I saw lots of topics on this and tried a lot of different settings but nothing seemed to work… On some types of photos like the flowers it is better but birds and people (and potatoes haha) are very different. I would like to start printing some photos some day but really getting frustrated.
I am using darktable 4.6.1 on a MacBook Air Monterey 12.7.6, no other display than built in.
I tried:
messing with my display settings
softproof profile settings
experimenting with LUT
using different color profiles in export, used every single one and either it was the same or worse
messing with different color settings in the modules
tried every kind of compatible image type like Tiff, PNG, JPG, etc
Also, I am not a geek or nerd in this stuff, so I need a little extra info to find the tools and understand. So forgive me in advance if I sound stupid and need clarification.
Below are side by sides of darktable on the left and Preview on the right. Also I did try reimporting my exports and they also look very different but not the same. I can do screenshots of those if you need.
Set your hq reprocessing to no in the export…are they a closer match… or if you can maybe try updating to a more current version of DT …I am not a Mac person so the OS doesn’t mean much but if you get to a newer version there is now a preview mode that will closer match the output of the high quality reprocessing… so try setting that to no for now… and I am assuming from the title that this is mostly or all related to using dehaze and if you omit it your problem goes away… issues with the dehaze have been discussed recently … you will find a couple of decent explanations. You can get a similar effect with other modules or try to blend dehaze in lightness mode and see if that helps at least with some images and the color…
This is the highest version I can use with my version of MacOS. I just recently posted about my fiasco of upgrading and having to find the old versions.
I need haze for some of these photos like the bird especially because its through a window. Plus haze really enhances everything and I like what I see, it really changed the way I am editing now. If I can use this feature, it would be amazing.
New export with high quality resample turned to off on top right. Its slightly better but still very different.
Diffuse or sharpen, contrast equalizer, local contrast are all worth a shot.
Post a photo as a PlayRaw, and you’ll get many versions with sidecars you can learn from.
Thanks for the suggestions! I played with those and while I have no idea what I am doing, it seemed to break through the haze quite a bit. The diffuse or sharpen one was too mysterious and made my computer lock up but the contrast equalizer and local did a lot.
Not sure I like the photo yet, but this is significantly better. Here is the result just messing with stuff.
Try the tone curve module and just activate it and blend it in subtract…now take that down to 8 to 10 percent and see how it looks…you can tweak the curve a little too but I don’t bother…also you can use multiply blend mode with exposure and local contrast to give your images that boost that de-haze does…it may not be the same but it might work for you…again you will drop the opacity quite a bit for the right amount
When you post jpg…you should downscale them and set the quality away from 100…Generally a 2K resolution on the long edge at about 80 to 85 percent…Jpgs shoudl be 2-4 Mb ish or less and not 35Mb …just going forward…when you share a raw and the sidecar people can create any resolution they desire and storage space is spared for this forum…
No matter what you do, in the darkroom that module uses a downsized version to calculate some parameters, even if you have the HQ processing mode turned on. As I understand this, at export time, there is no such downsized version available, and it uses the full-sized image, leading to different parameters. This is what we discussed in Github.
that sounds fun and educational! Finally I can learn about editing photos! I have been learning blind and just messing with sliders that made the picture look good without knowing what they did. I understand the basics but beyond that I am lost! Thanks so much!
You’ll probably find Editing moments with darktable useful, too. You can search on YouTube, there are quite a few darktable tutorials, from various authors.
I did not find this multiply blend you are talking about.
In tone curve, it might just be my version but I do not see a percentage? It seems all I can do is tweak the graph but even then I am not getting any good results, its way too crazy!
Anyways, I did some local contrast first, then contrast equalizer, and then I went for the usual exposure and color balance. Sammy the Song Sparrow is looking much better but I still don’t like it…
Are you familiar with the masking…I assumed you were…you just enable the mask and then you will have opacity and a blend mode option for basically every module…these are very powerful options… multiply is a great way to enhance your image
I sort of am familiar with masking. I have experimented successfully with it but not often enough to remember its there or how to use it appropriately. I can usually edit without using it but I really need to use it more often.
