Darktable 4.2.0 Release Notes
darktable/RELEASE_NOTES.md at master · darktable-org/darktable
We're proud to announce the new feature release of darktable, 5.0.0!
The github release is here: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-5.0.0.
To build from source, do not use the autogenerated tarball provided by GitHub on the release page, download our tar.xz file instead. If you're just building for yourself without creating a package for some distribution, then using source code cloning in git is an even more convenient way.
The checksums are:
$ sha256sum darktable-5.0.0.tar.xz
??? darktable-5.0.0.tar.xz
$ sha256sum darktable-5.0.0-x86_64.dmg
??? darktable-5.0.0-x86_64.dmg
$ sha256sum darktable-5.0.0-arm64.dmg
??? darktable-5.0.0-arm64.dmg
$ sha256sum darktable-5.0.0-win64.exe
??? darktable-5.0.0-win64.exe

When updating from the stable 4.8 series, please bear in mind that your edits will be preserved during this process, but the new library and configuration will no longer be usable with 4.8.
You are strongly advised to take a backup first.
Important note: to make sure that darktable can keep on supporting the raw file format for your camera, please read this post on how/what raw samples you can contribute to ensure that we have the full raw sample set for your camera under CC0 license!
Since darktable 4.8:

??? commits to darktable+rawspeed
??? pull requests handled
??? issues closed

Please note that the darktable documentation is not currently complete for release 5.0
and contributions are greatly appreciated. Please see the
project documentation
for more information on how to contribute.
The Big Ones
The following is a summary of the main features added to darktable
5.0. Please see the user manual for more details of the individual
changes (where available).

This development cycle has included a large number of changes which
improve the user experience, as detailed in the next section.

UI/UX Improvements


Added camera-specific styles for more than 500 camera models to more
closely approximate the out-of-camera JPEG rendition.  These styles
only affect contrast, brightness, and saturation and do not attempt
to match sharpening, denoising, or hue shifts.  Also added a Lua
script to auto-apply the appropriate style on import and manually
apply styles to a collection of previously-imported images.


The user interface now gives feedback while processing bulk image
operations such as rating, tagging, applying styles, and edit
history management (and undoing those operations), rather than
silently freezing until the operation completes.  While the
operation is in progress, darktable will now show either a busy
cursor (such as a stopwatch or spinner) or a progress bar with
option to cancel the remainder of the operation.


Paths for drawn masks now display two Bézier handles per control point,
which can be moved individually. This allows for more precise control
of the paths.


Added a high-contrast theme with bright white text on a dark gray
background.


Enhanced tooltips for utility module headers to provide more
information about the module.


Added more new-user hints on an empty lighttable.


Added two new error placeholder images to distinguish between
missing, unsupported, and corrupted images.  When attempting to edit
such an image, an appropriate, more specific error message is
displayed.


When selecting a style in the export module, hovering on the style
name in the popup menu displays a thumbnail previewing the effect of
appending the style to the active image's edit (first selected image
in lighttable, center-view image in darkroom).


Allow for selecting the utility modules to be displayed on the
panels in the different views.


Right-click on the empty panel area below the modules to get a
menu where they can be hidden or shown. This allows additional
modules to be added to the darkroom, like metadata editor and
styles.


This replaces the options in the "collections" and "recently used
collections" modules' preferences to show or hide the latter and
show a "history" button in the former instead. Users that want the
separate module will need to reenable it once via the new
Right-click menu.


The menu also contains an option "restore defaults" that resets
the selection and position of modules in the current view. In the
preferences dialog, on the general tab, there's a "reset view
panels" button that resets all views, including visibility and
width of the panels themselves.




Added a global preference to swap the left and right side panels in
the darkroom view.


The first time a new user presses Tab, they will be warned that this
will hide all panels and how to get them back. Hopefully this
prevents some confusion or frustration.


