Release notes¶

Darkroom 1.12.0¶

More accurate Sky and Subject¶

Sky: far fewer false skies on indoor photos (a light wall, the back of a room), and slightly softer edges (Masks).
Subject: on a landscape with no clear subject, the AI no longer picks a random piece of the foreground; it says so (No subject found in the photo), and the magic brush completes.

My Style, from your edits in Darkroom¶

My Style now learns only from photos edited in Darkroom: settings imported from Lightroom (.xmp, catalog) are no longer used as examples (My Style). They are still read and applied to your photos as before.

Fixes in 1.12.0¶

Sony lossless compressed RAW files in size M or S: still not supported, but Darkroom now says so clearly and gives the solution, shooting in size L (FAQ).

Darkroom 1.11.3¶

Fixes in 1.11.3¶

Sharpening of colour photos: more accurate, edges and fine details are crisper; Detail and Masking also act more accurately (Detail).
Retouch screen on a large display (4K): the image is no longer pixelated, and the reduced view no longer has stair-stepped edges (Retouch).

Darkroom 1.11.2¶

Black and white¶

Texture in bright areas: lowering Highlights flattened the grain of lit skin, fabric and leather; it is now kept (Light).
Clarity: it also adds grain to bright areas and shadows, more so the higher the slider, and no longer brightens midtones, which washed out the background of textures (Effects).
Sharpening: edges are crisper, and noise in flat areas is no longer emphasized (Detail).
Concerts and dark scenes: lit faces and areas no longer come out too bright or blotchy on skin, and an edge burnt out by a spotlight keeps its gradient instead of a flat patch.

Your black and white photos may therefore render slightly differently: more relief and sharpness, slightly darker midtones.

Fixes in 1.11.2¶

Cropped photos: exported at full size or viewed at 100 %, they were slightly blurred at the pixel level. Fixed.

Darkroom 1.11.1¶

Fixes in 1.11.1¶

Exporting a portrait photo with haze or relight: lighter rectangles and silhouettes could appear in the background of the exported image. Fixed.
Magic Brush on a thin object (a bird in the sky, an arm, a statue): a stroke wider than the object selects the object itself, no longer the sky around it; painting again over an object already selected no longer adds the background around it (Remove).
Deleting a preset: a trash can at the end of each of your presets' row, on hover; Cancel, in the message that follows, restores it (Presets).
Film looks: their names follow the interface language when it changes.

Darkroom 1.11.0¶

Darkroom colors¶

The logo's orange marks what is active or chosen: lit buttons, selections, the Export button. Backgrounds stay neutral gray, to judge the photo's colors (Interface).
Calmer border on AI features: still at rest, it only turns while the AI is working (subject, sky, depth, people, magic brush).
Masking and Remove: the button the selected mask or retouch comes from stays lit, and its row is outlined in orange in the list. When masking opens, no tool is chosen for you any more: you pick one (Masks).
New Charcoal appearance: darker neutral grays (View › Appearance).

Eyebrows and people¶

Eyebrows: the mask now follows the hairs, with their real thickness, facing the camera as well as in three-quarter view or with the head tilted; face skin stops at the same place (Masks).
One mask per part becomes a switch, placed above the parts to check.

Darkroom 1.10.0¶

Haze, relight and film looks¶

Haze and Relight: new Develop section, based on the depth estimated by AI. Haze gets thicker with distance (amount, distance, light, color); relight brightens or darkens the foreground and the background separately (Develop).
Film looks: 9 built-in presets at the bottom of the preset list: portrait and consumer negatives, saturated and neutral slides, tungsten cinema film with halation, expired film, classic, soft and red-filter black and white. Hovering shows a preview, Amount sets the strength (Presets). They are also offered in the LUT tool and in the Retouch screen.

Working without AI¶

View › Turn Off Artificial Intelligence: from the next start, no AI model is loaded and the AI tools are no longer offered; the rest of Darkroom works as usual. The choice stays after updates (Artificial intelligence).

