Which darktable version was used for editing?

Software darktable
1

I found a photo from 2008, which has a xmp-file, but 2008 doesn’t mean it was edited 2008, but probably a very long time ago.

How can I find out which darktable version was used?

Can I open it with dt 5.2 and the editing is not lost? I know only, there is no way to use it with an older dt-version then.

2

Just work on a copy as with anything like this…but in most cases DT will honour the old editing…in a few cases in the past I think there were a few hiccups but it should be fine…

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3

To my knowledge, darktable was first released in 2009…

I have edits dating back to 2012. All of them can be opened without any problems, edits are still ok, except for some (not all) containing the deprecated crop & rotate, which throw a warning when opened. In these cases, I replace crop & rotate with crop and rotate & perspective.

Otherwise, I agree with @priort’s recommendation: work with a copy if you want to be absolutely sure.

The darktable version is not of relevance but the version(s) of the module(s) used. These are saved in the sidecar file (modversion):

<rdf:li
      darktable:num="7"
      darktable:operation="demosaic"
      darktable:enabled="1"
      darktable:modversion="3"
      darktable:params="0000000000000000010000000100000000000000"
      darktable:multi_name=""
      darktable:multi_name_hand_edited="0"
      darktable:multi_priority="0"
      darktable:blendop_version="9"
      darktable:blendop_params="gz11eJxjYGBgkGAAgRNODGiAEV0AJ2iwh+CRyscOAAdeGQQ="/>
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5

AFAIR there was a change with perspective, it was integrated in rotate.

Does this matter?

6

I don’t have an old edit handy but the old modules are all available and will be used for old edits…it’s one way to access them Infact. ie make a style from an old edit

7

Module crop & rotate (source code clipping.c) has been deprecated because it’s code has become error-prone and unmaintainable. Too many different functions inside one single module.
It has been replaced by crop and rotate and perspective with the advantage that these modules can be arranged at different locations in the pixel pipe. Rotate and perspective relatively early (after lens correction), crop much later.

If you run into problems with old edits containing the deprecated crop and rotate (warning message “Module has insane data so it is bypassed for now. You should disable it or change parameters”) you can do what the message tells you to do.
Personally, I take a different approach: whenever this warning appears, I replace crop and rotate with the two newer modules.

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