Darktable is an open source photography workflow application and RAW developer. A virtual lighttable and darkroom for photographers. It manages your digital negatives in a database, lets you view them through a zoomable lighttable and enables you to develop raw images and enhance them.

It tries to fill the gap between the many excellent existing free raw converters and image management tools (such as ufraw or f-spot). The user interface is built around efficient caching of image metadata and mipmaps, all stored in a database. The user will always be able to interact, even if the full resolution image is not yet loaded.

All editing is fully non-destructive and only operates on cached image buffers for display. The full image is only converted during export. The frontend is written in gtk+/cairo, the database uses sqlite3, raw image loading is done using libraw, high-dynamic range and standard image formats such as jpeg are also supported. The core operates completely on floating point values, so darktable can not only be used for photography but also for scientifically acquired images or output of renderers (high dynamic range).

Install DarkTable in Ubuntu:

DarkTable is available in Ubuntu Software Center, but it’s old. It got few PPAs on launchpad.net for Ubuntu Lucid, Natty, Oneiric and Precise.

For stable releases add the Darktable Release PPA. Execute this command to add the PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release
sudo apt-get update

For stable releases plus some extras add the Darktable Release Plus PPA. Execute command to add PPA:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release-plus
sudo apt-get update

If you are adventurous and are willing to deal with problems from time to time add the Darktable Unstable PPA. Don’t use this PPA if you do time critical work with darktable! Execute command:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-unstable
sudo apt-get update

After that, search for “darktable” in the Software Center and install it.