Licenses

Darkroom

Darkroom is free of charge during its beta-test phase. It first runs for 14 days as a trial version, with all its features; then request your license, also free during the beta, valid for one computer: Help › License… menu, Request Your Free License button (see Installation).

Darkroom may become paid software after the beta. This would be announced in advance, and the version you use with your free license would remain usable (license agreement, point 1).

You can support its development on Ko-fi. A donation is optional: it is not a purchase.

License agreement

The same text comes with Darkroom (LICENCE.txt) and is shown by Help › License Agreement.

1. Use. During the beta-test phase, the author grants you, free of charge, the right to install and use Darkroom, for private or professional use. After a 14-day trial, Darkroom asks for a license, also free during the beta: Help › License…, then Request Your Free License. A license is valid for one computer. Darkroom may become paid software after the beta. Such a change would be announced in advance (official page, release notes) and would only concern the versions released afterwards: the version you use with your free license would remain usable, and nothing would be charged without your consent. Updates are only installed with your consent.
2. Copying and distribution. Darkroom is downloaded only from its official page. You may make copies for your own use (backup, your other computers, a USB stick). You may not redistribute it (download sites, public sharing, a copy given to someone else) or sell it: to let someone else use it, point them to the official page. The RAW decoding library remains redistributable under the LGPL (see 4).
3. Ownership. Darkroom remains the property of its author. Third-party components (artificial intelligence models, libraries) remain under their own licenses, reproduced in LICENCES-TIERS.txt; for those components, they apply instead of this license.
4. RAW decoding library (LGPL). darkroom_raw.dll (libdarkroom_raw.so on Linux) is distributed under the GNU LGPL 2.1 or later; its source code is provided in the sources folder. Nothing in this license limits the rights the LGPL gives you. In particular, you may modify Darkroom for your own use and reverse engineer it to debug such modifications.
5. No warranty. Darkroom is provided free of charge, as is, without warranty of any kind, including any warranty that it is free of errors or fit for a particular purpose. Darkroom writes settings files next to your photos, can move photos to the trash when you ask it to and updates itself with your consent: keep a backup copy of your photos.
6. Liability. To the extent permitted by law, the author is not liable for damages resulting from the use of Darkroom or the inability to use it, including data loss. This limitation does not apply in case of gross negligence or willful misconduct by the author.
7. Donations. Donations (Ko-fi) are optional. They are not purchases: they give no right to any particular service, warranty or support.
8. Personal data. Darkroom sends neither your photos nor any data about your use. Its only Internet connection is the update check, on gitlab.com, which then sees the computer's IP address; it can be turned off in the Help menu. To get a license, you send by e-mail the computer's identifier (a computed code that reveals nothing else), your name and your e-mail address. They are used only to create your license and to be able to send it to you again. They are shared with no one and are deleted on request at the contact address (see Legal notice).
9. Governing law. This license is governed by French law.

Third-party components

Darkroom relies on open-source components, whose full licenses are shown by Help › Third-Party Licenses.

Artificial intelligence models

Model	Authors	License
Depth Anything V2 Small (depth)	Lihe Yang et al. (HKU, TikTok)	Apache 2.0
MobileSAM (Magic Brush)	Chaoning Zhang et al., based on Segment Anything (Meta)	Apache 2.0
BiRefNet lite (Subject, Background)	Peng Zheng et al.	MIT
BlazeFace, people segmentation, Face Mesh (People)	Google (MediaPipe)	Apache 2.0
Big LaMa (AI Erase)	Samsung Research	Apache 2.0
DRUNet (noise reduction)	Kai Zhang et al.	MIT
DINOv2 ViT-S/14 (My Style)	Meta	Apache 2.0

Libraries

• ONNX Runtime (Microsoft, MIT): runs the AI models.
• rawler (LGPL 2.1): decodes RAW files. It is isolated in darkroom_raw.dll, which you can replace with your own version, as the LGPL allows.
• The Rust libraries compiled into the application (MIT, Apache 2.0 and compatible licenses), listed one by one in the licenses file.

DNG technology

Darkroom reads and writes DNG files (panoramas, HDR merges): This product includes DNG technology under license by Adobe.

Trademarks

Adobe, Adobe Camera Raw, Adobe Color, Adobe DNG Converter, Adobe RGB (1998), Lightroom and Photoshop are either registered trademarks or trademarks of Adobe in the United States and/or other countries. Capture One, DxO PhotoLab and darktable are trademarks of their respective owners. Darkroom is independent software, neither affiliated with nor endorsed by these publishers (see Legal notice).

Adobe's color profiles and lens profiles are not supplied with Darkroom. When they are installed on the computer (by Adobe Lightroom, Adobe Camera Raw or Adobe DNG Converter), Darkroom reads them where they are, without copying or modifying them. They remain the property of Adobe.