darktable is the professional photo workflow suite built by photographers, for photographers. A virtual lighttable and darkroom on your computer — manage your digital negatives in a database, browse a zoomable lighttable, and develop RAW images with the same depth of control pro photographers expect from Lightroom — except the program lives on your machine, not in the cloud. Own it forever instead of renting it month after month. Native installers for Windows, macOS (Intel and Apple Silicon), and Linux all included on the same media.
| Feature | darktable | Adobe Lightroom | Other sellers |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time payment — owned forever | Yes | $119.88 / year | Maybe |
| No Adobe account, no Creative Cloud sign-in | Yes | Required | Maybe |
| USB or CD — buyer's choice at checkout | Yes | Download only | One format |
| Native Windows, macOS and Linux installers | Yes | Win & Mac only | Windows only |
| Native Apple Silicon (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4) build | Yes | Yes | Maybe |
| GPU-accelerated processing (OpenCL) | Yes | Yes | Maybe |
| Catalog stored on your computer — not Adobe's cloud | Yes | Cloud catalog | Maybe |
| Lua scripting for automation | Yes | Limited | No |
| Install on unlimited computers — no activation | Yes | 2 devices, signed in | Maybe |
| 📷 |
RAW photo development
High-quality RAW processing for 400+ camera models — Canon, Nikon, Sony, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Leica, Olympus, OM System, Panasonic, Pentax and more. Native handling of DNG, NEF, CR2, CR3, ARW, RW2, ORF, RAF and dozens of other RAW formats. 4×32-bit floating-point pipeline preserves every bit of your sensor data.
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| 🎨 |
Advanced color grading
Scene-referred pipeline with filmic RGB color science — the same workflow used in cinema for HDR-to-display tonemapping. Color zones, color balance RGB, color calibration, and color lookup tables. Full ICC color management: sRGB, Adobe RGB, XYZ, linear RGB.
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Non-destructive workflow
Your original image is never modified — every adjustment is stored as an editable instruction. Full history stack lets you walk backwards through every change. Virtual copies let you keep multiple development versions of a single negative. Snapshots compare two states side-by-side.
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Precision masking
Brush, gradient, drawn, and parametric masks for surgical local edits. Combine multiple masks with boolean operations. Sky-only exposure recovery, eye-only sharpening, skin-only colour correction — any module can be masked, any adjustment localized.
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Photo management & lighttable
Browse, rate (1–5 stars), tag, label, and search thousands of images from a zoomable lighttable. Filter by tag, rating, color label, camera, lens, focal length, ISO, date — any EXIF field. Flexible database queries on every piece of metadata.
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| ⚡ |
GPU-accelerated performance
OpenCL support means many image operations run directly on your graphics card — lightning-fast previews, slider interaction, and export. Zero-latency, zoomable UI backed by multi-level software caches. Edits feel instant, even on 50 MP files.
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📸 Tethered shooting
Connect your camera by USB and shoot directly into the catalog with live view — perfect for studio, product, and portrait work.
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🎬 Camera-specific styles
Built-in style presets for Canon, Nikon, Fujifilm, Hasselblad, Leica, Olympus, OM System, Sony, DJI, Minolta and more — match the look you'd get from the camera's in-body film simulations.
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📤 Powerful export
Export to JPEG, PNG, TIFF (8 or 16-bit), HDR (PFM, EXR), Piwigo web albums, email attachments, 1:1 backup copies, or auto-generate an HTML web gallery.
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📝 XMP sidecar files
All edits and metadata are also stored as XMP files alongside your photos — back up the raw + XMP and your full edit travels with the photo to any other catalog.
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🤖 Lua scripting
Automate repetitive tasks — bulk renaming, watermarking, custom export pipelines, third-party plugin integration — with full Lua scripting access.
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🌐 Multi-language UI
Available in more than a dozen languages — English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Russian, Polish, Japanese, Chinese and more.
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🔍 Modules for every job
Sharpening, denoising, lens correction, perspective correction, retouch (frequency separation, healing brush, clone), tone equalizer, exposure, contrast, vibrance — 60+ modules total.
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📊 EXIF, IPTC & GPS data
Full EXIF, IPTC, and GPS metadata read/write via libexiv2. Map view for geotagged photos. Bulk metadata editing for whole shoots at once.
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📷 Hobbyist photographers
RAW-shoot your weekend hikes, edit them properly, and walk away owning your catalog instead of renting access.
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💼 Pro photographers
Filmic scene-referred pipeline, parametric masks, GPU-accelerated previews on 50 MP files, tethered studio shooting — the toolkit a working photographer can hand client deliverables out of.
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🚪 Lightroom switchers
Tired of the Adobe subscription? darktable does the lighttable, develop, and export workflow you already know — and your catalog stops being held hostage in someone else's cloud.
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🎓 Students & learners
Learn pro RAW workflow without a monthly bill. The skills you build here transfer to every other RAW developer you'll ever touch.
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.exe (64-bit).dmg and native Apple Silicon arm64 .dmg| Operating system | Supported versions |
|---|---|
| Windows | Windows 10 and 11 — 64-bit native .exe installer |
| macOS | macOS 13.5 Ventura or later — native Intel .dmg and native Apple Silicon arm64 .dmg (M1 / M2 / M3 / M4) |
| Linux | Most major 64-bit distributions |
| Graphics | OpenCL-capable GPU strongly recommended (NVIDIA, AMD, Intel integrated) for full GPU acceleration |
| System | 8 GB RAM recommended (4 GB minimum), 2 GB disk space, modern multi-core CPU |
| Drive | USB port (USB option) or CD-ROM drive (CD option) |
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1
Plug in your media
Insert the USB or CD into any Windows, Mac or Linux machine.
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2
Run the installer for your OS
Pick Windows, macOS, or Linux — the step-by-step PDF walks you through it with screenshots.
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3
Import & start developing
Point darktable at your photo folder, watch the lighttable populate, and open your first RAW into the darkroom.
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