Clarity in darktable

[s7habo (Boris Hajdukovic)]

@paperdigits

I haven’t noticed flat highlights from filmic. Most of my raw files are quite flat to begin with, but I feel I’ve had no problems using exposure + filmic to get the image overall to a good point.

I see now, I must actually correct myself. It’s not just about local contrast in highlights, but how the rest of the dynamic range and colors are affected. Let me demonstrate this with an example.

Here you can see a section of a wall of a house after the usual processing with exposure, filmic and contrast correction with color balance modules:

The image looks a little “washed out”; local contrast is very low and the image looks a little " hazey" (this can be seen very well on the window glasses, which have a white layer as if they had a very fine layer of dust)

If I now use the local contrast module to highlight details and darken windows, I get this HDRish look:

But if I just boost the local contrast in the midrange…

…and add a multiply blend mode, I get a visually pleasing result:

Please note the colors and brightness on the roof, walls and windows. Now you can see the flower relief on the wall even better, because it not only differs in contrast in brightness but also discreetly in color.

If I now increase the detail slider in the Local Contrast module, I get even more local contrasts in the picture without it looking very unnatural:

Actually I try to achieve something similar to what @heckflosse does in his thread here:

Call for example raw files

Sometimes I use an old lens which in some situations has low contrast caused by internal reflections and probably old coating. For this reason I’m currently experimenting to improve the results using a very simple method on raw data. If someone has raw files shot using low contrast lenses like for example the one from first screenshot, I would be glad to get some raw files to test. Here are first results. Left without, right with the new very simple method. First screenshot was made using the…

@Bbawt

The images you posted all have two instances of the module. Did you use the default settings for the first instance?

No. I’m still experimenting with the best way to combine this.

@RawConvert

You said at the start this was about highlights and I noticed this slider is at zero, which struck me as odd. Playing with this value, it seems to make little or no local difference to the snow to my eyes. And similarly with normal blending.

That was actually my mistake. It’s still about the highlights, but the other areas have to be influenced as well. I believe multiplication blend mode eliminates the changes that can be made with the highlights slider.