Software Update: Darktable 3.2.1

Version 3.2.1 of Darktable has been released. Darktable is an open source raw photo editing program, a virtual light box and darkroom for photo editing. It manages digital negatives through a database. The raw photo files are developed by means of so-called sidecar files, in which the photos are processed in a non-destructive manner. The software is available for various Linux distributions, macOS and Windows. The complete release notes can here are found, these are the main changes made in this release:

The Big Ones

• The lighttable view has been rewritten and the filmstrip reworked, resulting in large performance gains, especially when using the zoomable lighttable view. The culling view has also been rewritten from scratch. Operations are smooth at any screen resolution up to 8k.
  Many types of overlay are now possible on lighttable thumbs. Different overlay information can be selected depending on the thumb size on the lighttable. The different sizes can be set in the preferences, so we can have no overlay at all for small thumbs and full overlay when large thumbs are displayed. This is fully configurable.
  Likewise, the tooltip information when hovering the thumbs can be activated/deactivated based on the thumbs size.
• The lighttable modules have improved user interaction: buttons are highlighted only when the context makes the action possible.
• A complete overhaul of the CSS has been done. This gives dark table a professional look. This continues the goal to make every single aspect of the UI themable using CSS.
• The Color Picker and Location modules are updated to better fit into the new UI, and most of the icons have been altered so as to be more visually balanced.
• The preference dialog has been fully reviewed and reorganized to propose a better look and require less scrolling. It is also possible to add some CSS rules directly into the preference dialog to tweak darktable’s look as well as to directly control the font size and DPI values ​​from the general preference tab.
  A search field has been added to the shortcuts tab to help you find the keyboard shortcut you want to customize.
• The new negadoctor module has been added to help inverting negative films.
• A new histogram display called RGB Parade has been added. At the same time the histogram module height can now be adjusted with Ctrl+Scroll.
• The metadata feature has been made generic internally and has new features. The user can now select the information they want to see in the metadata editor. This selection is automatically mirrored in the collection and image information modules.
  Along with a new “notes” field, all the fields are multiline Ctrl+Enter, sizable Ctrl+Scroll and can be set as private (not exported). Metadata collection filters have an entry “not defined”. At import time it is possible to choose not to import some metadata.
• Image change detection has been made more reliable. This affects the lighttable thumbnails change symbol and history collection filter, which is now more accurate. In darkroom navigation, this avoids the need to recalculate an image and save the xmp file when there is no change.
• A new down-sampling preference has been introduced for faster response in darkroom. The preview is either computed at full resolution (original, default value) or at 1/2, 1/3 or 1/4 of the original size. This allow for better performance but can slightly hinder the precision of the guided filter masking.
  Note that this is a very delicate feature to implement. A lot of care has been taken to ensure all is correct when using down sampling. It touches all areas of darktable, like masks, guided filter, liquify controls, crop & rotate, lens and perspective corrections…
• Clarify the three possible workflows. Previous version had a preference to choose whether to auto-apply the base curve module. Many questions were raised about the intention. The new preference introduces three workflows:
  • display-referred : use base-curve module
  • scene-referred : use cinematic and exposure modules (new default)
  • none : use neither base-curve nor filmic
• Filmic RGB is updated to v4 (new color science) with integrated highlight recovery.