Wonderful shot! I don’t know about the original colors, so I played a little with the image and did some color grading to taste.
MJD04337.ARW.xmp (17.2 KB)
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My attempt (darktable 4.5.0~git1108.ff5095cc-1+10846.1), trying to put emphasis with analogue and complementary colors:
MJD04337.ARW.xmp (12.8 KB)
Cool, so I gave things another quick go and attempted to get at least “not worse than ooc jpg” colors, even if the ooc jpg tastes for contrast/saturation differ and I’m not sure how to feel about them yet. I just checked the color balance rgb doc and saw " This module is not suitable for beginners with no prior knowledge of color theory, who might want to stick to the global chroma and global vibrance settings until they have a good understanding of the dimensions of color." and maybe this is where I keep getting stuck or into very weird colors. I had seen a bunch of tutorials basically stating to manage: white balance, the exposure, and then global vibrance/global chroma, then go into filmic. In this quick attempt, I tried using the 4-way tab without any understanding and at least it didn’t make things markedly worse or anything. I also applied tone masks to the leg/eye highlights to knock down the brightness a tiny bit while raising the exposure elsewhere.
I understand near 0 about color and the editing process, but I changed the workflow to sigmoid from filmic as suggested above for this one. I know my biggest hurdle may be how little I know, but It’s been a struggle for me to remember alllllll the pieces of information I’m trying to learn when a lot of it isn’t sticking quite yet, or I don’t understand.
One with haze removal attached, one without. Maybe it’s a bad idea for a module to use here, but sometimes I noticed the haze removal was pleasant at certain depths on the macros I’ve made, and sometimes making them look fake or weird.
I definitely prefer some of the thoughtfully done color renditions above, so I will hopefully try again after reading and looking at what y’all did.
MJD04337.ARW.xmp (20.0 KB)
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hi @Madko in the DT preferences you can set the workflow to sigmoid. I am not knocking filmic, but it is a more demanding tool to use.
In color balance RGB module you don’t need to be a color expert to use the sliders in the master tab. Just explore and you will find it gives you great control over saturation, contrast and I even depend upon it to adjust shadows and midtones brightness. It is one of my go to modules.
I also sometimes use RGB curves to achieve small color tweaks such as adding a little yellow by lowering the blue curve or adding a bit of blue by raising the blue curve.
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This is a lovely photo. I didn’t see a need to make any edits of consequence.
ART 1.18
MJD04337.jpg.out.arp (11.2 KB)
This version is mostly ART’s default settings, but uses the Adobe Standard .DNG camera profile, and has some minor tweaks in Lab, a little bit of local contrast, and small amount of texture boost.
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Couldn’t help myself. Here’s mine in RT
MJD04337.jpg.out.pp3 (15.3 KB)
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MJD04337-1.jpg.out.pp3 (15.4 KB)
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Hi @Madko,
nice shot, i liked the picture. But for me it lagged focus so, is cropped it heavily to make it more interesting to me. Hope you like my intepretation if you pic 
dt 4.5.0+1131~g5aba7e941e
MJD04337.ARW.xmp (14.1 KB)
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A warm welcome 
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I really cannot see any issue here. The colours look fine to me. Here’s my edit using dt 4.4.1. I tweaked the exposure a little with tone equaliser and improved the saturation of the greens with colour balance RGB. I set WB with colour calibration using the bee’s leg to sample a grey point. In all, a very easy edit with little to do.
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