Download Darktable 3.4.0

Version 3.4.0 of Darktable has been released. Darktable is an open source raw photo editing program, a virtual light box and darkroom for photo editing. It manages digital negatives through a database. The raw photo files are developed by means of so-called sidecar files, where the photos are processed in a non-destructive manner. The software is available for various Linux distributions, macOS and Windows. The complete release notes can here are found, these are the main changes made in this release:

The Big Ones

• The user manual is made available at the same time as the release. Note that this user manual is also the last version as a new project has taken over the lead on this. The goal is to have an up-to-date user manual by using a simpler format to write text for contributors. Feedback or contributions for the new format are welcome here.
  • Current manual (multilingual)
  • New manual (English only)
• The tethering view has been reworked and is now more stable.
• The histogram is back on the tethering view (it was disabled in 3.2 due to lack of time)
• A new module grouping feature has been introduced. This makes the “more modules” module (at the bottom right of the darkroom) obsolete and this module has therefore been removed.The module grouping feature allows users to create their own groups of modules. A number of pre-defined module groups are included as presets (default, minimal, scene-referred, display-referred, all modules) as well as a new default module group tab layout (technical / grading / effects), which better organizes the modules according to their purpose.
• Module masking is now enhanced for use with scene-referred workflows. A new masking implementation has been added, with fully unbounded blending modes, which allows parametric masking either in linear RGB or in JzCzHz color spaces. A boost factor slider has been introduced in the masking GUI so that users may set thresholding parameters above 100% to mask pixels in HDR images.JzCzHz is derived from JzAzBz, which is a perceptual color space developed for HDR and published in 2017, with better properties than CIE Lab from 1976, allowing near-perfect hue linearity, for a robust hue/saturation masking. A JzCzHz hue mask will produce the same output whether it is used before input color profile, after output color profile, or anywhere in-between, providing an important consistency improvement over HSL masking.
• A new color calibration module has been added as a full-featured hub for color correction. It was first intended as a scene-referred (unbounded) rewrite of the old channel mixer, allowing corrections of the color space, both for creative and corrective purposes.Because channel mixing is how white balancing and chromatic adaptation are implemented, color calibration also introduces robust chromatic adaptation transforms, Bradford (from ICC v4) and CAT16 (from CIECAM 2016), improving the color rendition of the white-balanced final image. The module provides a library of all standard CIE illuminants and two machine-learning illuminant detection algorithms, using different assumptions, for when no neutral colors can be sampled from the image, along with the traditional color-picker for manual sampling of neutral colors.Color calibration internally implements gamut-mapping and gamut-clipping, which attempts to preserve the hue and luminance of pixels while avoiding imaginary and out-of-gamut colors at the beginning of the pipeline, to improve the robustness of color-grading modules inside the pipeline . This is made necessary because white balancing will only push input out-of-gamut colors farther away, and will noticeably help dealing with artificial colored lights (LED, stage lighting, etc.).A new workflow setting “chromatic adaptation defaults”, in processing preferences, allows users to choose to keep using the white balance module to perform the chromatic adaptation for new edits (“legacy” worflow, the default) or to use the new color calibration instead (“modern” workflow). The modern workflow still uses the usual white balance module, although with different default settings, because input color profiles and demosaicing need at least a rough white balancing early in the pipe.
• Map view has evolved. Images close to each other are now grouped and a count of grouped images is displayed on the bottom-left corner. This provides better performance when many images need to be shown on the map. Mouse-scrolling over a group’s thumb scrolls through the images of the group. Groups containing selected images are highlighted with a white border. The image count is displayed as a white number if all images of the group are exactly at the same place, and in yellow otherwise.Movement of images within the map has also been improved. Click to drag the visible image, Shift-Click to drag the full group. A new “locations” module allows you to define location areas (using elliptical or rectangular shapes). These locations are saved as collections visible under ” geotagging” in the collect module.