Software Alternatives & Reviews

digiKam VS Darktable

Compare digiKam VS Darktable and see what are their differences

digiKam logo digiKam

Professional Photo Management with the Power of Open Source

Darktable logo Darktable

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer.
  • digiKam Landing page
    Landing page //
    2018-09-30

digiKam is an advanced open-source digital photo management application that runs on Linux, Windows, and MacOS. The application provides a comprehensive set of tools for importing, managing, editing, and sharing photos and raw files.

  • Darktable Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-10-18

digiKam videos

The Power of DigiKam (Wow Factor)

More videos:

  • Tutorial - How to Organize your Pictures with Digikam (intro tutorial)
  • Tutorial - How To Organize Photos On Linux With Digikam

Darktable videos

Free Lightroom Alternative: Darktable Review

More videos:

  • Review - darktable 3.0 How Good is it in comparison to other editing programs?
  • Review - Lightroom vs Darktable - the Key Difference ? 2019

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to digiKam and Darktable)
Photos & Graphics
79 79%
21% 21
Graphic Design Software
0 0%
100% 100
Image Editing
56 56%
44% 44
Photo Editing
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare digiKam and Darktable

digiKam Reviews

15 Best Google Picasa Alternatives You Should Use (2022)
Apart from the popular image formats like JPEG and PNG, DigiKam can also handle RAW files, making editing and processing of the image smooth. Then there are some great features like facial recognition, smart categorization, geo-tagging, and slideshow creator that just come for free. So make sure to give this one a try.
Source: techdator.net
10 Best Google Picasa Alternatives You Should Use
DigiKam is another powerful photo management software that is free and open-source. It’s available on Windows, macOS, and Linux so that is great. The software is generally used by professionals to organize all their digital media assets, but I would recommend it to everyone looking for a capable Picasa alternative. DigiKam can easily handle large bulk of images (more than...
Source: beebom.com
13 Free Alternatives Image and Photo Organizer For Microsoft Windows 10
digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application for Linux, Windows, and Mac-OSX. The people who inspired digiKam’s design are the photographers like you who want to view, manage, edit, enhance, organize, tag, and share photographs under Linux systems. digiKam is an advanced digital photo management application, which makes importing and organizing digital photos...
5 Best Linux Photo Management Software
digiKam is mainly developed for KDE, but works just as well on other desktop environments. It comes with a lot of features with an interface that works nicely. The main features of digiKam includes:
Source: itsfoss.com

Darktable Reviews

Our 6 Favorite Free Photoshop Alternatives (2022 Update)
Darktable is a free, open-source photo editing software that is used by photographers and editors and is a wonderful alternative to the likes of Photoshop and Lightroom.
5 Best Linux Photo Management Software
Darktable is more of a photo editing application than an organizer. Darktable stands out for its own user interface regardless of the desktop environment you might be using, and of course for its editing capabilities. The basic features include:
Source: itsfoss.com

Social recommendations and mentions

digiKam might be a bit more popular than Darktable. We know about 9 links to it since March 2021 and only 8 links to Darktable. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

digiKam mentions (9)

  • How to tag and store pictures downloaded from the internet?
    Digikam seems ideal for this https://digikam.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • What are your favorite methodologies for organizing digital life
    I have all of my photos (with the exception of smartphone photos... ugh) in a nicely constructed set of folders \photos\yyyy\yyyymmmdd\ then the folder made by the camera, etc. I've got a small python script to generate the folders. I use Digikam[1] to do facial recognition and tagging on them. It's finally gotten to the point where it doesn't crash all the time writing metadata, and the facial recognition is... - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
  • are there any free self-hosted DAMs like Adobe Experience Manager [AEM]?
    I use digikam for my own personal library. I’m not sure if it’s able to be run from a server, but I know you can hook up a NAS to it to manage it. Can tag photos, rank, organize, etc. Source: about 1 year ago
  • Looking for a simple Photo manager/DAM for not photos advice?
    Check out digiKam. It has photo editing tools as well, but the main focus is photo management. Also it is free and open source. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Looking for a way to tag my photo collection with keywords
    But with that many photos, I'd suggest a more fully featured digital asset management (DAM) program. Lightroom (paid), DigiKam, or DarkTable (both free) are good choices. PhoTool's IMatch (paid) also uses exiftool and is extremely powerful with regards to metadata. Source: about 2 years ago
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Darktable mentions (8)

  • Photomator for Mac
    I'm pretty new to photography. I understand a lot of the basics (ex-wife shot as a professional hobbyist for a few years) but never really paid much attention to her editing workflow. Adobe already gets me for $20/mo for Illustrator (because designers) and I looked at alternatives. I've been using darktable http://darktable.org since I got my camera about a month ago and it's nice enough for me. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Nudibranch (Nembrotha cristata), Verde Island, Philippines, April 2023
    Thank you! The shot was gently edited in darktable. More TG-5 / single strobe examples here. Source: almost 1 year ago
  • I've seen it with Adobe
    No, unfortunately not. But check out the free Darktable app which is similar on darktable.org and also this list https://petapixel.com/best-free-raw-editing-programs/. Source: over 1 year ago
  • Exporting a RAW file. Is it possible without the format changing? If I export to another folder on my mac it becomes a .jpeg, to Lightroom it becomes a .jpg, to Photoshop it becomes a .tiff. I want to be able to edit the RAW file, a .dng in another app that is not Apple proprietary.
    It sounds like you might want non-destructive editing. Look at something like darktable.org or Lightroom. You can edit your RAW files in multiple different ways, i.e., effectively keeping multiple copies of edited RAW files around. Source: almost 2 years ago
  • Software to edit and enhance Photos (JPG and RAW).
    If you're looking to learn more complicated software without having to rent it while you do, there's Darktable. Rawtherapee is another app in the same category, and usually appeals to people who don't like Darktable's interface. Source: about 2 years ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing digiKam and Darktable, you can also consider the following products

XnView MP - XnView is a free software that allows you to view, resize and edit your images. It supports more than 500 different formats!

GIMP - GIMP is a multiplatform photo manipulation tool.

ACDSee Photo Studio - ACDSee becomes ACDSee Photo Studio — ACDSee Photo Studio Standard 2018 continues the ACDSee legacy

Adobe Photoshop - Adobe Photoshop is a webtop application for editing images and photos online.

FastStone Image Viewer - FastStone Image Viewer is a fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor.

Affinity Photo - Affinity is the imaging and design suite for creative professionals exclusively for Mac.