Safety of your photos¶

Memory cards: browsing a card no longer writes anything to it (thumbnails are kept in Darkroom's cache). Importing copies each photo entirely or not at all, even if the card is removed during the copy. On a card, a USB stick or a network drive, which have no Trash, deleting is announced as permanent; renaming on a card is discouraged by a warning; a photo from a card is exported to Pictures\Export (FAQ).
Never overwritten: a rename that fails halfway gives every photo its name back without overwriting any (before, undoing it could overwrite a photo). Retouch screen exports and HDR and panorama merges take a numbered name instead of replacing an existing file.
More precise deletion: only a photo's settings and the camera JPEG go with it, never a file edited or exported under a similar name; deleting a virtual copy moves its settings to the Trash.
Damaged files: a damaged or crafted settings file (.xmp, .darkroom, .acr), Retouch document or Lightroom catalog can no longer crash or freeze Darkroom.
Updates: downloaded over HTTPS and from gitlab.com only; the file whose signature is checked is exactly the one installed.

Darkroom 1.9.0¶

People masks¶

People: new Masking button (AI). It finds the people in the photo from their faces and selects part of one of them: whole person, face or body skin, eyebrows, eye whites, irises and pupils, lips, teeth, hair, clothes. Several parts in one mask, or one mask per part (Masks).
Mask names that are too long now stop at the edge of the mask list.

Darkroom 1.8.0¶

Develop¶

Cropping like Lightroom: while cropping, the frame stays straight and the photo turns underneath; dragging outside the frame turns the photo with the pointer. What you see is exactly the result (Crop and geometry).
New zoom in the bottom bar: Fit, a sloped slider to zoom in or out (snaps to 100%) and the percentage, to type for an exact value. Zoom goes up to 300%.
Ctrl + mouse wheel zooms around the pointer, also in Masking and Remove, where the wheel alone still sets the brush size. Entering Masking or Remove keeps the current zoom (Keyboard shortcuts).
More room for the photo: hide the filmstrip with F6, View › Hide Filmstrip or the button to the right of the clipping warning (remembered); clicking the selected icon on the right again (Edit, Info) closes the right panel (Interface).
Sections remembered: settings sections stay open or collapsed as you left them, from one photo and one session to the next, for each workspace (Develop).
AI Noise Reduction: default amount 25 instead of 50. Photos already set keep theirs.

Windows and buttons¶

Confirmation windows from the keyboard: delete, rename, copy settings, collections, update, Retouch screen windows… The main button has the focus when the window opens; ← / → or Tab move between the buttons, Enter or Space confirms, Esc cancels. Behind an open window, the arrow keys no longer change the photo.
Active buttons in Darkroom's colors: a button that is on (clipping warning, filmstrip, selected tool…) fills with Darkroom's gradient.

Import¶

Shift+click checks or unchecks a whole range of photos at once (Import and export).
Copying is no longer slowed down by thumbnails still being read from the card.

Darkroom 1.7.1¶

Startup¶

Loading window: on the first launch after an install or an update, the graphics card prepares Darkroom's rendering engine (a minute or two). Darkroom no longer looks frozen meanwhile: a small window shows the progress, then the main window opens. Later launches stay quick.

Darkroom 1.7.0¶

License and legal notice¶

Free during the beta: Darkroom and its license are free during the beta-test phase. At the end of the 14-day trial, Help › License…, Request Your Free License button. 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 (Licenses).
License agreement: Help › License Agreement, and LICENCE.txt in the Darkroom folder. Darkroom is downloaded only from its official page.
Legal notice and privacy: a new documentation page (Legal notice).

Security and AI¶

Signed updates: from this version on, Darkroom only installs an update signed by its publisher.
AI-edited photos flagged: an export that contains an AI erasure or an AI reconstruction says so in its metadata, as the European AI Act requires (Artificial intelligence).
More responsive Magic Brush after an erasure: detecting the next object no longer waits for the fills of the previous erasure.

Zoom¶

Zoom levels between "Fit" and 100%: a click on the zoom level in the bottom bar opens the menu of levels (25, 33, 50, 67, 100, 200%); Ctrl+= and Ctrl+- go to the next or previous level (Keyboard shortcuts).

New names¶

Several tools are renamed, with no change in how they work:

Develop: Straightening (perspective and level corrected in one click), Targeted Color, AI Erase, Show Dust Spots; Library: rule-based collections;
workspaces: the original one is called Darkroom, the others are listed under For users of:; appearances Slate, Graphite, Steel and Pewter;
Retouch screen: Reshape, Perspective Plane, non-destructive layers and filters, Clone Brush, Blemish Brush, Reconstruct with AI, Move and Reconstruct, Seam Scale, Pin Warp, Layer Variants, Creative Blurs, Dodge / Burn…

Rendering change¶

Clarity in black and white: the clarity complement computed by a learned model is removed; on a black-and-white photo, Clarity may render the contrast of large areas slightly differently.