Drag&drop utility module headers to reposition them across the left
and right panels (lighttable) as well as vertically (all
views). Hold Ctrl+Shift to avoid expanding/collapsing
them before dragging. Each view can have a different layout.


Drag&drop of processing modules in the darkroom right panel has been
improved to auto-scroll when reaching the top or bottom and to not
get confused when images get dragged into the area.


Improved the message displayed at startup when the database is
locked by another instance of darktable.


Replaced the icon of the operator button in the color label filter
for working with multiple selected color labels
(union/intersection).


Performance Improvements


Added OpenCL implementation of color equalizer.


Improved the speed of bulk image operations by improving the speed
of sidecar writes, and by moving sidecar updates for many operations
into a background task, allowing the user to proceed before the
writes complete.


Significantly accelerated loading of PFM files due to loops
parallelization and optimization that eliminated additional
processing.


Other Changes


Switched default scope for new installations from histogram to
waveform to display more detailed information about image color and
tonality.


The ISO 12646 color assessment condition is kept until unset by user
action.


Exposure bias can now be used to form collections and as a display filter.


Improved visualization of the color equalizer's effect.


Improved debugging support for verifying CPU vs. GPU results.


Add Calibrite alias for X-Rite ColorChecker in color calibration.


The scan for updated sidecar files now ignores timestamp differences
of two seconds or less.


The macOS installation package now has a background image to direct
the user on installing darktable.app.


Changed the user interface of the import dialog to make it easier to
delete custom places.


Numerous rounds of code cleanup.


The copy-parts dialog does not select any module by default now.


Add support for undo/redo for actions done on the filmstrip while in
darkroom.


In darkroom, add action (binding to Ctrl+x by default) for
synchronizing the last edited module on current edited module to the
selection.


Expose encoding speed control for AVIF export: trades off export
time for file size and quality.


Tag names can now easily be copied to the clipboard via popup
context menu in the tagging module.


The piwigo export storage now supports to specify a file name
pattern for the exported file.


The directory where darktable will write the log file under Windows
has been changed to %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Darktable. This allows
the user to easily see where the log file is located without even
having to search for it in the documentation or FAQ. The previous
location was deep in the system subdirectories of the user profile,
and also under a hidden directory (so it was impossible to click to
it in File Explorer with default system settings).


Allow import of JPEG 2000 files with .jpf and .jpx file extensions.


Add a visible indicator to the color calibration module when its
color mapping section has non-neutral settings which will affect
color rendition..


Added new substitution variables $(IMAGE.TAGS.HIERARCHY) to insert
tags with full hierarchy and $(IMAGE.ID.NEXT) to insert the image ID
to be assigned to the image being imported, allowing the image ID to
be part of the filename generated during a copy&import operation.


Exporting to floating-point JPEG XL with a quality of 100 will try
to do it as losslessly as possible. That is now consistent with the
behavior of integral JPEG XL formats.


Bug Fixes


Fixed a performance regression for redrawing mipmaps.


Fixed handling of old (2020) edits using Filmic RGB.


Various OpenCL fixes to reduce differences between CPU and GPU
processing: colorspace conversion, saturation gradient filter in
color equalizer.


Fixed gallery export not working on Windows.


Fixed printer discovery in the print module, which could cause
available printers to be missed.


Work around out-of-spec ExIF date field caused by buggy software.


Fixed reading embedded color profiles from PNG images.


Fixed certain boundary cases in the crop module.


Fixed crash when loading corrupted .gpx file in the geotagging module


Fix preset handling in the export module not saving all parameters.


Fix an issue in FilmicRGB where one of the parameter could be above
the maximum allowed range making the validation failing and the
whole set of parameters reset to default.


Fix overlay recording to work in all cases (discarding history or
copy/paste history for example) ensuring that an image not
referenced anymore as overlay in a composite module can be removed.


Properly reset darktable internal tag darktable|style| and
darktable|changed when resetting history.


