darktable 5.6.0
A non-destructive RAW photo workflow application: a library manager and darkroom for developing camera RAW files, with scene-referred processing, tethering, and optional AI-assisted masking.
Download AppImage Project website ↗Download Mirrors
darktable is the open-source answer to Adobe Lightroom: a photo library manager joined to a RAW developer, where every edit is non-destructive. Your camera’s RAW file is never modified; adjustments are stored as a stack of operations and applied on export.
Lighttable and darkroom
The application splits into two modes. Lighttable manages the library: importing, rating, tagging, filtering, and culling a shoot. Darkroom develops a single image through a pipeline of modules, from exposure and color calibration to local contrast, denoising, and lens corrections. The scene-referred workflow that darktable defaults to produces more predictable highlight handling than the older display-referred approach, though it takes some unlearning if you come from other tools.
What 5.6.0 adds
This release introduces an optional AI subsystem with object masking and a neural restore module, both disabled by default and requiring extra runtime setup for GPU inference on Linux. Alongside that are substantial performance improvements: OpenCL optimizations, doubled darkroom preview resolution, and faster thumbnail cache builds. The release notes count 1,561 commits since the 5.4 series.
Installing
chmod +x darktable-5.6.0-x86_64.AppImage
./darktable-5.6.0-x86_64.AppImageFlatpak is also well supported (flatpak install flathub org.darktable.Darktable), and most distributions package darktable, though often behind upstream.
Hardware notes
darktable benefits substantially from a GPU with working OpenCL, which turns sluggish edits into responsive ones. It is also memory-hungry with large RAW files; 8 GB is a working minimum and 16 GB is comfortable.
darktable vs RawTherapee vs GIMP
RawTherapee is the other major open-source RAW developer, with a different processing philosophy and no library management. GIMP is a pixel editor, not a RAW workflow tool, and complements rather than replaces either. If you shoot RAW and need to manage volume, darktable is the one built for that job.
Verify Your Download
Checksums are published alongside each release on GitHub.