Darkroom 1.6.0¶

New Retouch screen¶

Retouch, the layer-based retouching screen after Develop (Ctrl+E, the layers button at the bottom, or View › Retouch): the developed photo is the Background and always follows its settings, layers go on top; the document is saved next to the photo and exported as JPEG or 16-bit TIFF (Retouch and layers).
Layers: pixels, type (warped, on a path), shapes, adjustment layers (curves, levels, hue/saturation, color table…), groups, layer and clipping masks, blend modes, styles (shadow, glow, stroke, bevel…), non-destructive layers and filters, layer variants.
Selections: rectangle, ellipse, lassos, Magic Wand, Object Select and the Selection Brush, AI Subject and Sky, Select by Color, Focus Area, Quick Mask, alpha channels, Refine Selection.
Tools: brush (custom tips, brush presets), eraser, Clone Brush (pattern, perspective), healing brushes (including an AI fill), Patch, Move and Reconstruct, Red Eye, Dodge/Burn, Sponge, Smudge, gradient, Paint Bucket, Pen, Crop, Ruler.
Filters: about fifty — blurs (including the creative blurs: Elliptical, Tilt-Shift, Rotational, Point), Advanced Sharpen, noise, distortions, Reshape, Lens Correction, render (Clouds, Lens Flare, Lighting) —, with their preview, as non-destructive filters or not.
Image and edit: image and canvas size (the extension filled by AI), rotation, auto tone, contrast and color, Color Matching, Free Transform, Warp, Pin Warp, Plane Perspective, Perspective Plane, Seam Scale, Align Layers by Content and Seamless Layer Blend (focus stacking), composites (another photo as a layer, linked to its development; Replace Sky).
Actions: a series of commands recorded, played on the open photo or as a batch on the chosen photos; history with snapshots, guides, rulers and grid.

This is the first version of this screen: please report what does not work as expected.

Darkroom 1.5.0¶

Interface in English¶

Interface language: French or English, chosen from the system at first launch, then in View › Language; the documentation is also available in English (Language).

Workspaces¶

Five workspaces (View › Workspace): the original one, familiar to Adobe Lightroom users (now named Darkroom), and four more for users of Adobe Camera Raw, Capture One, DxO PhotoLab and darktable, each with a layout, wording, shortcuts and appearance familiar to those users. Changing workspace never changes how a photo is rendered (Workspace).
About thirty new tools, available in every workspace: Brightness, Levels, Channel Mixer, Tone Equalizer, Adaptive Lighting, Glow, grain types, 3D LUT (.cube), Targeted Color, Base Curve, Saturation by Tone, Moiré, Clarity method (Punch), Normalize, Refine Saturation, Luma curve, Protect Saturated Colors, lens blur miniature effect (Tools of each workspace).
View: waveform, RGB parade and vectorscope (right-click the histogram), focus mask, gamut warning, color sampler; keyboard-and-wheel adjustment in the Capture One workspace.

Masks and Remove¶

Masks: control point, Amount (mask opacity), Entire Image mask, local hue shift.
Remove: Red Eye and Censor (pixelate a face or a license plate) (Red eye).

Library and export¶

Delete photos: Del or Photo › Delete Photo…, after confirmation; they go to the Trash with their camera JPEG, their settings and their virtual copies (Delete photos).
Edit › Equalize Exposures for a series shot in auto mode, decorative frame on export.

Removed¶

Super Resolution: the model wiped out fine textures (surface grain, fibers, water) for several minutes of processing. DNGs already enlarged remain ordinary photos.

Fixes¶

Brightness, Levels and Refine Saturation are smoother on the slider.
Exporting works on a computer without a graphics driver (software rendering, virtual machine): the first image no longer fails after 60 seconds.

Darkroom 1.4.1¶

Automatic updates: at startup, Darkroom tells you about a new version and shows what's new in it; Install and Restart downloads it, puts it in place of the current one (Windows: in the same folder; Linux: the same AppImage) and restarts Darkroom. Settings, presets, collections and photos are left untouched. Help › Check for Updates… checks at any time; the Help › Check for Updates at Startup checkbox turns off the check, which is Darkroom's only connection to the Internet (nothing is sent) (Updates).
This version still has to be installed by hand: unzip it in place of 1.4.0. Later versions will be offered automatically.