Fixed crash in the piwigo export storage when not logged in to the
piwigo server.


Fixed a bug in the export module where it was impossible to export a
file again if "on conflict: overwrite if changed" was selected.


Fixed a bug where double clicking on a label in darkroom modules
does not reset the control.


The composite module now prevents assigning an overlay that would
lead to a loop. Previously, only direct references
(image #1 <-> image #2) were checked; this has now been extended
to also cover chains (image #1 -> image #2 -> image #3 -> image #1)
of arbitrary length.


Fix a bug in overlay module which incorrectly apply a color profile
and so creating an unwanted and wrong color cast. This bug was a
regression added just before the 4.8 release.


Fixed a bug in color calibration module where switching between
various illuminants could lead to unpredictable settings.


Various fixes In the demosicer module. Non-usable options are hidden
now. Fixed dual demosaicing for xtrans sensors and OpenCL code.


Lua
API Version

API version is now 9.3.0

Bug Fixes
Add action support for Lua
Other Lua changes
Notes


When exporting to AVIF, EXR, JPEG XL, or XCF, selecting specific
metadata (e.g. geo-tag or creator) is not currently possible. For
AVIF, EXR, JPEG XL, and XCF formats, darktable will not include any
metadata fields unless the user selects all of the checkboxes in the
export module's preference options.


Release 4.8 drops support for macOS versions older than 13.5.


Changed Dependencies
Mandatory

Minimum libpng version 1.5.x is now required
Bump Exiv2 requirement to 0.27.2
Minimum pugixml version 1.5 is now required
Minimum libcurl version 7.56 is now required
Bump SQLite requirement to 3.26

Optional

n/a

RawSpeed changes

Fujifilm X-Trans 4 based and newer cameras now use the vendor supplied crop

Camera support, compared to 4.6
Base Support

Canon EOS R100 (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Canon EOS R50 (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Canon EOS R6 Mark II (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Canon EOS R8 (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Canon EOS Ra (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Fujifilm FinePix S9600fd
Fujifilm X100VI (compressed)
GoPro FUSION (DNG)
Leica SL3 (DNG)
OM System OM-1 Mark II
Panasonic DC-TZ95D (4:3)
Panasonic DMC-FX150 (4:3, 3:2, 16:9)
Panasonic DMC-FZ28 (3:2)
Phase One P25+
Phase One P45+
Ricoh GR III HDF (DNG)
Ricoh GR IIIx HDF (DNG)
Sony ILCE-9M3
Sony UMC-R10C

White Balance Presets

Canon EOS R6 Mark II (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Fujifilm X-H2
OM System OM-1 Mark II
OM System OM-5

Noise Profiles

Canon EOS R6 Mark II (requires LibRaw 202403 and later)
Fujifilm GFX 50R
OM System OM-1 Mark II
OM System OM-5
Phase One IQ180
Sony ILCE-9M3
Sony ZV-1

Missing Compression Mode Support

Apple ProRAW DNGs
CinemaDNG lossless (Blackmagic, some DJI, etc.) and lossy (Blackmagic)
DNG 1.7 using JPEG XL (Adobe enhanced, Samsung Expert RAW)
Fujifilm lossy RAFs
Nikon high efficiency NEFs
OM System 14-bit high resolution ORFs
Sony downsized lossless ARWs ("M" for full-frame, "S" for full-frame & APS-C)

Suspended Support
Support for the following cameras is suspended because no samples are available on https://raw.pixls.us:

Creo/Leaf Aptus 22(LF3779)/Hasselblad H1
Fujifilm IS-1
Kodak EasyShare Z980
Leaf Aptus-II 5(LI300059)/Mamiya 645 AFD
Leaf Credo 60
Leaf Credo 80
Minolta DiMAGE 5
Olympus SP320
Phase One IQ250
Sinar Hy6/ Sinarback eXact
ST Micro STV680

Translations

???

