Two and a half years after Darktable 4.0 was released, the newer Darktable 5.0 version is now available. As one of the few free image editing software programs available today, one can’t expect it to give you the most complex and intricate editing tools for your photography. But three years on from our last review, we decided to put the newer version to the test to see what had changed and if anything had improved.
Back in 2022 we reviewed the previous version of Darktable to see how this free software it stood up to paid editing options like Adobe Lightroom. If I was to sum up that experience in a few words, it’s safe to say we didn’t enjoy the experience of using it at all. It was slow, cluttered, and certainly not worth giving up your Adobe or Capture One subscription for. But with companies like Adobe increasing subscription costs due to their irritating obsession with AI-generating tools, amateur photographers are struggling with affordable alternatives. This was one of the primary reasons we decided to review the newer version of Darktable – to see if it could be a tool that would be able to do some powerful edits for photographers who didn’t want to shell out a monthly subscription fee for editing software. Darktable is still free, so we’re not expecting the world from it.
The Big Picture: Darktable 5.0 Review Conclusions
I do all my editing on an M1 Mac Mini that’s a little over 3 years old. This system is capable of smoothly running Capture One Pro, Adobe Lightroom, and Adobe Photoshop simultaneously while Firefox is open with at least 15 tabs at any given time. But even a powerful system like this choked when doing even the most basic slider adjustment on Darktable 5.0. After nearly an hour, I was still trying to work on the first Raw file I decided to edit. I was ready to give up at this point already, but I trudged on and edited a few more. However, Darktable is definitely not for professionals who need to edit raw files quickly. I can’t imagine it would be much faster on a new Apple M3 or M4 system. The issue lies not so much with the processing power it seems to need to run, but also with the interface. Tools are named significantly differently than what seasoned editors would expect them to be, and hidden in some obscure places. I cannot recommend this to any professional. Amateurs who can’t afford a subscription license to professional editing tools might find Darktable useful for editing jpg files.
Pros
- Still free to use
- Jpeg file editing is fast
- UX/UI and performance improvements
- Camera-specific styles added for more than 500 camera models to more closely approximate the out-of-camera JPEG rendition
- Various bug fixes from previous versions
- If you haven’t a clue what something does, there’s a “?” button that you can select. Then, click on any tool that you want more information on. This directs you to the appropriate help page in a new browser window.
Cons
- When you first install it, the interface still looks plain and uninspiring. To feel better, immediately go into settings and change the interface to the newer, “Elegant high-contrast” view.
- Editing tools aren’t user-friendly. This looks more like a scientific image analysis kind of tool than an intuitive image editing tool.
- Infuriatingly difficult to find basic editing tool sliders like Exposure, shadows, highlights etc
- RAW file edits are painfully slow
- I used a trackpad to scroll. If I scroll up or down while the cursor is over the sliders in the Darkroom tab, it adjusts the values instead of scrolling the various slider tabs up or down
- Not all NEF types are supported. Darktable seemed to have trouble reading the high-efficiency NEF files from a Nikon Z9 and Nikon Zf
- Adjustments take too long to reflect edits in the Darkroom tab
- It feels like I’m editing images using very outdated software from the late 90s
- Positioning of the various editing tools is so confusing.
- Single mouse clicks don’t seem to do much for actions like clicking on a folder or a new image. Such actions needed double clicks
- I really just wanted to give up after trying to edit 1 image
- CPU hog. My computer was also warmer than usual on the temperature sensor
Gear Used
I tested Darktable 5.0.1 on my 16GB M1 Mac Mini, connected to my 27-inch Dell U2720Q monitor
Important Updates Tested
Here’s what you should keep in mind about this review.
New Camera-Specific Styles
I could see various new camera profiles added to the list (seen above), including my Nikon Zf. You can see visible differences in the edits if you swap between camera profiles, but as with everything on this app, it takes what seems like ages to view the results when editing raw files. It’s also equally slow to revert them when you undo with Ctrl+Z.
What I didn’t see were camera-specific picture profiles, such as the Deep Monochrome profile in the Nikon Zf. However, I did notice that it retained monochrome NEF files from my Nikon Z6 II as black-and-white in the light table and darkroom tabs. Capture One Pro still converts them to color upon import.
Utility Module View Adjustment
Utility modules refer to the tools that don’t process pixels, but are used for other image-related attributes like metadata, editing history, etc. In Darktable 5.0, you can hide or show the various utility modules across different tabs. You can reposition them across the left and right panels (in the lighttable tab) as well as vertically (all views)
Export Style Selection Preview
While I quite like the idea of an export-style preview, I do wish the thumbnail were a much bigger preview instead. It’s super difficult to see the differences between various export styles in such a small thumbnail. Below are various styles applied to the same image. The styles are (in order), None (no camera style applied), Nikon Zf, Nikon D300, Fujifilm XT-5, Leica Q2, Canon 5D MII, Olympus E-M1X.
Overall Thoughts
There isn’t much to unpack here. From an editing perspective, the thoughts are still the same as our earlier Darktable review. I get why this software might be appealing for some – it’s free and open source, which makes it something that amateurs can consider. But professionals picking this would be akin to turning up at a drag race event with a go-kart instead of a seriously fast car. Will you get to the finish line? Eventually yes, but at the cost of considerable stress and frustration. The learning curve is too steep for someone to want to work with this on a long-term basis. It is feature-rich, no doubt, but there really needs to be a UX overhaul here to make it attractive. I do appreciate the efforts that have been put into this thus far, but it’s still an unpolished stone for now. Whether it turns out to be a gem or just a rock can only be determined in the years to come.
Some modules are genuinely clever, but professionals need predictability when it comes to editing tools. By my best guess, learning to master Darktable will easily take the best part of 6 to 9 months if you go at it for at least an hour a day. That’s a lot longer than it took me to become adept at Lightroom or Capture One. If you’re a Nikon user, download the free NX Studio software instead. It’s not like that’s a Lightroom competitor by any means, but it’ll make your editing job a lot easier than Darktable will for now. I often felt like I was fighting with the software to get an edit done. There’s potential here, I will admit that. But it needs to go in a vastly different direction from the one it took to reach version 5.0.
