As soon as you open up Darkroom, you know it’s special. The app launches to a grid of your photos. Tap one, and you’re editing it. Tap the exit arrow, and you’re back at the grid. It’s even faster than using the built-in Photos app to view and edit your pictures.
Bonus tip: Tap the info button in the edit view, and you can swipe though your images and watch the info panel — exposure details, map, etc. — update instantly for each image.
Files app, right inside Darkroom.
Darkroom can also edit your Portrait mode photos, applying different effects to parts of the image depending on how far away they are. It even lets you switch between the detailed Portrait Matte, which is great for pictures of photos, and the regular Depth Matte, which is less detailed, but which also delivers better depth information for other parts of the scene.
Bulk edits, and new sorting options.
The app also offers great support for RAW images. And if you have both RAW and JPEG version of the same photo, it lets you switch between them.
But that was all there already. The latest version of Darkroom is all about integrating with other apps. The Photos Extension, for example, allows you to edit a photo with Darkroom while you’re still inside Apple’s stock Photos app. Any changes you make will be saved to the original image, and can be reverted at any time.
Most of Darkroom’s tools are available in the edit extension, but not all. You can’t edit based on depth information, for example.
Use Darkroom inside the Photos app.
Also new in the Darkroom update is the sharing extension, which lets you open a photo in Darkroom from any other app. These photos are the stored in their own album inside Darkroom, until you save them to your Camera Roll. You can even hit Import inside Darkroom, and a Files picker opens to let you navigate your entire iPad’s (or iPhone’s) file system. You can also drag and drop photos into the app.
It’s a super-solid update, and makes this essential iOS photo-editing app even more useful.