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.
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.
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
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.
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 
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