Which can be corrected in post processing 
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It does not show a processing tab, for me. Only GUI options, Core options, Session options, Shortcuts, and Presets. I have looked through all of those, and I do not see a place where I could select scene referred or display referred.
I am running the latest available release of darktable (3.0.2-7) on Arch Linux.
The scene-referred/display-referred setting is for darktable 3.2, which hasn’t been officially published yet. I think it should be available in the next few days, and it streamlines things a bit:
- the “mid-grey” slider is removed from the new filmic in 3.2, since “exposure” module is now used instead. If you still have old filmic, just set mid-grey value to “18.45”
- the new filmic sets the white point to +4EV, and black point to -8EV, which is a good starting point for a properly exposed picture (if the image is not properly exposed, use the “Exposure” module to compensate)
- adding the “local contrast” module will often improve the image somewhat
- if more colour saturation is required, this can be done with “colour balance” module, using the output saturation slider.
- if you want to selectively tweak the exposure in parts of the image (eg. shadows, highlights, etc.) then tone equaliser works well.
Those are the primary modules I use now (and white balance, of course).
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Yeah, my bad! Sorry.
I thought you used 3.2 or the latest development. Looking back I do not know where I got that idea…
Looks to me like the first image has warmer WB and is more saturated. You could get the second image closer by using the White Balance module (temperature slider) and using the Color Balance module (Output Saturation slider).
Somewhat more advanced tip: you could use a parametric mask on the CB module to exclude already-saturated colors (such as the blue sky) from the saturation boost, if desired.
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I think I’m making some progress. This photo was challenging because it was taken in pretty deep shade, and there’s really nothing white it it to balance on. There were also three areas where the exposure was really blown out. I did everything with a filmic workflow.
I really appreciate all the help and tips you all have given me. This is a very friendly community.
The first jpg is from a straight magick convert. The second one is of my darktable work. The original raw file is also attached.
DSC_4006.NEF.xmp (11.7 KB)
DSC_4006.NEF (18.5 MB)
You can white balance off the top part of the camera, it should be a fairly neutral colour. These are some simple edits in darktable 3.0.2 using white balance + color balance + filmic + local contrast. The second picture tweaks the composition a bit; I think it might be better to have a bit more negative space in front of the photographer, who I guess is the main subject of the photo.
DSC_4006_01.NEF.xmp (6.7 KB) DSC_4006_02.NEF.xmp (6.7 KB)
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Morning, @Tim,
There are several spots you can use for white balance,
like the white cloth on his shorts, or the logo at the back
of his shoes.
Here is my interpretation…
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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This is how I did the white balance: Took some samples from shoe, shorts and the brighter parts of the camera (ditched the shorts later because of the color gradient there) and adjusted red and blue channel until the values in the color picker were almost equal.
There is much green light in this situation coming from the foliage when it reflects the sun light. You can see that in the upper part of the lens cap. I took the brighter part right of the round button because it looked like it got direct sun light.
Went a bit further in the image with filmic (v4) and local contrast, didn’t went to sharpen and denoise it. Removed a bit of the red color from the face.
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Thank you, @Matt_Maguire, @Claes, and @pphoto.
I had tried several of those white balance methods, and for me, some of them made the colors turn goofy. I tried the black of the top of the camera and the “white” stripe on the shorts. I tried a few other places. I know that my “final” came out dark and murky, but when I tried to bring the overall levels up, I kept getting clipping.
I think I did a great job with the blowouts on his thumb, calf, and left shoulder. But I lost a lot of the detail of his black shorts, the rocks, and the water. It really seems that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
I am reading and viewing the materials of Aurélien Pierre. It’s a lot to take in, but I’m learning.
Thanks, @pphoto, very educative. I find your edit very good and realistic (but I haven’t been there, so I might be wrong)
If you spend some extra time on the shorts, you could even find a spot which is almost pure neutral gray
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I have upgraded darktable from 3.0.2 to the 3.1 version that is on GIT. At least, that was what it said it was, but after I installed it, it somehow says it is 3.3.0.r17.g824caf986-1. At any rate, I now have more modules available, such as Tone Equalizer.
So, here is my latest attempt. I think the overall levels are much better, but the blown highlights are not completely fixed. The left shoulder highlight looks pretty good.
