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Pascal Obry announced today the release of Darktable 3.8 as a massive update to this open-source, free, and cross-platform RAW image editor.
Darktable 3.8 comes with major changes like a completely revamped keyboard shortcut system with support for controlling the app with other devices, such as game controllers or MIDI devices, a new diffuse or sharpen module that lets users simulate or revert diffusion processes to reconstruct images, as well as a new scene-referred blurs module that lets you accurately synthesize motion and lens blurs.
Other major changes include support for multiple images in the print view, Aa new LMMSE demosaic algorithm, support for the Canon CR3 RAW image format, and the global availability of the composition guides from the crop module across the entire app.
This release also renames the Perspective Correction module to Rotate and Perspective to let you manually define correction settings by drawing lines or rectangles on an image, and normalizes the color checker profiling tool patch-wise in exposure to discard an effect of uneven lighting and fall-off.
Darktable 3.8 also adds read support for the HEIF/HEIC file format, support for ARM64 and Apple M1 architectures, timestamp support in the Camera Import dialog, a new vertical waveform scope option, support for PNG files in the watermark module, a new preference to choose the number of recent collections to display, as well as a new option to allow users to choose when to start writing changes to XMP sidecar files.
New sorting options based on capture, import, modification, last export, and last print times are also present in this release, along with thumbnail preview support for DNG files in the import dialog.
Among some of the improvements introduced in Darktable 3.8, there’s an improved Denoise module that now uses wavelets by default, faster mask handling, rating support to the Collections module, new buttons to the Orientation module, and a search box in the preset preferences and shortcuts.
Base camera support has been improved as well, and Darktable now supports the Canon EOS R, Canon EOS RP, Canon EOS R5, Canon EOS R6, Canon EOS 250D, Canon EOS 850D, Canon EOS 90D, Canon EOS 1D X Mark III, Canon EOS M6 Mark II, Canon EOS M50, Canon EOS M50 Mark II, Canon EOS M200, Canon PowerShot G5 X Mark II, Canon PowerShot G7 X Mark III, Fujifilm GFX50S II (compressed), Leica C (Typ 112) (3:2), Leica Digilux 3 (4:3), Leica M10 (dng), Ricoh GR II, Sony DSC-HX95, Sony ILCE-7M4, and Sony ZV-E10 cameras.
Moreover, there are new noise profiles for the Canon EOS R, Canon EOS RP, Canon EOS R5, Canon EOS R6, Fujifilm X100V, Leica D-Lux 7, Leica M10, Leica SL (Typ 601), Panasonic DC-S5, Panasonic DC-FZ91, Panasonic DC-FZ92, Panasonic DC-FZ93, Panasonic DC-TZ90, Panasonic DC-TZ91, and Panasonic DC-ZS70 cameras, as well as new white balance presets for the Canon EOS R (with fine-tuning), Canon EOS RP (with fine-tuning), Canon EOS R5 (with fine-tuning), Canon EOS R6, Canon EOS M50 (with fine-tuning), and Ricoh GR II cameras.
Of course, numerous bugs were fixed, translations updated, and other components improved. Check out the full release notes for more details about the changes introduced in Darktable 3.8, which you can download right now from the official website for all supported platforms, or you can install it as a Flatpak app from Flathub.
Last updated 2 years ago
