Darkroom 4.1: Photos and Share extensions, Files app support, drag and drop & much more

Darkroom, one of the best iOS photo editors with RAW support and a gorgeous darkened user interface, was updated today with a new extension for the Photos app, support for the Files app, the ability to drag and drop images from other apps and other improvements.

Photos extension

You can now edit images with Darkroom right within the context of the stock Apple Photos app. Just select an image in Photos, tap Edit, then hit the three-dotted button to access your extensions. All the edits made in the extension are available for you in Darkroom itself.

Before you can use the extension for the first time, you must enable it manually: tap More at the rightmost side of the menu, then enable the Darkroom extension (and re-order it in the list if you like). This extension works with your Live Photos as well.

Share extension

Darkroom 4.1 sports a new Share menu extension that makes it easy to hand over your photos from the Photos directly to Darkroom for convenient editing, without creating duplicates. All the changes made in Darkroom are automatically saved in your Photos library.

To get started, choose an image in Photos, tap the Share menu and choose Edit in Darkroom (if you don’t see that option, scroll the top row of icons to get to the icon labeled with the text More, then tap it to manually enable the Edit in Darkroom extension).

Files app support

Darkroom now supports Apple’s Files app and other storage apps like Dropbox, which simplifies the process of importing an external photo into Darkroom for further editing. Simply select an image in the Files app, Dropbox or any other app, then tap the system-wide Share menu and choose a new Copy to Darkroom button.

If you don’t see the button, enable it manually right from the Share sheet: scroll all the way to the right, then tap More button and turn on Darkroom in the list. You can also re-order the list to your liking in order to make Darkroom accessible as one of the first items in the list.

Enhanced Darkroom browser

The in-app browser has been enhanced, according to a blog post:

The Album Picker gains the ability to launch the native Files app within Darkroom. You can find the new Open button right next to the new Imported smart album.

What’s particularly handy is that the Files app integrates with many third-party storage services which gives you an incredible convenient way to import assets from places like Dropbox right within the app.

I especially like a new Imported smart album (really, what took them so long?) that let you see all the photos imported into the app in one place, in the order you imported the items.

Location information is now stripped from your exported photos by default:

Darkroom has long added a setting to disable the location information when exporting photos. In this update we have decided to enable the feature by default in order to protect your privacy further. This can be changed from Settings. We got your back.

Other tidbits and enhancements in Darkroom 4.1 include a button for quick switching to Date Modified and Date Created, the removal of the Hide Screenshots setting in favor of the Screenshots smart album in the album picker, the new default sorting of the All Photos smart album by Date Added, improvements to the Batch feature (hold a photo to get to its action menu which lets you copy edits and paste them in place) and other perks.

For the full list of everything new and fixed in Darkroom 4.1, visit their updates page.

All told, there are now six ways of starting a photo editing session in Darkroom: the Photos extension, the Share extension, the Files app, drag and drop on iPad, the Copy to Darkroom action and the in-app album picker.

Darkroom is a free download from App Store.