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The Problem: Why Darktable Exports Look Wrong on Instagram

You’ve spent time tweaking your image in Darktable — colour grading, a Classic Chrome simulation, careful exposure work — and then you export and upload to Instagram. And it looks terrible. Washed out, wrong colours, nothing like what you saw on screen.

This is one of the most common frustrations for photographers migrating from Lightroom, and the fix is simple once you understand what’s happening.

The Root Cause: Colour Space

Colour space defines how your image’s colours are interpreted and displayed. Different devices and platforms handle different colour spaces:

  • Your screen can display a wide range of colours
  • Your raw file (Fujifilm, Nikon, etc.) comes in as Rec. 2020 — a very wide colour space
  • Darktable’s default output is sRGB
  • Instagram only accepts sRGB — full stop

Lightroom hides this from you and exports sRGB silently. Darktable gives you full control — which means you need to set it correctly yourself. Do it once, save a preset, and you never think about it again.

If you export in Adobe RGB or any other wide colour space, Instagram will misinterpret the colours. Sometimes it’s subtle, sometimes it’s dramatic — but it’s never what you intended.

The Correct Export Settings for Instagram

Open the Export module on the left panel in Darkroom. Here’s exactly what to set:

Format: JPEG Quality: 90 — produces files around 4-5MB, the sweet spot before Instagram starts recompressing aggressively

Size: Set the width yourself — do not leave it to Instagram. Instagram’s maximum width is 1080px for all formats:

  • Portrait: 1080px wide
  • Square: 1080 × 1080px
  • Landscape: 1080px wide

This is critical: if you export larger, Instagram resamples the image in ways you can’t control. Take control yourself and set 1080px.

Output colour profile: sRGB — always, explicitly. Do not use “image settings” — this can change if you switch cameras or open a file from a friend, and you’ll export the wrong colour space without realising it.

Intent: Perceptual — this tells Darktable how to handle any colours that fall outside sRGB. Perceptual compresses them gracefully rather than clipping them hard.

Style: Leave empty unless you want to apply a watermark on every export (covered in a future video).

Save It as a Preset

Once you’ve configured these settings, save them as a preset so you never have to think about it again:

  1. Click the preset icon in the Export module
  2. Choose Store new preset
  3. Name it Instagram Portrait (or Instagram Square for a 1080×1080 version)
  4. Click OK

Next time, one click and you’re done.

Quick Reference

Setting Value
Format JPEG
Quality 90
Max width 1080px
Colour profile sRGB
Intent Perceptual
Style None

A printable PDF version of this reference is available for free download.