{"slug": "darktable", "name": "Darktable", "category": "media", "category_name": "Media and creative", "description": "Open-source RAW photo editor and digital darkroom for Linux, macOS, and Windows.", "recommenders": 11, "commenters": 22, "warners": 3, "score": 9.522, "rising": -0.95, "first": "2026-01-02", "latest": "2026-10-08", "why": "HN commenters like Darktable for its deep editing control and output quality, and many use it as a Lightroom replacement, especially on Linux.", "why_is_quote": false, "has_verdict": true, "sentiment": {"recommend": 12, "neutral": 6, "compare": 2, "warn": 3}, "spark": [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 3, 0, 1, 6, 1, 0, 1], "listed": true, "loved": ["Editing control", "Linux support"], "caveat": "Learning curve", "short_quote": "I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me", "icon": true, "domain": "darktable.org", "github_repo": null, "official_url": "https://www.darktable.org/", "pricing": "open source", "aliases": ["Darktable", "darktable"], "verdict": [{"text": "HN commenters like Darktable for its deep editing control and output quality", "cites": [{"id": 800208161, "item_id": 50013010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013010", "by": "thesnarkitecht", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has far more control", "excerpt": "Fair question. The scene-referred design is modelled on darktable\u2019s, and darktable deserves the credit for it. My very first prototype ported some of darktable\u2019s algorithms, and I replaced that with an independent implementation before releasing. Both projects are GPL-3.0, and the README now credits darktable directly. I built Rembrandt because darktable\u2019s learning curve kept me from using it, not because it\u2019s worse;", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI"}, {"id": 785601360, "item_id": 49100085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100085", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been liking Darktable", "excerpt": "I've been told that Darktable is more powerful than RAWtherapee and thus the learning curve is worth it, so I switched from Rawtherapee to Darktable. I've been liking Darktable", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "RawTherapee", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 799381857, "item_id": 49961366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961366", "by": "pitchlatte", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state", "excerpt": "i personally like affinity better than the FOSS photoshop alternatives, mostly for UX reasons. what i still haven\u2019t found a good replacement for is Lightroom. i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state. and i say this despite the fact that i consider the output strictly superior to Lightroom (or in fact anything i\u2019ve ever used).", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust"}, {"id": 785578464, "item_id": 49098654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098654", "by": "lionkor", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me", "excerpt": "I've been using darktable for a while to edit my RAW photos. The amount of features, viable workflows, and in general the quality of the software is baffling for a free product. I would happily pay 200 bucks or something per year to use this, it makes all other RAW editing software obsolete. I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me, even for editing thousands of RAW photos with presets, different s", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "editing RAW photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"text": ", and many use it as a Lightroom replacement, especially on Linux.", "cites": [{"id": 785614288, "item_id": 49100893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100893", "by": "anfractuosity", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Really like Darktable", "excerpt": "Really like Darktable, was playing printing a few photos at weekend from it, on my large-ish dye-sub printer - DNP DS80, works very nicely under Linux with cups (once I figured out how to make it print in colour). I switched to it from Lightroom and made a little Python script to copy photos based on their exif data, into the same file structure as Lightroom.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing and printing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 764197840, "item_id": 47762365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762365", "by": "curioussquirrel", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing! Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me. I wish this was opensource but I will give this a shot (pun intended) for sure.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor"}, {"id": 766800048, "item_id": 47925003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925003", "by": "MrDrMcCoy", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "excerpt": "By photo editing, do you mean a RAW editor alternative to Lightroom? Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\" [1] [1] https://artraweditor.github.io/Book.html", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"}, {"id": 765194209, "item_id": 47824638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824638", "by": "bix6", "date": "2026-04-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "excerpt": "Paywall. I assume everyone is tired of their subscription fee? I love Lightroom but it\u2019s too expensive for my hobby use. I wish all the photo systems had better interoperability. I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "context": "hobbyist", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe"}]}, {"text": " The most common complaint is a steep learning curve", "cites": [{"id": 785600912, "item_id": 49100057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100057", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep.", "excerpt": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep. Some ex-maintainers hated the direction of Darktable and thus made their own fork, namely https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 800208161, "item_id": 50013010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013010", "by": "thesnarkitecht", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has