DSC_4006_01.NEF.xmp (5.9 KB)
First, I’d like to say that there are no objectively right and wrong answers here, editing photos is party science but mostly art. My edit was just a simple straightforward edit to try to show how to get a reasonably natutal looking picture with minimum fuss, but there is a lot more you could do if artistically you wanted to emphasise certain aspects of the image.
I had tried several of those white balance methods, and for me, some of them made the colors turn goofy.
So this is the danger when you try to white balance using a dark area. The levels are already quite low and close to each other, and noise can easily skew the result. For the white balance, I just selected a patch on the camera that wouldn’t pick up too much of the coloured light coming off the foliage. I didn’t tweak the whitebalance settings after that, because I wanted you to be able to see the exact area I sampled to get that white balance, but normally it is ok if you tweak the white balance for artistic reasons after doing a spoi white balance.
I think I did a great job with the blowouts on his thumb, calf, and left shoulder.
In darktable, down the bottom is a raw file clipping warning (it it looks like a red and green checkerboard). If you turn this on, you see that the leg and thumb are clipped in the raw file. This means the information there is missing in the raw file, and cannot be recovered. The best you can do is try to blend the blowouts nicely with the surrounding area. In darktable 3.2, the new Filmic v4 module has some new features to deal with that, but I stuck with darktable 3.0.2 so that you could load my xmp file into your 3.0.2 version at home.
But I lost a lot of the detail of his black shorts, the rocks, and the water. It really seems that there’s no such thing as a free lunch.
Yes, it is going to be a compromise. If you feel there is detail in those parts you want to recover, you can try to lower the black point in Filmic and increase the latitude, but you will lose overall contrast if you try to map too many tones into your midtone area. If there was some detail in the shorts you felt was important, one thing you could do is use tone equalier to define a suitable mask and increase the exposure of the shorts. That’s a more advanced technique though, and you’d need to study Bruce Williams’ and Aurélien Pierre’s videos on how to use that module.
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Yes, notice that in post 35 in this thread, the ImageMagic conversion clearly shows wrinkles in the shorts, just below the lowest part of his shirt. Those have just disappeared into a sea of black in most (or all) of everyones’ darktable conversions. I will try to learn about the Tone Equalizer masks. I just now upgraded darktable and obtained that module.
It is basically what Aurélien Pierre says: the human eye has much more dynamic range than the camera, and the camera has more than our displays. But I’m still working to learn how to deal with all this, and I feel like I’m making pretty good progress. What do you think of my image in post 41?
What do you think of my image in post 41?
There seems to be a bit of a greenish tinge to the skin tones. If you want to bring out the green in the water more, I think @Claes did a nice job of bring out some warmth.
In your image, the blue shirt looks very saturated, and you’ve lost some of the shadow in the creases. Again I would look at @Claes 's edit – he has made the blue shirt more saturated than in my simple edit, which gives it some more pop, but without going too overboard. and losing detail. From memory, the shirt was not blown out at all in the raw, so this gives you options to work with there.
Note in the new filmic in 3.2/3.3, the desaturation curve works a bit differently to 3.0.2.
You said you upgraded to the dev version on the master branch, not sure if that is a good idea. They are releasing the 3.2 version officially tomorrow I believe, and if you stay on the dev branch, I think there will be quite a lot of changes coming up for the christmas release, which could make the software less stable. Remember that you can upgrade your DB to newer versions, but you can’t go backwards, so you may end up stuck on the developmeent branch. My suggestion would be for you to restore your 3.0.2 database, and upgrade to 3.2 when it comes out for better stability.
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I agree. I was having quite a bit of trouble with the hue and saturation in the Color Balance module. I probably shouldn’t have messed with them, but I couldn’t resist. 
I can always back out of the history and try, again, or even create a new duplicate.
Oh, that is one of those sports shirts, very thin, slinky material. It really is that saturated of a blue.
Color Balance module. I probably shouldn’t have messed with them
Of course you should mess around with that module!
That’s the only way to get to know it, and to see all nice things it can do.
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
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When using “highlight reconstruction”, “reconstruct color” one could do a quite good job on the calf. In my opinion the color of the shirt is somewhat oversaturated. Also, I think the light spots (left shoulder …) should not be “fixed” to much and still be recognizable as such. In my edit below I also tried to keep some structure in the pants.
DSC_4006.NEF.xmp (11.5 KB)
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I must agree, @Thomas_Do, that is an excellent treatment of the image. Thank you. I am downloading you xmp to see just what you did.
Thank you 
.