Darkroom 7.4 for macOS

You just pulled a dozen shots off your camera and dropped them onto the desktop. Darkroom spots them right away — the auto-import grabs the batch and lines them up along the bottom filmstrip before you've even poured your coffee. It feels less like opening software and more like spreading prints across a light table.

Start with a photo that's almost there but a little flat. Tap into the Curves tool. Version 7.4 throws out the old guardrails and lets you yank the line wherever you please — plus five new HSL Curves mean you can push just the blues in a sky without touching the skin tones. Next, pull up the rebuilt White Balance. Hit the auto-correct once and watch a yellow kitchen snap turn neutral. If you shot a portrait, find the blur slider and dial the background down just enough to keep the moment, not the wallpaper.

Video clips play by the same rules. Trim a few seconds off the tail, drop a custom filter you built last week, and export. No switching apps, no timeline panic. And if you're big on sharing, set up a hashtag set once and let a Siri shortcut stamp it onto every export from your phone later — the Mac, iPad, and iPhone versions all talk.

Bottom line: Darkroom gets out of your way and lets you fix a photo in seconds, then print it straight from the Mac without a detour.

Batch-edit five photos before coffee

Let Darkroom pull in your library overnight. When you wake up, pick five recent photos and try the same small edit on all of them — a quarter-stop exposure bump, say. You’ll learn the batch rhythm faster than tapping through one at a time. Save that adjustment as a custom filter before lunch; you’ll reach for it again.

If you print, run a test on plain paper first. Version 7.4’s printing support is new, and a quick 4x6 keeps surprises off the good photo stock. And on a MacBook, pin the filmstrip to the left so the Liquid Glass redesign feels natural under your fingers — the whole window breathes better with a little space.

who fits the room

iCloud Photos users who bounce between a Mac desk and an iPhone in the field get the most mileage here. Edits write directly to the library, so the portrait you tuned on a big screen slides right into your pocket without an export. Photographers who shoot RAW and want a darkroom macos workflow that skips the subscription tangle also settle in fast — Darkroom reads the files straight and lets curve adjustments land wherever you drag them.

Video folks who don’t need a timeline novel find a natural home too. A couple of clips from a booth event, a quick trim and color pass — it’s the kind of Darkroom booth crack that turns around while the memory is still fresh, no heavyweight editor required.

Version 7.4 brings a few things I've been waiting for. Printing finally lands on the Mac, so you can go straight from edit to paper. The Curves tool gets unconstrained editing and five new HSL Curves for picking apart individual colors. White balance got a full rebuild with a solid auto-correction, and the Mac and iPad pick up the Liquid Glass design refresh.

• macOS 15.4 or later
• Works on both Apple Silicon and Intel 64-bit Macs