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Add to SafariWhen comparing Darktable vs LightZone, the Slant community recommends Darktable for most people. In the question“What is the best photo editing software?” Darktable is ranked 6th while LightZone is ranked 21st. The most important reason people chose Darktable is:
There are a lot of different modules.
Specs
Question Ranking
Pros
Pro Feature rich
There are a lot of different modules.
Pro Fast and Flexible
A very well considered UI makes edits fast and fluid. You can redo or undo any step without disturbing any other part of your edit. The UI doesn't get in the way.
Pro Good batch editing capabilities
Darktable allows applying the same set of operations to multiple images and saving your history stack as a style (you can pick exactly which modules).
Pro Edits are saved to a separate file
Original files are untouched by any edits. No worries on what was done before or if an accidental save occurs. All work is separate from the originals.
Pro Customizable
Darktable allows favoriting modules and remapping hotkeys.
Pro Allows for local adjustments
Most modules, by default, affect the whole image, but have the option to only be applied to masked-off areas (be those drawn masks, parametric ones, or a combination of the two).
Pro Supports tethered capture
On the camera set it to use USB Remote. Open Darktable, on the left side under Import, click scan for devices. The camera should appear. Click on tethered shoot. Next on the right side look for the gear icon above the battery n/a and click it. go to the session options tab, and change the base directory to the location you want to save photos. close that settings window and try taking a picture. It should come right up.
Pro Allows users to create and edit RAW profiles
Unlike most other RAW editors, LightZone supports user-created RAW profiles and allows editing existing RAW profiles.
Pro Allows changing the order in which adjustments are applied
You can change in what order sharpening, saturation, tone, etc adjustments are applied simply by switching around their order in the tool stack.
Cons
Con Can be overwhelming
There are a lot of different modules. You're going to need some time watching tutorials to understand how to get the best out of it.
Con For tethered capture on Linux you may need additional software installed that is not a dependency for Darktable
First make sure you have gphoto2 and libgphoto2.
Con No official Windows version
Whilst official builds exist for Linux and OSX, this isn't the case for Windows (though unofficial versions do exist).
Con Asset management is basic
Browser module includes a file browser, metadata viewer and a really basic metadata editor (allows editing just 6 fields), and allows you to give images a rating, but no advanced asset management is supported. There's not even a way to assign keywords to files.