far more control", "excerpt": "Fair question. The scene-referred design is modelled on darktable\u2019s, and darktable deserves the credit for it. My very first prototype ported some of darktable\u2019s algorithms, and I replaced that with an independent implementation before releasing. Both projects are GPL-3.0, and the README now credits darktable directly. I built Rembrandt because darktable\u2019s learning curve kept me from using it, not because it\u2019s worse;", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI"}, {"id": 785663584, "item_id": 49103974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103974", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I did not have a good time with Darktable.", "excerpt": "I guess I am in the minority but I did not have a good time with Darktable. I used it for a few years and then had to hold my nose and transition to Lightroom. On decent hardware (MacBook Pro that was only a few years old) it was dog slow. But the worst part was transitioning from their version 2 to version 3 of the workflow or whatever they called it. None of my old photos would render correctly after that and half ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"text": " and an interface that some find hard to settle into.", "cites": [{"id": 764197840, "item_id": 47762365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762365", "by": "curioussquirrel", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing! Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me. I wish this was opensource but I will give this a shot (pun intended) for sure.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor"}, {"id": 799381857, "item_id": 49961366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961366", "by": "pitchlatte", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state", "excerpt": "i personally like affinity better than the FOSS photoshop alternatives, mostly for UX reasons. what i still haven\u2019t found a good replacement for is Lightroom. i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state. and i say this despite the fact that i consider the output strictly superior to Lightroom (or in fact anything i\u2019ve ever used).", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust"}]}], "praise": [{"label": "Editing control", "summary": "Commenters say it offers more control and features than other RAW editors.", "quotes": [{"id": 800208161, "item_id": 50013010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013010", "by": "thesnarkitecht", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has far more control", "excerpt": "Fair question. The scene-referred design is modelled on darktable\u2019s, and darktable deserves the credit for it. My very first prototype ported some of darktable\u2019s algorithms, and I replaced that with an independent implementation before releasing. Both projects are GPL-3.0, and the README now credits darktable directly. I built Rembrandt because darktable\u2019s learning curve kept me from using it, not because it\u2019s worse;", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI"}, {"id": 785601360, "item_id": 49100085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100085", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been liking Darktable", "excerpt": "I've been told that Darktable is more powerful than RAWtherapee and thus the learning curve is worth it, so I switched from Rawtherapee to Darktable. I've been liking Darktable", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "RawTherapee", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785578464, "item_id": 49098654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098654", "by": "lionkor", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me", "excerpt": "I've been using darktable for a while to edit my RAW photos. The amount of features, viable workflows, and in general the quality of the software is baffling for a free product. I would happily pay 200 bucks or something per year to use this, it makes all other RAW editing software obsolete. I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me, even for editing thousands of RAW photos with presets, different s", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "editing RAW photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Linux support", "summary": "Commenters use it as their main RAW editor on Linux, including for printing.", "quotes": [{"id": 785614288, "item_id": 49100893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100893", "by": "anfractuosity", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Really like Darktable", "excerpt": "Really like Darktable, was playing printing a few photos at weekend from it, on my large-ish dye-sub printer - DNP DS80, works very nicely under Linux with cups (once I figured out how to make it print in colour). I switched to it from Lightroom and made a little Python script to copy photos based on their exif data, into the same file structure as Lightroom.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing and printing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 764197840, "item_id": 47762365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762365", "by": "curioussquirrel", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing! Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me. I wish this was opensource but I will give this a shot (pun intended) for sure.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor"}, {"id": 743542344, "item_id": 46471396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471396", "by": "Alupis", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Flatpaks to install many GUI apps, such as FreeCAD, KiCad, Darktable, Steam, Reaper, and a lot more.", "excerpt": "I've used Fedora on my laptop for over a decade. I switched my main home workstation to Fedora in 2023, and haven't looked back since. My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet containers) on podman. It \"Just Works\". Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too. ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop"}]}, {"label": "Lightroom alternative", "summary": "Several commenters switched to it from Lightroom or list it as a Lightroom alternative.", "quotes": [{"id": 785614288, "item_id": 49100893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100893", "by": "anfractuosity", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Really like Darktable", "excerpt": "Really like Darktable, was playing printing a few photos at weekend from it, on my large-ish dye-sub printer - DNP DS80, works very nicely under Linux with cups (once I figured out how to make it print in colour). I switched to it from Lightroom and made a little Python script to copy photos based on their exif data, into the same file structure as Lightroom.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing and printing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 766800048, "item_id": 47925003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925003", "by": "MrDrMcCoy", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "excerpt": "By photo editing, do you mean a RAW editor alternative to Lightroom? Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\" [1] [1] https://artraweditor.github.io/Book.html", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"}, {"id": 765194209, "item_id": 47824638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824638", "by": "bix6", "date": "2026-04-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "excerpt": "Paywall. I assume everyone is tired of their subscription fee? I love Lightroom but it\u2019s too expensive for my hobby use. I wish all the photo systems had better interoperability. I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "context": "hobbyist", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe"}]}, {"label": "Output quality", "summary": "Some users describe the results as excellent, with one calling the output better than Lightroom's.", "quotes": [{"id": 799381857, "item_id": 49961366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961366", "by": "pitchlatte", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state", "excerpt": "i personally like affinity better than the FOSS photoshop alternatives, mostly for UX reasons. what i still haven\u2019t found a good replacement for is Lightroom. i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state. and i say this despite the fact that i consider the output strictly superior to Lightroom (or in fact anything i\u2019ve ever used).", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust"}, {"id": 785578464, "item_id": 49098654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098654", "by": "lionkor", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me", "excerpt": "I've been using darktable for a while to edit my RAW photos. The amount of features, viable workflows, and in general the quality of the software is baffling for a free product. I would happily pay 200 bucks or something per year to use this, it makes all other RAW editing software obsolete. I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me, even for editing thousands of RAW photos with presets, different s", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "editing RAW photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785600912, "item_id": 49100057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100057", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep.", "excerpt": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep. Some ex-maintainers hated the direction of Darktable and thus made their own fork, namely https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Ongoing improvement", "summary": "Long-time users say it has improved a lot over the years.", "quotes": [{"id": 785604736, "item_id": 49100296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100296", "by": "dllu", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years. It has improved vastly over the years. I love the new additions like AgX! However I tried out the new AI denoise and it still isn't great. I also wish there was a way to manually correct barrel distortion (eg for vintage lenses) -- currently it only supports embedded metadata or lensfun profiles. I also find the OpenCL implementation to be rather slow. It would be better if it were", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 782273664, "item_id": 48892104, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892104", "by": "Pseudomanifold", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable (https://www.darktable.org/) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.", "excerpt": "Darktable (https://www.darktable.org/) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.", "context": "", "use_case": "digital photography RAW editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop"}]}], "caveats": [{"label": "Learning curve", "summary": "Several commenters call the learning curve steep, and one found the documentation dense.", "quotes": [{"id": 785600912, "item_id": 49100057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100057", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep.", "excerpt": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep. Some ex-maintainers hated the direction of Darktable and thus made their own fork, namely https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 800208161, "item_id": 50013010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013010", "by": "thesnarkitecht", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has far more control", "excerpt": "Fair question. The scene-referred design is modelled on darktable\u2019s, and darktable deserves the credit for it. My very first prototype ported some of darktable\u2019s algorithms, and I replaced that with an independent implementation before releasing. Both projects are GPL-3.0, and the README now credits darktable directly. I built Rembrandt because darktable\u2019s learning curve kept me from using it, not because it\u2019s worse;", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI"}, {"id": 785663584, "item_id": 49103974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103974", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I did not have a good time with Darktable.", "excerpt": "I guess I am in the minority but I did not have a good time with Darktable. I used it for a few years and then had to hold my nose and transition to Lightroom. On decent hardware (MacBook Pro that was only a few years old) it was dog slow. But the worst part was transitioning from their version 2 to version 3 of the workflow or whatever they called it. None of my old photos would render correctly after that and half ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Interface flow", "summary": "Some users say the UI never clicked or gets in the way of an efficient workflow.", "quotes": [{"id": 764197840, "item_id": 47762365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762365", "by": "curioussquirrel", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing! Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me. I wish this was opensource but I will give this a shot (pun intended) for sure.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor"}, {"id": 799381857, "item_id": 49961366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961366", "by": "pitchlatte", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state", "excerpt": "i personally like affinity better than the FOSS photoshop alternatives, mostly for UX reasons. what i still haven\u2019t found a good replacement for is Lightroom. i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state. and i say this despite the fact that i consider the output strictly superior to Lightroom (or in fact anything i\u2019ve ever used).", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust"}]}, {"label": "Performance", "summary": "Users report slow performance, including a slow OpenCL implementation.", "quotes": [{"id": 785663584, "item_id": 49103974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103974", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I did not have a good time with Darktable.", "excerpt": "I guess I am in the minority but I did not have a good time with Darktable. I used it for a few years and then had to hold my nose and transition to Lightroom. On decent hardware (MacBook Pro that was only a few years old) it was dog slow. But the worst part was transitioning from their version 2 to version 3 of the workflow or whatever they called it. None of my old photos would render correctly after that and half ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785604736, "item_id": 49100296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100296", "by": "dllu", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years. It has improved vastly over the years. I love the new additions like AgX! However I tried out the new AI denoise and it still isn't great. I also wish there was a way to manually correct barrel distortion (eg for vintage lenses) -- currently it only supports embedded metadata or lensfun profiles. I also find the OpenCL implementation to be rather slow. It would be better if it were", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Library management", "summary": "One commenter says its photo library management is an afterthought and it is not a direct Lightroom replacement.", "quotes": [{"id": 785568080, "item_id": 49098005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098005", "by": "ghostly_s", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "its \"library management\" is such an afterthought that I would challenge whether it even deserves to be called library management.", "excerpt": "Don't lead people down a fruitless path. From their own FAQ: >Is darktable a free Lightroom alternative?\u00b6 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\u2019s a direct replacement. Other than both being raw editors with photo library management, and looking somewhat similar, they have very little in common. What th", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Upgrade breakage", "summary": "One user says a major version change broke the rendering of old edits and made modules obsolete.", "quotes": [{"id": 785663584, "item_id": 49103974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103974", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I did not have a good time with Darktable.", "excerpt": "I guess I am in the minority but I did not have a good time with Darktable. I used it for a few years and then had to hold my nose and transition to Lightroom. On decent hardware (MacBook Pro that was only a few years old) it was dog slow. But the worst part was transitioning from their version 2 to version 3 of the workflow or whatever they called it. None of my old photos would render correctly after that and half ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}]}, {"label": "Missing features", "summary": "Commenters mention weak AI denoise, no manual barrel distortion correction, and feature creep.", "quotes": [{"id": 785604736, "item_id": 49100296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100296", "by": "dllu", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years. It has improved vastly over the years. I love the new additions like AgX! However I tried out the new AI denoise and it still isn't great. I also wish there was a way to manually correct barrel distortion (eg for vintage lenses) -- currently it only supports embedded metadata or lensfun profiles. I also find the OpenCL implementation to be rather slow. It would be better if it were", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785600209, "item_id": 49100013, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100013", "by": "lolc", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "and I went back to Darktable.", "excerpt": "I used Ansel for a while, and I agree that Darktable is suffering from feature creep. Ansel right away had some usability improvements. But the amount of regressions introduced was wild. The anger you can read in the messaging was apparently also employed to cut code, and things got flaky. In the end some features I used stopped working in all releases I tried, and I went back to Darktable. Maybe Ansel is stabilizing", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "Ansel", "story": "Darktable"}]}], "who": [{"by": "anfractuosity", "context": "Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100893", "date": "2026-07-29"}, {"by": "wizzledonker", "context": "Mac user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099117", "date": "2026-07-29"}, {"by": "lionkor", "context": "Arch