Note: If you only take JPG pictures with your digital camera, Darktable is not for you! You should look into GIMP. Select the folder in which you have stored the RAW files of your digital camera. You can do this for many photos at once by clicking on ‘folder’ in the left sidebar in the ‘import’ section. When the program is opened, you need to load a photo collection. Therefore I like to present the absolute basics of photo editing with Darktable. For many people, getting started can be daunting.

The negative is kept, and the photo (the positive) is developed from the negative. I like to compare it to developing a photo. Darktable is aimed at non-destructive photo editing. It can be used to change photos in many ways, including cutting things out of the picture or pasting things into the picture. GIMP is aimed at destructive (the image is changed when saved) photo editing. In the Free and Open Source world, there are 2 amazing alternatives: GIMP and Darktable. If you use it for photo management (and leave all your images in Darktable between sessions) then this would need to be adapted.When I was starting in the world of amateur digital photography, I learned about 2 software programs that everybody was using: Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Lightroom. I should point out that I work in batches of photos with Darktable, adding the folder to work on and then clearing all images out of Darktable after editing. This is a bit tedious and prone to human error, but I just tested it with a small group of photos and it worked as expected. Back to the collect images tab on the right, double-click on 'altered' to display only the edited JPEGs, select them all, then switch the file format back to JPEG in the export selected module.Use this to simply copy the unaltered images to the destination directory. In the export selected module on the right, select 'copy' from the file format menu.

Click once on any thumbnail then press Ctrl + A to select all thumbnails.

Darktable should now be displaying only unaltered images in the main lighttable view of thumbnails.

In the collect images module on the left, select 'history' from the dropdown, then double-click on 'not altered'.

Switch to the lighttable view (top right).

Import and selectively edit your JPEGs as before.

I don't have an easy answer but I do have a workaround which might help.

Darktable export