January 27, 2026
What is it about?
Every lens has physical weaknesses. Wide-angle lenses often distort the image in a barrel shape (vertical lines slope outwards), telephoto lenses in a pincushion (vertical lines slope inwards) shape. In addition, almost all lenses are slightly darker in the corners than in the center (vignetting). This module corrects these errors automatically.
How does it work?
Darktable relies on a huge database (Lensfun) of lenses. It reads exactly which camera and lens you used from the metadata of your photo and applies the appropriate correction profile.
The three corrections:
- Distortion: Makes crooked lines straight again.
- TCA (Transversal Chromatic Aberration): Another method against color fringes (see (RAW) Chromatic Aberrations).
- Vignetting: Brightens the dark corners.
How to apply it:
Simply turn it on! In most cases, darktable automatically detects your equipment and the image immediately “jumps” into the correct shape.
Tip:
If you consciously want to keep the “look” of an old lens (e.g., the dark corners), you can deactivate individual corrections (e.g., only “Vignetting”) in the module.
For more information, view darktable’s official manual page: “lens correction”.
Questions about this topic? Discuss it with us in the darktable.info forum!