There’s a new post out today: Reflections on Reflections
4 Likes
I’ve had this seasonally-appropriate tutorial partially written for awhile but was stuck on exactly how to use the channel mixer in color calibration to achieve the desired results. After watching @s7habo’s recent tutorial on the channel mixer, it finally “clicked” (thank you!) and now both pieces of the tutorial (using either color balance rgb or color calibration) are complete:
7 Likes
Because they’re so commonplace, we don’t realize that smartphone JPEGs have made us all desensitized to hue shifts in highlights. This isn’t how photos are supposed to look, and fortunately it’s easy to correct with a RAW file in darktable:
I know this has been discussed before on this forum, but I think it’s helpful to have examples of a variety of types of scenes where this occurs all displayed together.
7 Likes
Very true… although personally - and probably largely thanks to this forum - I’ve become a bit allergic to hue shifts. 
Especially the blue sky shifting to teal 
- I’ve seen this in the work of people who I would have expected to be aware of how awful it looks.
I do think however that in some rare cases - like your sunset shot - the ‘correct’ hue is not actually completely true to what our eyes see (or at least not what my eyes see) due to the Bezold–Brücke shift.
Hence my liking for the preserve hues slider in sigmoid. 
1 Like
That is great, though I suspect you’re in the minority of people.
That’s a good point, though I think for my work I’d like to try and emulate what painters did with colors. It might not actually match how our eyes perceive the light, but if it’s a pleasing scene I’m fine with that. Something related often happens to me when I photograph sunsets with a lot of color in the sky - what I “remember” (though it might just be my imagination) is often a lot more colorful than what I see in the RAW file, so I will often use try to use color balance rgb to make it look like how I “remember” it (even if that’s more exaggerated than reality).
1 Like
You can add a desired hue shift at any time.
It’s a lot harder to remove one introduced by your tool chain…
3 Likes
Same here, I see it everywhere now, on pictures, in movies, in my old edits …
1 Like
Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us. Your explanations are better suited for my little brain than those technical discussions i encounter sometimes on this forum 
. Looking forward to new Tutorials from you. I especially love that you address some questions about creative use of those modules. I am going to head to your Website and subscribe to your newsletter regarding Darktable.
Oh and lovely to see one more member appreciating the music of mark knopfler 
1 Like
Glad to hear you’ve found them helpful! Let me know if you have any other ideas for future tutorial topics.
It’s good to meet another Mark Knopfler fan. Are you excited for his new album, One Deep River, coming out in April?
2 Likes
Count me as a fan and waiting for this new album
2 Likes
One topic which i would be interested in is distribution of contrast in a image. In high contrast scenes i tend do lift shadows and reduce highlights to a amount which looks unnatural. And sometimes i would like to increase contrast in certain area’s without sacrificing a natural look. It goes in the same direction of your Article on “Directing Attention in a Scene”
About mark knopfler’s new Album, i am now. Didn’t knew he is releasing one this year.
2 Likes
Thanks for the feedback. I’ll see what I can come up with on that topic.
Yes exactly, I was planning on reviewing that video to make sure I had the rules right for when and when not to use preservation of details before writing an article on this subject
2 Likes
Isn’t is simply that you use preserve details when compressing a scene’s dynamic range (reducing contrast) and NOT using preserve details when adding contrast?
1 Like
The two instance process Boris uses in the video to enhance details/contrast in the highlights is:
- first instance with EGIF and darken the highlights
- second instance with no and pull the highlights back up
Yep, so first is compression → preserve details; the second is expansion → no need for detail preservation, as expansion enhances them anyway.
1 Like
Just to add on this… the compression part can only be done with tone eq (I think there are no other tools with detail preservation? 
) the second part can be done with a multitude of modules - tone eq, tone curve, filmic, sigmoid, color balance rgb, …
tone eq allows to put the contrast enhancement exactly where you want it, so it is a good choice of course.
Great initiative Andrew. I am already an avid follower. Thanks
1 Like
I’m not sure if it’s exactly what you mean, but the Local Contrast module does have an HDR local tone-mapping preset, which has a similar effect of compressing the dynamic range and preserving/increasing details. At its default, it’s a bit too strong for most applications, but I find that using at 50% opacity works quite well. You can also tweak the highlights and shadows sliders to “skew” the compression.
1 Like