PART 1

What developing is and why RAW

Since day 1 the camera has been saving RAW+JPEG. The JPEG is the photo as "cooked" by the camera; the RAW (.ARW on Sony) is the digital negative with all the information from the sensor.

RAW vs JPEG in 30 seconds CONCEPT

The RAW keeps several extra stops of information in the highlights and shadows. A sky that is blown out forever in the JPEG can often be recovered from the RAW. That's why we develop: to decide for ourselves what to do with all that information.

Installing Darktable FREE · WIN / MAC / LINUX

Darktable is free, open-source software — no subscriptions, no watermarks. It's the open equivalent of Lightroom.

Download from darktable.org (install button). Standard "next, next" installation. The interface language can be changed anytime under preferences → general → interface language.

Darktable has two rooms (tabs at the top right): the lighttable for organising and choosing photos, and the darkroom for developing the open photo. All your work moves between the two.

Import and choose LIGHTTABLE

Copy the RAW files from the card to a folder on the computer organised by date (e.g. 2026-06-walk). In Darktable: left panel → import → add to library and select the folder. Darktable never touches the original files: every change is reversible.

Go through the thumbnails and rate them with keys 0–5: the ones worth developing get 3 stars or more. Then filter at the top by ★3+ and work on those only. Same discipline as the 36-shot roll: you develop the best ones, not all of them.

PART 2

The 5-module workflow

Double-click a photo to enter the darkroom. The modules are in the right panel. These five, in this order, solve 90% of photos. Time per photo at the start: ~5 minutes.

1 · Crop and rotate MODULES: ROTATE AND PERSPECTIVE / CROP

Composition first: there's no point adjusting the color of areas you're about to throw away.

Straighten the horizon (in "rotate and perspective", right-click and drag a line along the horizon and it levels itself) and crop what's left over. The thirds grid appears automatically while cropping.

2 · Exposure MODULE: EXPOSURE

Only one slider matters: exposure. Move it until the midtones (faces, ground) look right, ignoring for now whether the sky blows out. Corrections between −1 and +1 EV are typical. The histogram at the top is your guide, just like on the camera.

3 · Highlights and shadows MODULE: FILMIC RGB (OR SIGMOID)

Darktable's star module: it compresses the RAW's range down to your screen's, deciding what happens to the almost-blown highlights and the almost-black shadows.

In the filmic module's scene tab: the white relative exposure slider recovers highlights (lower it if the sky is blown) and black relative exposure opens up shadows (raise it if they're crushed). Small touches: if the photo starts to look "washed out", you've gone too far.

4 · Color MODULES: WHITE BALANCE · COLOR BALANCE RGB

White balance: if the photo looks unintentionally blueish or orange, move the temperature slider until the whites are white. Trick: if there's something neutral grey in the photo, click the eyedropper and then that area.

Color balance rgb: to bring photos to life, raise global chroma or global vibrance by 5-15%. The sensible rule: when the colors start to shout, step back two points.

5 · Lens correction and noise MODULES: LENS CORRECTION · DENOISE (PROFILED)

Lens correction: just switch it on — it detects the 16-50 mm from the metadata and automatically corrects its distortion and vignetting, both quite noticeable on this lens. Essential for shots at 16 mm with straight lines in them.

Denoise (profiled): only for photos at ISO 1600 or above. Switching the module on with its defaults is usually enough — it knows the a6000's noise profile.

PART 3

Export and share

Your develop lives inside Darktable until you export it to JPEG.

Export to JPEG LIGHTTABLE → EXPORT

Go back to the lighttable, select the developed photos and in the right panel → export. Starting settings that work:

Setting	For sharing / social	For printing / archive
Format	JPEG · quality 90	JPEG · quality 97
Max size	2048 px long edge	0 (full size)
Destination	Subfolder $(FILE_FOLDER)/developed — stays next to the RAW files

Mission of the week: develop the 5 best photos from the 36-shot roll from start to finish following the 5 modules in order, and compare each developed JPEG with the JPEG the camera produced. If your own develop wins in at least 3 out of 5: goal achieved.