I just tag as a go (or forget to) and live with a certain degree of chaos that comes from six years learning to use Darktable while using it to solve the tasks at hand.īasically a Darktable collection is a set of search criteria. Some people want a grand hierarchy beforehand. Tagging of course is a whole different can of worms. With recent versions of Darktable I can even narrow further by lens or date modified or aperture, etc. If I am only interested in New Mexico pictures from 2018, I can narrow the search by date.

If “New Mexico” is a useful collection, I can save it as a preset for easy access.

I can collect all my pictures tagged “New Mexico” on the light table if I select pictures by tag instead of by film roll. And pictures can belong to multiple collections.įor me, tags are the most useful way of creating collections across multiple film rolls and date ranges are the second most useful. But a collection can be any of the other options or a combination of filters.

The most common filter is “film roll” which by default is equivalent to an operating system’s file directory/folder. In Darktable, a collection is a set of filters.

Darktable import from virtual drive