Linux user", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098654", "date": "2026-07-29"}, {"by": "arecsu", "context": "creative", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870561", "date": "2026-04-22"}, {"by": "bix6", "context": "hobbyist", "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824638", "date": "2026-04-19"}], "tags": ["for Linux users", "for RAW photo editing", "Lightroom alternative", "for hobbyist photographers"], "use_cases": ["raw photo editing", "photo editing", "photo processing", "photo editing and printing", "raw photo editing on mac", "editing raw photos"], "compared": [{"slug": "adobe-lightroom", "name": "Adobe Lightroom", "co": 9, "switched_from": 2, "switched_to": 1}, {"slug": "rawtherapee", "name": "RawTherapee", "co": 4, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "ansel", "name": "Ansel", "co": 3, "switched_from": 1, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "gimp", "name": "GIMP", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "davinci-resolve", "name": "DaVinci Resolve", "co": 4, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "affinity", "name": "Affinity", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "adobe-photoshop", "name": "Adobe Photoshop", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}, {"slug": "blender", "name": "Blender", "co": 2, "switched_from": 0, "switched_to": 0}], "makers": [], "threads": [{"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49096654", "title": "Darktable", "mentions": 11}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49326156", "title": "GIMP Development Update", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471199", "title": "2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop", "mentions": 2}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50012199", "title": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49958850", "title": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust", "mentions": 1}, {"url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48891200", "title": "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop", "mentions": 1}], "sentiment_by_month": {"2025-11": {}, "2025-12": {}, "2026-01": {"neutral": 1, "compare": 1}, "2026-02": {}, "2026-03": {}, "2026-04": {"recommend": 3, "warn": 1, "neutral": 1}, "2026-05": {}, "2026-06": {"recommend": 1}, "2026-07": {"recommend": 6, "warn": 2, "neutral": 3}, "2026-08": {"neutral": 1, "recommend": 1}, "2026-09": {}, "2026-10": {"compare": 1, "recommend": 1}}, "quotes": [{"id": 800208161, "item_id": 50013010, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=50013010", "by": "thesnarkitecht", "date": "2026-10-08", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "it has far more control", "excerpt": "Fair question. The scene-referred design is modelled on darktable\u2019s, and darktable deserves the credit for it. My very first prototype ported some of darktable\u2019s algorithms, and I replaced that with an independent implementation before releasing. Both projects are GPL-3.0, and the README now credits darktable directly. I built Rembrandt because darktable\u2019s learning curve kept me from using it, not because it\u2019s worse;", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Show HN: Free open source Adobe Lightroom alternative, completely local with AI"}, {"id": 799381857, "item_id": 49961366, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49961366", "by": "pitchlatte", "date": "2026-10-05", "stance": "compare", "quote": "i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state", "excerpt": "i personally like affinity better than the FOSS photoshop alternatives, mostly for UX reasons. what i still haven\u2019t found a good replacement for is Lightroom. i use darktable but the way the interface is laid out is antithetical to getting into an efficient flow state. and i say this despite the fact that i consider the output strictly superior to Lightroom (or in fact anything i\u2019ve ever used).", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "ArtCraft Apps \u2013 open-source Adobe compatible suite written in Rust"}, {"id": 789272726, "item_id": 49329545, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49329545", "by": "squidbeak", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "even Darktable ended up making sense", "excerpt": "This isn't true. There have been plenty of other applications (Corel, Paint Shop Pro, Fireworks, Krita etc) with their own workflows and keybindings that weren't confusing for users. GIMP's UX is just bad. I loathe photoshop and desperately want to like GIMP, but each time I make the attempt the friction is too much and the workflows nonsensical. I used it a few weeks ago to place two images side by side in a larger ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "GIMP Development Update"}, {"id": 789262818, "item_id": 49328926, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49328926", "by": "Liftyee", "date": "2026-08-17", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "other software like Blender or Darktable (or even Davinci Resolve)", "excerpt": "I don't get everyone's complaints about the interface. I've been using it for years, once you learn where things are I can get what I need done. The learning curve (finding where functions are, the right tools for each job, etc.) wasn't much different from other software like Blender or Darktable (or even Davinci Resolve). The panels concept might be the most intuitive part of it, but Blender also has different panel", "context": "", "use_case": "", "switched_from": "", "story": "GIMP Development Update"}, {"id": 785663584, "item_id": 49103974, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49103974", "by": "IgorPartola", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "I did not have a good time with Darktable.", "excerpt": "I guess I am in the minority but I did not have a good time with Darktable. I used it for a few years and then had to hold my nose and transition to Lightroom. On decent hardware (MacBook Pro that was only a few years old) it was dog slow. But the worst part was transitioning from their version 2 to version 3 of the workflow or whatever they called it. None of my old photos would render correctly after that and half ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785614288, "item_id": 49100893, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100893", "by": "anfractuosity", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Really like Darktable", "excerpt": "Really like Darktable, was playing printing a few photos at weekend from it, on my large-ish dye-sub printer - DNP DS80, works very nicely under Linux with cups (once I figured out how to make it print in colour). I switched to it from Lightroom and made a little Python script to copy photos based on their exif data, into the same file structure as Lightroom.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing and printing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785604736, "item_id": 49100296, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100296", "by": "dllu", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years.", "excerpt": "I use Darktable a lot for 10 years. It has improved vastly over the years. I love the new additions like AgX! However I tried out the new AI denoise and it still isn't great. I also wish there was a way to manually correct barrel distortion (eg for vintage lenses) -- currently it only supports embedded metadata or lensfun profiles. I also find the OpenCL implementation to be rather slow. It would be better if it were", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785603792, "item_id": 49100237, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100237", "by": "BeetleB", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "But when I switched to Darktable, I didn't really miss it.", "excerpt": "I felt that way because my prior RAW editing tool did photo organization/collections. But when I switched to Darktable, I didn't really miss it. I have a simple organization: Year/description/YYYY-MM-DD/* (So 2026/yellowstone/2026-06-01/). In the end, what matters are the files I export to JPG. It makes sense to use a separate photo organization tool to manage those*.", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785601360, "item_id": 49100085, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100085", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I've been liking Darktable", "excerpt": "I've been told that Darktable is more powerful than RAWtherapee and thus the learning curve is worth it, so I switched from Rawtherapee to Darktable. I've been liking Darktable", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "RawTherapee", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785600912, "item_id": 49100057, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100057", "by": "thatxliner", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep.", "excerpt": "I found Darktable absolutely amazing, although the learning curve is incredibly steep. Some ex-maintainers hated the direction of Darktable and thus made their own fork, namely https://github.com/aurelienpierreeng/ansel", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785600209, "item_id": 49100013, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49100013", "by": "lolc", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "and I went back to Darktable.", "excerpt": "I used Ansel for a while, and I agree that Darktable is suffering from feature creep. Ansel right away had some usability improvements. But the amount of regressions introduced was wild. The anger you can read in the messaging was apparently also employed to cut code, and things got flaky. In the end some features I used stopped working in all releases I tried, and I went back to Darktable. Maybe Ansel is stabilizing", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "Ansel", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785585872, "item_id": 49099117, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49099117", "by": "wizzledonker", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use it on Mac - I didn\u2019t notice too much.", "excerpt": "I use it on Mac - I didn\u2019t notice too much. There\u2019s some GPU usage, I assume Apple still has some deprecated OpenCL drivers kicking around that it knows to use.", "context": "Mac user", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Mac", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785582609, "item_id": 49098913, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098913", "by": "Mashimo", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "over a decade ago I used digiKam in parallelle with Darktable.", "excerpt": "> What solutions have you found? * Putting the photos in folders, based on dates and event name. * over a decade ago I used digiKam in parallelle with Darktable.", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785578464, "item_id": 49098654, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098654", "by": "lionkor", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me", "excerpt": "I've been using darktable for a while to edit my RAW photos. The amount of features, viable workflows, and in general the quality of the software is baffling for a free product. I would happily pay 200 bucks or something per year to use this, it makes all other RAW editing software obsolete. I can only recommend it, and there's nothing missing for me, even for editing thousands of RAW photos with presets, different s", "context": "Arch Linux user", "use_case": "editing RAW photos", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 785568080, "item_id": 49098005, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49098005", "by": "ghostly_s", "date": "2026-07-29", "stance": "warn", "quote": "its \"library management\" is such an afterthought that I would challenge whether it even deserves to be called library management.", "excerpt": "Don't lead people down a fruitless path. From their own FAQ: >Is darktable a free Lightroom alternative?