Darkroom 1.4.0¶

Masks¶

Subject, Sky, Background in one click: all the people or the main object, everything but it, or the sky, cut out pixel by pixel right into the gaps between the branches and needles of a pine tree. Edges slightly softened; on a photo with no sky, the AI says so (Masks).
Vibrance in the mask settings (Masks).
Smooth Magic Brush on large photos, and the AI uses a quarter of the memory.
Adjustable Object Edge on any mask snapped by the AI, even after switching to another mask; the mask no longer fades along the edges of the photo.
More precise edges (mask grid twice as fine); the red overlay is hidden while a mask slider is held, so you can see the effect of the adjustment.
Color Range: the eyedropper picks the color as the mask sees it, at the clicked point, even on a cropped photo.

Remove¶

AI snap to the object edge: what is erased is exactly the selection shown, to within a few pixels, and erasing is immediate; a person is taken right to the tips of the hands and hair (Remove). Removals already made keep their look.

Develop¶

Super Resolution: Create 2× DNG in Detail (or right-click a RAW photo) creates a DNG twice as large on each side, with reconstructed detail; noise is reduced before upscaling (removed in 1.5.0).
Faster AI Denoise: about 15 seconds instead of 22 for a 33 MP photo.

Library¶

No more folder prompt at launch: Darkroom reopens the last folder, otherwise the Pictures folder (Library).
My Style: first click in 2 seconds instead of 11.
Panorama: handheld series with a close foreground now stitch together.
HDR merge and panorama DNGs have their thumbnail.

Darkroom 1.3.0¶

Linux¶

Darkroom for Linux, as an AppImage: a single file to run, no installation, for Ubuntu 24.04 and later, Linux Mint 22, Debian 13, Fedora 40, Arch… (Installation).
Adobe profiles found on the Windows partition of a dual-boot computer, in a folder copied from Windows, or with Adobe DNG Converter installed through Wine.
Same photos, same edits: since settings are kept next to the photos, a folder opened on Windows and then on Linux keeps its edits.
Mounted memory cards and USB drives recognized for import; the file manager opens on the photo ("Show in Folder").
A license covers one computer and one operating system: a second license, free of charge, activates Darkroom on Linux on the same computer.

Darkroom 1.2.0¶

Develop¶

Composition overlays in the Crop tool: thirds, grid, diagonals, triangles, golden ratio, golden spiral (O to go to the next one) (Crop and geometry).
Auto straighten: the photo is leveled from its lines (a building's verticals, even when they converge, otherwise the horizon) (Crop and geometry).
Targeted Adjustment in the color mixer and the B&W mixer: dragging on the photo adjusts the color underneath (Develop).
Navigator on the zoomed photo: shows the visible part, which you move with a click or a drag (The interface).

Masks and healing¶

Magic Brush ready as soon as masking opens on a photo with no mask, and adjustable object edge: from sharp to very gradual (sky, hair) (Masks).
The button of the selected mask's shape (Linear, Radial, Luminance, Color, Depth) stays lit.
AI snap in the Remove tool: when unchecked, the painted area is selected as is; the eraser is recalculated by the AI (Remove).
Show Dust Spots: sensor dust shows up white on black so you can find it (Remove).

Library¶

Rule-Based Collections: photos are chosen by rules (rating, color label, date, camera, lens, keywords…) and the collection updates itself (Library).
Thumbnails of a folder of RAW files display faster (especially on an external drive or a NAS), and no more needless computation for a folder you have already left.

Reliability¶

Your edits are no longer lost silently: an edit that cannot be saved (locked card, full disk) is reported, and an unreadable settings or collections file is never overwritten.
Card import: photos with the same name and the same size are no longer skipped, and a card already imported is no longer imported twice after a daylight saving time change.
Virtual copies: "Delete Virtual Copy" now deletes the one that was clicked, and the export of a copy is no longer confused with it.
Lightroom: a photo no longer receives the settings of a photo with the same name in another folder of the catalog.
Damaged files (RAW, JPEG, .xmp, .darkroom) and a removed card or disconnected NAS during a read: the photo is rejected with a message instead of closing the application.
A slow drive (USB stick, sleeping disk) no longer freezes the interface; a background task that fails (export, My Style, merge, AI) reports it instead of hanging.
Lens blur and AI noise reduction no longer carry over from one photo to the next; AI Erase with broad strokes no longer invents rectangles.

