lighttable modes on darktable 5.6 user manual

filemanager

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

In the default mode images are displayed in a grid with an adjustable number of images per row.

🔗controls

zoom: The number of images in each row can be altered using the numeric input in the bottom panel, or by holding Ctrl while scrolling over the center view with your mouse.
navigate: You can navigate through the images using the arrow keys (←/→/↑/↓) or by scrolling with your mouse. Press the Home key to scroll to the top of the collection, the End key to scroll to the bottom, and PageUp/PageDown to scroll up/down by a page.
select: You can select the image under the pointer by clicking on its thumbnail or by pressing Enter. To select a range of images, click on the first image and then Shift+click on the last one. To add or remove images in a selection, Ctrl+click on a thumbnail or hover over a thumbnail and press Spacebar.
hover: When the pointer hovers over any image’s thumbnail, it is highlighted and its image implicitly selected for keyboard shortcuts. If that thumbnail is part of a currently-selected set, certain shortcuts will be applied to all images of the set (for example, a numeric digit star rating).
drag: You can drag a thumbnail (along with any selected set to which it may belong) to set its custom sort position just before or after the image it’s dropped upon.

zoomable lighttable

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The zoomable lighttable mode provides an alternative way to navigate large collections of images, but with some similarities to the filemanager mode (described below).

🔗controls

zoom: Scroll with the mouse wheel to zoom in and out of the lighttable (compared to Ctrl+scroll in filemanager mode).; Zooming the thumbnails does not change the number of thumbnails per row, so the lighttable can exceed the visible area on all sides.
navigate: Hold down the left mouse button and drag to move the lighttable around and navigate through your collection.
select: As with the filemanager mode, you can select the image under the pointer by clicking on its thumbnail or by pressing Enter. To select a range of images, click on the first image and then Shift+click on the last one. To add or remove images in a selection, Ctrl+click on a thumbnail or hover over a thumbnail and press Spacebar.
hover: Hovering over a thumbnail highlights and impicitly selects it for keyboard shortcuts as in filemanager mode. However, dragging pans the entire thumbnail display, so you cannot change images’ custom sort order in this mode.

Hint: you may find that image thumbnails are slow to load when zooming quickly through a large collection. One way to speed up the navigation is to generate a cache containing all the thumbnails using the darktable-generate-cache command.

culling

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Culling mode allows you to display images side by side for easy comparison.

Thumbnail overlays can be controlled by selecting the star icon in the top panel and changing the “culling overlays” setting. If “no overlays” is selected, then the overlay can be shown on-demand by pressing the “I” key.

🔗controls

zoom: In culling mode, you can zoom into images (up to 100%) by holding Ctrl while scrolling with the mouse wheel.; Pan within zoomed images with click+drag.; By default, zooming and panning are synchronized between all visible images. If you want to zoom or pan only a specific image, add the Shift modifier to the above actions.
navigate: Use the mouse wheel or arrow keys (←/→) to scroll through your collection.

🔗modes

There are two different culling modes, which define how many images are shown at the same time: “fixed” and “dynamic”. Switch between these while in culling mode by pressing the “<” key.

full preview

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

From any of the lighttable modes, you can display a fully-zoomed preview of the image that is currently under the mouse pointer by pressing and holding down W. This is useful to more closely inspect an image while rating and selecting images.

Pressing and holding Ctrl+W fully zooms into the image and also identifies any regions of sharpness in the image that may indicate image focus. For this tool to work the input image needs to hold an embedded JPEG thumbnail, which is the case for most raw files.