Yesterday, I wrote about how only the latest versions of darktable support Fujifilm cameras.

In fact, there are many advantages to using the most up-to-date version of darktable besides increased camera support, including new features and bug fixes.

There are two main ways to get the latest version: install from source code, or use a 3rd part repository.

Install darktable from a 3rd party repository

If you are using Ubuntu 14.04 or 15.04 you can add Pascal de Bruijn’s PPA (Personal Package Archive) to your computer’s sources. Open up the terminal, and run the following three lines of code:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:pmjdebruijn/darktable-release

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install darktable

Easy.

Install darktable from source

If installing from source you have the choice of installing the latest stable release, or the latest development version from the Github repository.

For the latest stable release, you want to download the source code (here is the source for version 1.6.8), extract it to whatever folder you want it in, and install by running the installation shell script.

./build.sh

You will need to make sure you have all the dependencies installed, or the install will fail. More info here.

Alternatively you can build the latest code. This is less advisable, although it works fine on my Ubuntu work machine. However, this is the machine that I use for development rather than serious image editing. In my opinion you’re better off sticking with the latest stable release to avoid bugs that could cause you to lose an important photo.

If that doesn’t bother you then you should clone the Git repository and install from that:

git clone https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable.git
cd darktable
./build.sh
cd build
sudo make install

You should now be able to run darktable from the command-line:

darktable

If you had darktable installed from a repository, you should probably uninstall it before you install from source.

There are very good installation guides on the darktable website.

Want to know when the next version of darktable is released? Get the latest updates delivered straight to your inbox: