open a photo again?
Will the old workflow. be overwritten by the new one.
I think I will prepare a test machine with 5.2 and scene filmic, update to 5.4 check some photos and the switch to Scene AGX.
If anybody has done this before and could give some informations what happens, or there are some disadvantages…would be great.
No. Once again, existing edits are never modified automatically. (that would mean the result would change in an unpredictable way). If your edits have filmic now, they will keep filmic, until/unless you change the edit.
No need to prepare a test machine to try out AgX on a few images. AgX will not be applied to any edit unless you ask for it (by activating it in an edit or, but only for new edits, if you set it to be the default in the workflow selection)
If you want to test AgX on a few images, you can use the “duplicate manager” in the darkroom. That will create either a duplicate of the current edit (which you can then change) or a new unedited “copy” (neither will duplicate the underlying raw file, you will get an extra sidecar if you use those).
I 100% recommend updating to 5.4. It will have no effect on your past edits and you can continue to edit in the same fashion as you are used to. The big improvements for 5.4 is capture sharpening in the demosaic module and the option to use AgX. There are other improvements and bug fixes as well.
