Ceci est une ancienne révision du document !
If you have been following our Darktable tutorials, you will know we are working with the latest version, not the version that is bundled in the Ubuntu Software centre.
Today, on the 5th of November, a new release of Darktable is available. Boy, are there a lot of changes! I will have to inspect these before this month’s Darktable article can go out. The change log is as long as my arm. There are new features for us to explore.
Disclaimer: In no way am I an expert in photo manipulation, I just know a guy who had a dog that gave me some fleas. I thought I may help you scratch an itch also.
Instead of doing another tutorial, this month, I would like to talk about Darktable 3.0 that was released yesterday. You can find it here: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/releases/tag/release-3.0.0rc0
Under the “Big Ones”, you will see that they mention themes. Before I say anything further, know that this is a release candidate. Things may change. The first thing that caught my eye was that the default font had changed. In my humble opinion, for the better. The grey-in-grey is closer related, giving you a bit less contrast between panels. This is the default, but you can change it; open up settings and select a different theme, if you like. Darktable’s dark theme is great to work with at night; however, during the day, the dark grey can become a bit much, so hooray for the lighter themes. The next visual tweak is that it now looks great on my 4k screen. The release notes say it now works on 4k and 5k screens. I do not have a 5k screen, so I will have to take their word on it. Maybe one of our readers can test this and get back to us?
I am a little confused as to the timeline feature. According to the release notes, that is new. However, when I fire up my Solus laptop, which runs version 2.7 of Darktable, I also see the timeline feature. This is messing with my memory. I can tell you that I have never dragged inside the timeline , and now if I do, it brings up a whole range of pictures. The thumbnail zoom feature is the other one that is confusing, as it also is in my older version on my other laptop. It is there, but I can honestly say I have never used it. Maybe it is a good thing that I am working through the release notes. Darktable is honestly a powerful program, with many settings that I have not used before. I am sure there are some that you have not used before. I will be running this on other operating systems too, once the final version has been released, but for now it seems Gtk 3.22 is needed for all the bells and whistles.
Another visible feature that jumps out at you, is the search box - when you switch to the Darkroom mode, you can now type in the name of the module you are searching for. I can not tell you how handy that is!
You simply start typing and you don’t even need to type out the whole module name. Speaking of modules, the new modules like retouch and filmic have gotten a visual overhaul. It seems a lot more friendly. We can dive right into these once the final has been released. How exciting! I really like that things that were stuck in tiny drop-down arrows, now are available on the panel and, to accommodate them all, we now have tabs. I am no UI designer, but this works for me. No more unfolding tiny triangles to get to more settings. The layout of the buttons has also changed, instead of them all on the left-hand side, now only the on/off toggle is on the left. I am on the fence about that visual change, as it does nothing for me; it does not speed up my work flow or make it any easier. The sliders that go together, are grouped together, this I like a lot.
They talk about undo and redo of tags and colours, etc. This is a feature I have honestly also not used, so I have no comment there, but we can definitely explore that when the final version is released. They also mention performance improvements. I cannot really say that I see it immediately, but I am going to load this on my dual-core machine to see what the fuss is about. We can surely discuss this in the final. Lut3d is a new module that we have not talked about, but soon will. The tutorial is taking shape in my head as I write this.
Visual changes are what brought me to Darktable version 3.0, but I suspect it will be changes under the hood that make my day. There are so many changes here, we will be having so much fun in the new year, I cannot wait!
If you cannot wait, you will have to build it, as this is only an RC and will not show up in the Ubuntu software centre. If there is anything you would like me to highlight first , or make a tutorial about first, drop us a line on misc@fullcirclemagazine.org