Darktable is an excellent free and open source software tool for processing RAW photos. It can be used to edit non-raw photos as well but it is designed as a RAW photo processor and so some functionality may be disabled if editing non-raw images.
Here I will look at the basic steps I take when processing a RAW file using Darktable.
Here is the RAW image as it appears in darktable without any modifications made. As you can see it’s a little dull as is usually the case with raw images.
If you’ve ever taken a shot in RAW, then checked it out on the back of the camera and thought “Oh yeah, that’s nice.” but then when you’ve opened it on your pc it looks dull compared to what showed on the camera. There is a reason for that.
The image on the LCD of the camera is a JPEG image the camera has processed using it’s own built in parameters. This is based on the current image mode selected or custom settings that most DSLR cameras allow you to choose from. This preview is post-processed by the camera whereas the RAW file you open on the computer is raw and unprocessed. That’s why we are here.
You may ask then why not just shoot in JPEG and let the camera do the post processing, after all, the preview on the camera looked good?
