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Darktable, the popular free open-source photography and raw developer application, released new major 5.6.0 version today!<\/p>\n
The new version introduced optional AI sub-system, UI\/UX and performance improvements, as well as many fixes and other changes.<\/p>\n
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The AI sub-system is disabled by default<\/b>. If you build Darktable from source, then you need to configure with Darktable AI preferences<\/p><\/div>\n As you see in the screenshot above, you can one click download & install the following free and open source AI models:<\/p>\n It also supports loading local AI models in After enabled AI feature and downloaded the models, you can then go to darkroom mask manager to trigger either SAM2.1 or SegNext AI model (only one of them can be enabled at the same time). Then, click on an object to generate a precise mask, shift+click to subtract, scroll or Ctrl+scroll to adjust the smoothing or opacity. And, it supports saving the mask as a PNG for external use.<\/p>\n And, go to neural restore module in left side-bar for AI-based raw denoise, denoise, and upscale. Default models are NIND UNet (denoise), RawNIND UtNet2 (raw Besides the new AI features, this version also introduced new color harmonizer<\/b> module with options to apply anchor hue, pull strength and width, protect neutral colors, and apply a Gaussian filter to smooth harsh transitions.<\/p>\n As well, it added support exporting to HEIF image format<\/strong>, lossy or lossless in 8\/10\/12 bit color depths with all supported color subsampling options.<\/p>\n Darktable 5.6.0 also features UI\/UX improvements. It now has a welcome dialog<\/b> allowing to set some configuration options at first launch. It now supports rendering and caching 6K or 8K thumbnail or full-screen preview images in lighttable view. And, the resolution of the darkroom view’s preview-resolution images has been increased from 720×450 to 1440×900.<\/p>\n It also added pinning images directly from the 2nd window, through either drag’n’drop from the the horizontal strip of thumbnails or keyboard shortcut, as well as touchpad gestures to darkroom and lighttable culling layouts, and smartphone-like simultaneous pinch zooming and two-finger panning for Linux and Windows.<\/p>\n Darktable Welcome dialog<\/p><\/div>\n Other changes include:<\/p>\n There are also numerous improvements, bug-fixes, and other changes not mentioned in this post. See the Github release page<\/a> for details.<\/p>\n Darktable provide official installer packages for Linux, Windows, and macOS, which are available to download via the link below:<\/p>\n For Linux on modern Intel\/AMD platform, select download the AppImage, add executable permission from its properties dialog, finally run to launch the photography software. Though, Ubuntu since 22.04 needs to install For Ubuntu user who prefer native The AI feature in PPA package is only available for Ubuntu 26.04, while the package for Ubuntu 24.04 is on its way.<\/b><\/p>\n To add the PPA and install Darktable, open terminal (Ctrl+Alt+T) and run the commands below one by one:<\/p>\n-DUSE_AI=ON<\/code> option. After that, you may go to AI preferences tab to enable and download AI models.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/ubuntuhandbook.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/darktale-aidownload.webp\")
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.dtmodel<\/code> format. And, it has out-of-the-box support for using CPU hardware acceleration for AI inference, while GPU is also supported, though needs manual setup and external ONNX Runtime library in Linux.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\n
\ndenoise), and RealPLKSR 2x\/4x (super-resolution), and all runs on the ONNX backend. While, additional models are available in the model repository and can be
\ninstalled manually.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n<\/p>\n\n
--library <path><\/code> command-line option.<\/li>\nHow to Install Darktable 5.6.0<\/h3>\n
\nDownload Darktable<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\nlibfuse2<\/code> package for AppImage support.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n.deb<\/code> package, keep an eye on this OBS repository<\/a> (not updated at the moment of writing), or use the unofficial PPA<\/a> so far supports Ubuntu 22.04, Ubuntu 24.04, and Ubuntu 26.04.<\/p>\nsudo add-apt-repository ppa:ubuntuhandbook1\/darktable\r\nsudo apt update\r\nsudo apt install darktable<\/pre>\n