Darkroom 1.1.0¶

Develop¶

Lens Blur: background and foreground blurred according to the depth estimated by the AI, adjustable in-focus range (depth bar or click on the photo), bokeh shape, highlight boost, cat eye (Develop).
Straightening: perspective and level corrected in one click from the photo's lines (Auto, Level, Vertical, Full, Guided), without distorting a photo with no architecture; Auto and Straighten Tool in the Crop tool, fine grid while rotating (Crop and geometry).
Preset Amount (0 to 200%): an applied preset is dialed in with a slider under the list (Presets).

Color¶

Export in Display P3, Adobe RGB or ProPhoto RGB, in addition to sRGB, with the ICC profile embedded in the file (JPEG, PNG, TIFF) (Import and export).
Display profile: on a wide-gamut display, photos are shown according to its color profile (FAQ).

Library¶

Color labels: keys 6 to 9, right-click, Info panel, filter above the grid (Library).
Sorting by capture date, rating or last edit, filters by day, camera and lens, auto advance after rating (Library).
Rename Photos from a template ({name}, {date}, {time}, {num}), settings and virtual copies included (Library).
Title, caption, creator, copyright in the Info panel, written into exported JPEGs along with the keywords, rating and color label; default creator and copyright in the Export window (Import and export).
Copy masks, healing spots and crop to other photos: three more checkboxes in Copy Settings, unchecked by default (Library).

Lightroom¶

Lightroom presets (cloud version): Import My Lightroom Presets also picks up the ones Lightroom syncs to the computer (Presets).
Color labels, titles, captions, creator and copyright read from .xmp files and Adobe Lightroom Classic catalogs (Lightroom and Darkroom).

Ease of use and reliability¶

Switching tools (Crop, Remove, Masking, Edit) is immediate; while the AI loads or computes, an animated badge on the photo shows it, and the interface stays smooth (the AI leaves some processor cores free).
Settings saved with no risk of loss: a crash or power cut while saving leaves the previous settings intact, instead of a damaged file.
My Style: a copy of a folder whose photos were developed by the style no longer replaces your own edits of those photos during learning.

Darkroom 1.0.1¶

No more terminal window when Darkroom opens.
Magic Brush scaled to the gesture: a stroke over a good part of a person selects the whole person; a dab on an eye, the mouth or the beard takes only that element. The selection is no longer cut off sharply by the stroke's bounding box.
Zoom while masking and healing: Z zooms on the point under the pointer, holding Space gives you the hand to move around.
Masks: creating a mask and adding to an existing mask are clearly separate; a single brush, with the AI snap checkbox (magic or normal) and Alt to erase.

Darkroom 1.0.0¶

First public release of Darkroom.

Develop¶

Rendering calibrated on Lightroom's: Adobe profiles (Adobe Color, Landscape, Portrait, Vivid, Neutral, Monochrome, creative profiles), sliders measured on hundreds of exports.
A complete set of develop panels: light, color, mixer, curves, color grading, effects, detail, optics, calibration (The Edit panel).
Auto white balance and eyedropper; Auto button for light.
Lens corrections (Adobe profiles or camera data), chromatic aberration.
Crop and geometry, AI noise reduction.

Masks and healing¶

Magic Brush: the selection snaps to the edge of the painted object, in masks as in the Remove tool.
Brush, linear and radial gradients, luminance, color and depth ranges (depth estimated by the AI on any photo); shapes added, subtracted or intersected within the same mask.
On-device AI Erase, in three variants; Delete erases the selection.
Circular spot edits (Clone).

Library¶

Ratings, flags, keywords, search, virtual copies (Library).
Collections of photos from several folders, Compare two photos (C).
Copying settings by group.
HDR merge and panorama to DNG.

Lightroom¶

Settings, masks, healing spots, crop, ratings and keywords read from .xmp files; reading of Lightroom Classic catalogs; preset import (Lightroom and Darkroom).
My Style: develops your new photos the way you would have, based on the ones you have already edited (My Style).

Import and export¶

Import from a card; JPEG, PNG or 16-bit TIFF export, watermark, saved export settings (Import and export).

Cameras¶

Most RAW files: Sony, Canon, Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus/OM, Pentax, Leica, Hasselblad, Fujifilm (X-Trans included), DNG… and JPEGs.