\u00b6 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\u2019s a direct replacement. Other than both being raw editors with photo library management, and looking somewhat similar, they have very little in common. What th", "context": "", "use_case": "photo library management", "switched_from": "", "story": "Darktable"}, {"id": 782273664, "item_id": 48892104, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48892104", "by": "Pseudomanifold", "date": "2026-07-13", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable (https://www.darktable.org/) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.", "excerpt": "Darktable (https://www.darktable.org/) has become very good and continues to be my go-to solution for digital photography.", "context": "", "use_case": "digital photography RAW editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "An Infuriating Goodbye to Photoshop"}, {"id": 778345639, "item_id": 48646602, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48646602", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-06-23", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Ones I actually use.", "excerpt": "Ublock-origin with Firefox, Audacity, Batch Photo Resizer, calibre, cardflow, Diffraction, Ejimo and Ultra Character Map (try finding emojis without them), Libre Office, Paprika Recipe Manager, Samurai Safe, SeaMonkey (who else edits HTML?) GIMP, Darktable, RawTherapee, Super Photo Upscaler, Sublime Text, VLC, Clearview (and why isn't epub supported natively?), PhotoSync (share photos with all platforms), GhostText f", "context": "", "use_case": "photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Ask HN: New clean macOS install. Must-have apps? Best browser?"}, {"id": 766800048, "item_id": 47925003, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47925003", "by": "MrDrMcCoy", "date": "2026-04-27", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\"", "excerpt": "By photo editing, do you mean a RAW editor alternative to Lightroom? Darktable, RAWTherapee, DaVinci Resolve, AfterShot Pro, and the unhelpfully named \"Art\" [1] [1] https://artraweditor.github.io/Book.html", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "After three months on Linux, I don't miss Windows at all"}, {"id": 765928978, "item_id": 47870561, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47870561", "by": "arecsu", "date": "2026-04-22", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "Personally, I use Affinity, Resolve, Darktable, Blender, and Figma.", "excerpt": "Hey! Author here. Glad we're feeling the same. At the very end I've linked to another page where I maintain an organic list of software and interesting bits of internet that I admire and find useful as a creative, for other creatives alike. Just today for the purposes of ending my blog post in a good light I created the Software category in the directory, to list every alternative I found interesting to Adobe's offer", "context": "creative", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Adobe Is Cooked"}, {"id": 765194209, "item_id": 47824638, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47824638", "by": "bix6", "date": "2026-04-19", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "excerpt": "Paywall. I assume everyone is tired of their subscription fee? I love Lightroom but it\u2019s too expensive for my hobby use. I wish all the photo systems had better interoperability. I\u2019m losing quite a bit as I migrate to Darktable.", "context": "hobbyist", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "Lightroom", "story": "The creative software industry has declared war on Adobe"}, {"id": 764197840, "item_id": 47762365, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47762365", "by": "curioussquirrel", "date": "2026-04-14", "stance": "warn", "quote": "Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me.", "excerpt": "Thanks for sharing! Have been begrudgingly using Darktable since that seems to be your best option on Linux, but the UI/UX never really clicked with me. I wish this was opensource but I will give this a shot (pun intended) for sure.", "context": "Linux user", "use_case": "photo editing on Linux", "switched_from": "", "story": "DaVinci Resolve releases Photo Editor"}, {"id": 761852497, "item_id": 47615781, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47615781", "by": "k310", "date": "2026-04-02", "stance": "recommend", "quote": "awesome RawTherapee and DarkTable software", "excerpt": "Long ago, I wanted to export \"iphotos\" to external disk. I sneakernet a lot. They were all in a tree structure by date. Thanks to Unix, one command got them all. I keep all photos as files. \"Read the SD card, Luke\". It gets a bit tedious with a bunch of cameras, and I might turn on bluetooth one of these days. Here's the rub. Apple photos, any camera photos, are wildly anonymous. Any useful info is buried in the EXIF", "context": "", "use_case": "RAW photo processing", "switched_from": "", "story": "Goodbye, Apple Photos"}, {"id": 743642019, "item_id": 46477626, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46477626", "by": "neogodless", "date": "2026-01-03", "stance": "compare", "quote": "I tried Lightroom, darktable, and a few other pieces of software, but I kept going back to PhotoLab.", "excerpt": "I believe this was Dec. 2023 through Feb. 2024 (I should add dates to my little \"blog\"...): https://www.retorch.com/blog/linux-mint.htm If I remember, Linux Mint was on kernel 5.15 at the time. The TL;DR is that fractional scaling was broken under Cinnamon, and Brightness controls were broken under KDE. Most gaming was good, but a brand new game (Hogwart's Legacy) had major issues, including crashing and vastly worse", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop"}, {"id": 743542344, "item_id": 46471396, "url": "https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46471396", "by": "Alupis", "date": "2026-01-02", "stance": "neutral", "quote": "I use Flatpaks to install many GUI apps, such as FreeCAD, KiCad, Darktable, Steam, Reaper, and a lot more.", "excerpt": "I've used Fedora on my laptop for over a decade. I switched my main home workstation to Fedora in 2023, and haven't looked back since. My workstation runs Kinoite[1], an immutable/atomic version of Fedora. I started with Fedora 38, and now am running 43. Flawless major-release upgrades. I develop using distrobox[2] (pet containers) on podman. It \"Just Works\". Nearly 99% of my Steam library is playable on Fedora too. ", "context": "", "use_case": "photo editing", "switched_from": "", "story": "2026 will be my year of the Linux desktop"}]}