Darktable vs Lightroom: Which One is Better For Photo Editing in 2024
Are you wondering which one is the best photo editor for fulfilling your needs of adjusting color, contrast, brightness, exposure, and more to make your photographs more attractive in 2024? Absolutely, it’s not easy to choose the best program for editing tasks, but don’t worry. After reading a comprehensive comparison of two amazing photo editors, Darktable andLightroom, in this article, you can effortlessly decide which one is the best option for you. Now, you can effortlessly choose the best one, whether you’re a casual editor or a professional in your field.
I’ve been working on both Darktable and Lightroom for 10 months to understand if I can use Darktable as the alternative to Lightroom or LIghtroom as the alternative to Darktable. After deeply analyzing, I’ve drawn the results that comparing the features and interface of Darktable vs Lightroom is just similar to contrasting apples and oranges. However, I noticed a little difference between Lightroom and Darktable during my practical experience that I’ll discuss in this article.
A Quick Overview of Darktable vs Lightroom
Both Darktable and Lightroom are kings of their own in photo editing programs. Still, Lightroom is more sophisticated, easy to use, and compatible with processing raw files and managing a large library of images. On the other hand, Darktable doesn’t have the latest features similar to Lightroom, but its tools are not too outdated; they’re enough to edit raw images. Darktable doesn’t have a cloud-based storage system, so we don’t need to pay for extra storage space. In contrast, Lightroom is based on cloud storage, and we need to pay to get more than enough storage for large files.
Darktable vs Lightroom: Comparison Table
Features
Darktable
Lightroom
User-interface
Complex
Easy
Slider for smaller adjustments
Yes
No
Open-source
Yes
No
Non-destructive editing
Yes
Yes
Slideshow, Map, and Printing modules
Yes
Yes
Tethering module
Yes
Yes
Metadata
right-hand column
right-hand column
Define an import location
No
Yes
Add keywords (tags) and metadata
Yes
Yes
Keyboard shortcuts
Yes
Yes
Ability to find focus points
Yes
Yes
Control over Presets
Less
More
File management
Rather complex
Relatively simple
Navigation process
Less straightforward
More straightforward
Catalog system
minimal
Fleshed out
Ability to drag and drop images
Not available
Available
Mobile-friendly version
No
Yes
Darktable vs Lightroom: Key Features
Before making a perfect selection in Darktable vs Lightroom, it’s essential to know about the key features that force us to choose the best one. That’s why we’re going to discuss the basic features of Darktable and Lightroom for your deep understanding. Let discuss:
Key Features of Lightroom
Lightroom is available for both mobile and PC use, so we can use it on our Android, iPhone, and PC devices and can easily synchronize between different devices.
Lightroom offers us presets to apply the premade editing settings and effects on our photographs. Moreover, we can save the applied impact on one image and try it on our other images. This process not only saves precious time but also enables us to complete our editing process quickly and effortlessly.
The library filter in Lightroom allows us to search for our desired image from a large collection or catalog of images so that we can search either by text or attribute.
The batch editing process in Lightroom enables us to apply the same filters and effects to hundreds of images simultaneously. Instead of applying impacts one by one on all images, we can try more than 500 images from the same category in a few clicks.
Lightroom offers adjustment brushes to perfectly adjust the size, feature, flow, and density of effects after making major or sweeping edits.
It also allows us to transfer the adjustment settings from one photograph to another. For this purpose you need to navigate to the Develop Module and click on the “Previous” button. Furthermore, you can copy the settings of an image and paste these settings into another.
By using its Lens Blur tool, we can select the focus subject within the photograph and can blur the background to give a more attractive look to the main subject.
Due to non-destructive editing in Lightroom, we can fearlessly apply filters and effects to our images because the original image remains protected.
It also offers many other powerful tools for basic editing, like cropping, resizing, and adjusting color, contrast, brightness, and saturation.
Key Features of Darktable
Darktable is not available for mobile devices. We can run it on Linux distributions, macOS, Solaris, and Windows.
Similar to Lightroom, it also offers tools for basic editing, including crop, rotate, exposure control, tone mapping, color transfer, denoise, watermark framing, highlight reconstruction, spot removal, and more.
It allows us to import a wide range of standard, raw, and high dynamic range images, including JPEG, CR2, NEF, RAF, and more.
As discussed in Lightroom, we can also sort images from a collection by using tags, color labels, and metadata.
It also performs the editing process non-destructively so the original image does not go under modification.
Unlike many other photo editing software that adjusts the white balance within an image by using traditional temperature, in Darktable, we can explicitly define the color of the light source. We can give a robust look to our photograph by using its color calibration module.
Lenses in Darktable can cause distortion, vignetting, and chromatic aberrations in the image, but these issues can be resolved using the lens correction module.
It offers a number of modules for adjusting the local contrast and sharpness, including contrast equalizer, local contrast, disuse or sharpening, and more.
Darktable vs Lightroom: Pros and Cons
We can’t make our selection easier just by examining the key features of Darktable and Lightroom. So it’s compulsory to have a look at some pros and cons of both these fantastic photo editing programs to make our choice perfect. Let’s discuss their pros and cons:
Pros & Cons of Lightroom
Pors
The built-in catalog system
Highly useful features for editing images in a large number of formats
Syncing option with other devices and photo editing softwares
Batch editing is great for editing hundreds of images quickly
Not enough elements for graphic designing
Cons
Has limited image manipulation tools
Lack of local printing opportunity
Elements for graphic designing are limited
Blend mode is not available
Pros & Cons of Darktable
Pors
Support RAW processing by giving full control to user
Offers built-in modules for print, slide show, and tethering
Have good catalog system
Non-destructive editing is available
Have all basic tools for image enhancement
Cons
Lagging issue on some computers
Mobile version is not available
Less stronger for managing shadow details
Frequently Asked Questions
Darktable is only available for Windows, Linux, and Mac, and its app version is not available on the Play Store or App Store. That’s why you can’t use it on your Android or iPhone devices.
Darktable is an open-source program because users can make certain modifications to it according to their editing requirements.
Yes, both Darktable and Lightroom are safe to use because they don’t steal the user’s data.
Final Thoughts
If you’re still confused about whether we can use Darktable as an alternative to Lightroom, then yes, you can absolutely do it. In the case of file management and image processing, both have tools with the same capability. Darktable has a rather complex user interface, but one point that makes it a competitor of Lightroom is that it’s an open-source program. Moreover, Darktable is free but has limited features, in contrast to Lightroom, which is paid but has unlimited features in its paid version. Furthermore, if you don’t have a laptop or desktop, you can’t use Darktable for photo editing because its mobile version is not available. In that case, you’re bound to use the Lightroom App, or you can also use the Lightroom Mod APK.