This was ment technical: color calibration model in darktable set to daylight and 4014 K.
Exactly.
No bash or exiftool needed, just use the daylight mode in the white balance module ?
If you have the ‘modern’ color workflow enabled , you could disable it, or do what I said and disable 'color calibration ’ after it. To get a quick fix.
You are right in that the white balance mode is just a bit of metadata, so the image your camera takes is actually exactly the same bo matter what you had set as the White balance mode . It just writes a tiny bit of information what the white balance mode was, and darktable (and other raw processing software ) reads that and uses it to present a default .
Bit that’s a ‘default’ , nothing more nothing less. You are free to change it, with exactly the same results as you would get if you start messing with exiftool. But I wouldn’t touch your original files , And it’s easier to set the White balance in a tool like Darktable then it is to do from a command line (talking even as someone who is very comfortable on the command line ).
So, open one image. Turn off 'color calibration ’ if it’s enabled. Set white balance to daylight (or auto , or something else you prefer). Create a style (preset) with the white balance module settings in it , and the 'turn off color calibration ’ in it . Now from the light table view, select all the images and apply the style . Every image is now at daylight with no further edits made to it .
If you really want to use the color calibration module , you’d have to mess in there to set a 'normal daylight '. I actually don’t know from the top of my head how , since I don’t use it anymore 
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No need for the style: one can copy and paste the module settings.
Use selective copy and selective paste:
https://darktable-org.github.io/dtdocs/en/module-reference/utility-modules/lighttable/history-stack/
White balance is often excluded from the copy though (don’t know if this is actually better when using a style or not )
With standard copy and paste, it’s excluded. With the selective variants, you can easily copy it. Alternatively, R+Darktable includes them in the standard operations, as well, unless I’m mistaken.
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I shoot raw underwater and there color balance becomes a function of depth. My favorite general tool is white balance. And I know I should be using color calibration. I generally let the tool look at the whole picture and figure it out. Which seems to work well.
When that fails I plan to follow Boris Hajdukovic’s suggestion in this video:
Especially in edit 1.
If you really want to lose hope though in color, you could watch this video:
Where Aurélien Pierre points out that trying to get accurate colors is pointless since humans don’t pick colors that reflect reality, as in measured by a colorimeter I believe. Instead the color they choose as accurate is a function of the real color and their life experiences.
All that to say, and I don’t think I’m the original saying this, photography is art, make it look good to you.
Oh and use color calibration for bulk white balance and the tone equalizer for making up the rest🙃.
In that same video he also says that the tools should not modify colours, in order to preserve adjustments made earlier in the pipe.
So while the user shouldn’t worry too much about “accurate” colours (*), the tools should be accurate (in that a change in luminosity should not modify other parameters).
(*: in most cases , you don’t even have the information to go for accurate colours, unless you have a colour target or other known reference shot under the same lighting conditions. Hard to do while birding)
