Excellent ideas you captured in your post, and I love the image of the cottage with the thatched roof. Spent a few minutes just looking at it. So in that respect, it caught my eye, which is ultimately the purpose of a great image.
Suggestions for Highlights and Shadows and this may apply also to Mid-Tones
I tend to, as mentioned earlier, think top down, so any changes to be made, the big question will be what’s the scope of the required modification.
All of these “light” related changes, in one way or another will also contribute to contrast, on a larger scope, or a more limited scope, scope being a region of the image, such as shadows or highlights.
The other thing to add, is that over time, I try at first in an image to make small changes, i.e. small changes in different modules, might have a more natural result, than a big change in one module, cos such big changes on some sliders/controls, will likely have an undesired side effect.
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Global changes if needed - across the entire image, I’ll look at exposure module, as the main governor for the dark points and highlights. Exposure determines what gets passed on to the other modules, and is the 1st in the chain, for adjusting “light”.
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Then Filmic using the default setting, and I can adjust white relative exposure and/or black relative exposure, to refine the extremes, which is also a way to modify the contrast. The alternative would be to use the contrast slider, to achieve something similar.
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If a specific region such as Shadows or Highlights needs to be modified, I have found the new color balance rgb module, to be effective if one adjusts the Luminosity for the specific region. i.e Luminosity for Shadows, and Luminosity for Highlights. These two sliders are quite effective, for broad changes that are for just shadows, highlights, and of course there are sliders for “power” which is for adjusting “mid-tones”.
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If more specific adjustment is needed, then - tone-eq is applied. But I must be honest, the tone-eq has its own very specific workflow, and using it requires a lot of reading, a lot, and a lot of experimentation, to decide which kind of mask, best suits your image. , and one has to “calibrate” mask exposure compensation and mask contrast compensation first, before making any changes to the image. i.e Tone-eq, is not one module that we just go and start adjusting sliders, there’s a bit of setup first, with every image, so that it will work better. I can imagine that some who use tone-eq are not aware of the importance of first adjusting and selecting the right mask.
But if well understood, and the workflow for tone-eq is adhered to, then any further refinements for specific areas, to adjust contrast, can be achieved using tone eq, for more detailed changes than what can be achieved with color balance rgb.
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For even more detailed changes of contrast, then the rgb-curve module, enables even more complex adjustments of contrast, cos one can plot lots of points on it. But the more finite and precise one wishes to make changes to contrast, there is the risk of inadvertently destroying the image. rgb-curves, has almost no safety nets, or air bags. With cautious use, it can be a lifesaver.
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Anything more, will most likely have to veer into more advanced edits, using additional instances and/or masks, refine the scope of the change. Apologies cos I cannot remember the image where I used this example below, to attach it, and making up examples does take time.
An example - on an image, I had tried all of the above, to lift shadows, but I was not getting the result I wanted. As a last resort, I added a 2nd instance of the exposure module, with a parametric mask by grey level, therefore affecting only the region I was interested in. And that did the job. Some feathering and mask blur, in the parametric mask, helped to make this change less abrupt, and more natural.
From info I gleaned from another forum member, I’ve also setup three presets for color-balance rgb, which have parametric masks, on highlight, mid-tones, and shadows. So occasionally I might call up three instances set to these presets, to give me even more control over the use of the color-balance eq.
Tool choices - More Control OR More "Image Assistance" built into the Tool?
This debate will never end, of which approach is best. It depends. And sometimes different images may profit from using alternative tools.
When I want a “vintage” digital camera look, like digital cameras from sometime before 2010, kind of like the Canon 5D version 1 image, I just use Lightzone, it has far fewer controls than darktable, but I accept that the tool is doing a little bit more to contribute to the image, than darktable, cos it has its own method of tone mapping, which lends itself to a different kind of look. Its editing tools are basic, so one may then import the image into darktable for further editing, having acquired the “look” in Lightzone. Not a recommended workflow for most images, cos it adds time, to the whole process and needs more organisation.
Over time, darktable becomes like a set of surgeons tools, and over time, we establish our own habits of which tool to use for what, and also which alternatives to try/or complement with, if our 1st choice tool is not as effective as anticipated.
What I like about darktable is - compared to any other tool, I have used, you are 100% in control, if that’s what you want. If we like decisions taken for us, without the tools letting us know or explaining the “intelligence” and colour science behind the scenes, then Adobe tools, Capture One, Luminar and those kinds of editors are the way to go.
Equivalently comparing image editors, compensating in darktable
Unfortunately there is a paradox. Increased dynamic range at first glance, actually looks worse than reduced dynamic range.
The raw file is an example - has plenty of dynamic range, but it looks a bit greyed out and muddy. So all raw processing apps actually reduce the dynamic range to make them look more appealing. Some do this a bit more than others , as part of their “look”.
It took me a while - many months (maybe a year) to understand this. Until recently I was comparing darktable and other tools, at a time when I got pretty frustrated with darktable(because of its steeper learning curve), with new modules like filmic, and color calibration.
One observation was, tools like Capture One, and the OOC Jpeg algorithms in my Sony camera(which I can also emulate accurately via their Sony Imaging Edge software on the computer), tend to add by default, and its almost impossible to disable this - local contrast, and also reduce the dynamic range.
At first, when compared to the typical processed image in darktable, the results of other tools, may look more immediately appealing, but over time, it was more apparent that these other tools actually “distort” the image more, without asking for your permission. They look ok, but not as “clean” and “transparent” as darktable, unless of course you “command” darktable to add similar aggressive changes which it is also quite capable of achieving.
There is a certain “clarity” I find with darktable, which is especially great at preserving dynamic range but the downside is that it does not immediately look as pleasing, when compared side to side., until one adds some local contrast, and a bit more sharpening, or more global contrast to more accurately approximate the “look” of some of these other editors. This is what I call the instagram look, - instant appeal. But you may not want to print such an image on a large piece of paper, cos enlarged, it looks harsh, and two dimensional.
When one compares with other commercial raw processors, the purity of darktable processing, definitely needs a full complement of its modules, like local contrast, to match up.
Without this, one can be convinced to think that the commercial apps achieve a better result, but the truth is they are doing some extra “intelligence” which is not disclosed, which we now have to add in darktable - manually.
An example of this is discussed here