Not sure it will help. Do not shot RAW+jpeg or do not look to the jpeg. The camera embedded algorithm is not darktable and inevitably you’ll get two different rendering. Open your RAW in Lr or any other software and you’ll have more different results. Which one is giving better result? Not sure. If you want to stick to the “reality” you’ll need to profile your camera and this will give you a style to apply (tone curve + color checker).
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The camera JPG has a proprietary look to differentiate the manufacturer from its competitors. While it isn’t impossible to emulate the exact appearance, the real question is, as a photographer / artist, would you want someone else to dictate how your images turn out? Personally, I would rather go with my own style and tastes.
That said, RawTherapee does have an auto-matched curve, which makes adjustments to match the embedded preview, which I would say gives you an excellent starting point to your workflow.
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Great idea. This is not a great shot, but I have many night shots containing contrast like this and just want to make them as smooth as possible.
DSC09850.ARW (23.9 MB)
Hi @Anderl. Here is one attempt with RT 5.5. Let me know if the colors are all right.
DSC09850.jpg.out.pp3 (12.4 KB)
Then a bit of GIMP to lighten the food and darken the table cloth.
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1)darktable : I can’t really recover the highlights
DSC09850.ARW.xmp (8.8 KB)
2)Rawtherapee: blend mode for the highlights recovery, I think it’s too much orange
DSC09850.ARW.pp3 (11.8 KB)
3)rawtherapee with “hack”: same as before but I’ve exported as 32bit float and opened in darktable
rawtherapee with “hack”: same as before but I’ve exported as 32bit float and opened in darktable
Nice idea!
Could that be considered as cross processing?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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Here is my try with RT 5.5
DxO
I have two questions:
- Why did you published an edit from DxO in a thread that’s supposed to help the author do a better edit in Darktable or, eventually, another free, open source software?
- Why did you choose your username as DxO-user?
- When joining this forum ( a few days ago ) i did it because there was an “noise reduction” thread , and I wanted to show what DxO is capable of. RT has improved a lot with Noise reduction , but I feel there still is room for improvement.
Outside this forum like in Dpreview/forum there is a wide acceptance that DxO PRIME NR is the industry standard when it come to nr.
Have been following this forum for a long time ( years )
There have been many thread about shadow/ highlight recovery.
For a long time darktable/RT has been light years behind Lightroom ( which has been the industry standard).
Some users have posted editing done with Lightroom/ACR - just to show what can be done.
Maybe this has pushed RT to drastically improve shadow/highlight recovery ( which I feel they have done).
If it is against the forum rules to post images edited with other RAW editor than free/open source , I will stop doing that.
- Have been using Lightroom for years. After going subscription I moved to DxO ( number two reason for that is PRIME )
Even though i like RT 5.5 a lot - DxO is still my primary RAW editor. Thats why I have username DxO-user
I didn’t see any explicit rule in that direction, and sometimes posting edits from commercial software adds value to the discussion, like the noise reduction thread you’ve mentioned.
But it doesn’t make sense to me posting DxO edits all the time, when there is no particular reason.
But I’m relatively new here at the forum, and maybe I’m being too radical.
Honestly, the impression I get is that you’re trying to prove how better DxO is from other free software. But, again, I’m probably wrong, and if I am, I apologize in advance.
There is no explicit rule and you’ve hit the nail on the head, it is surely welcome where it adds value. Where it adds value is extremely subjective 
@DxO-user seems to be posting in good faith and had said s/he is trying to learn RawTherapee.
I don’t get that impression at all.
We mostly shy away from posting proprietary software renderings of our images because (1) not everyone has access to proprietary software and (2) we are explicitly for free software. In addition, there are a multitude of other places to share proprietary edited images. We stared this forum specifically because of the lack of places for people to congregate around free software for photographers.
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@DxO-user has been using RT and engaging in a meaningful manner so I think all is well. We all come from somewhere, so I wouldn’t put it against people whose frame of reference is proprietary apps. Heck, I use Windows and allow others and myself to poke fun at that.
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Apology accepted.
Happy New Year to all in this forum 
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Hi Anderl,
I agree with the base curve to be a bit ‘difficult’ with high dynamic lighting. Therefore I built a tone curve, from which I start editing my images.
I adjusted the darker tones a bit and shifted the temperature of the lights to match the JPG’s warmer tone. I also lifted the shadows a bit with the shadows/highlights module.
Compared to the JPG there’s more detail in the highlights, while the blues being darker and more reddish than in the JPG (at least on my non-calibrated monitor, so you might have to reset the colour zone module).
What do you think?
DSC09850.ARW.xmp (5.3 KB)
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Here’s a couple of tries at it using DT 2.6.0, one with highlight recovery and one without. Both use filmic. @Anderl, I left the history stacks uncompressed so that you can see the steps I took to arrive at the result. One note: when I used filmic I used the dropper by the middle gray luminance, then adjusted it to get the look I wanted.DSC09850.ARW.xmp (6.2 KB)
DSC09850_01.ARW.xmp (6.3 KB)
Bill
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A6000 images in DT are a pain. Never managed to entirely resolve it. What seems to help me: forget the alpha like base curve, just use neutral. Do not use the standard color profile, create one or use. For some reason the whitebalance tends to be a bit greenish, I usually shift a6000 images a bit to purple.
Applying that at least results in a decent (if not great) result:
DSC09850.ARW.xmp (9.7 KB)
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Sorry guys, I was off a few days and I’m quite impressed by all those great processings. Give me a few days next weekend and I will give all of them a try. 
