darktable 0.9.3 released with faster processing
Alexandre 
8. Nov, 2011
10 Opinions
The somewhat belated update to stable version of darktable, a digital photography tool for Linux and Mac, is out with fixes for all kinds of issues and, most notably, considerably faster processing of photos during editing and exporting.
I'm talking about an overall 2x speed-up. Most work on boosting darktable's performance was done by Rostyslav Pidgornyi, Bruce Guenter and Edouard Gomez. Rostyslav kindly provided an extended explanation:
Most impressive changes were done thanks to reorganization of calculations: precalculation, simplification of equations and so on. Using SSE alone provided a 10-40% boost; however in some cases using SSE turned out to be counterproductive, so we reverted the related changes.
The "cheapest" optimization was the removal of excessive conversions between floats and doubles. For instance, this has led to a 2x speedup in the graduated neutral density filter (which got even more optimizations).
Here is some raw data on speed-ups:
- input color profile is 40% faster;
- output color profile is 20% faster;
- white balance is 30% faster
- raw denoise is 20% faster;
- graduated neutral density is 10 times faster due to a combination of methods;
- zone system is 3 times faster;
- sharpen is 40% faster;
- color contrast is 35% faster;
- velvia is 4 times faster;
- denoise (nlmeans) is ca. 40% faster;
- equalizer is ca. 40% faster.
Other changes in this version are:
- some new presets in split toning, tone curve, equalizer and color zones plug-ins,
- updated internal copies of LibRaw and Rawspeed;
- various bugfixes.
As usual, both source code and builds in Pascal's PPA for Ubuntu are available. Pascal also released an update to his screencasts library. A dmg for Mac will follow soon.
Most of unstable code written during preparations of the stable 0.9.3 version is in the main development branch now bringing UI improvements, new features and more optimizations. If you feel like an adventurous Ubuntu user, watch for updates in Pascal's unstable PPA.
Are these changes in babl and gegl?
@Tobias
darktable doesn’t have much to do with either of them :)
Good looking APP. Following it for a couple years. Is there a export to GIMP. Just like ufraw.
@Digidio
There isn’t one yet.
Nice. I downloaded the previous version for mac (probably after reading about it on LGW), but it crashed every time I tried to import an image. Hoping that is fixed now, and that I can really try this app out.
@Alexandre
I thought they are using GEGL because it’s an dependency. Now I’d like to see an article about the technical background on LGW. ;)
@LswaN
Yep, there are some acknowledged issues with 0.9.2 build for Mac. I guess a DMG for 0.9.3 will be available soon, but I just don’t know how many of the issues are gone. Sorry about that.
@Tobias
I have something like that in drafts :)
I love this app :)
Finally I’m able to edit my photos on Linux without frustration and waiting for ‘standards’.
My life and my work is now and here, unfortunatelly.
Great job. I just saw the update on my Arch Linux repository. Can’t wait to go home and process my LA trip’s photos.
Great job. I just saw the update on my Arch Linux repository. Can’t wait to go home and process my LA trip’s photos