Darktable RAW vs Digital Photo Professional

Software darktable
1

I normally use Linux and work with Darktable. When I import images from my EOS R7 in RAW format, they look very dull, in contrast to the JPG images. I understand that I have to adjust various modules in Darktable to achieve a similar result.

In Windows I can use “Digital Photo Professional”. The RAW’s imported there almost match the JPG’s. Obviously, corrections are applied automatically. Presumably “Digital Photo Professional” knows exactly which corrections need to be applied. Is there a way to automatically apply these corrections directly in Darktable without having to manually search for and adjust the corresponding modules with the settings?

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2

Yes, create auto presets or create a style to apply on import or use the new styles that were created trying to match the camera jpg.

3

Is there some way to automatically create such styles, by analyzing the JPG’s?

4

Not to my knowledge. Like I said, there is already a style a developer created for your camera since 5.0. Did you try it?

5

Not really. I haven’t updated to 5.x as of yet. But since it should be available on Manjaro repositories since some days, I try to update today.

6

5.0.1 was released last Wednesday. Check it.

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7

Canon knows their secret sauce but doesn’t give any informations to the public.

So you might use darktable chart (darktable user manual - using darktable-chart ) to create presets for darktable user manual - color look up table using a color checker

8

Mine’s a Sony, but I find that, in recent versions of darktable, using Sigmoid, gives a starting point that is not too far away from the in-camera jpeg.

I like my camera’s jpegs, and I have no qualms about using/giving them if I lack time or inclination to post-process. And the manufacturers certainly have secret sauce eg for denoising.

I don’t use Windows, so I can’t use Sony’s raw processing app. They probably build into that a processing that would be very similar to what they do in camera. But then, if a just like the jpeg is the desired result, why not just use the jpeg. As I mentioned: I often do.

So why do we process from raw, apart from dogma :wink: ? Maybe it’s for lossless tifs for printing, but more often it is to put our personal touch on the finished result. And for that, undercooked might be a better starting point?

Please excuse. This is not really an answer to your question, more the thoughts it sparked in my head.

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9

RawTherapee has the Auto-Matched Tone Curve", which takes the JPEG embedded in the raw file and calculates the tone curve needed to duplicate it. That’s about the closest to “automatic” of which I’m aware…

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Try importing this style into DT through the styles module in the lighttable view. This is a style I have created for my Canon R7 to give me a starting point close to the camera’s JPG. It is not perfect but I find it gives me a nice starting point. This will also give you the basis for starting your own style. BTW, this style is based on Sigmoid but you could create your own with filmic if you so desire. Filmic gives dull colors out the box and would require additional tweaks in color balance rgb to give the desired colorfulness.
R7 jpeg Style =+1.1EV.dtstyle (3.7 KB)

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11

It’s an old post, so:

  • instead of filmic, use filmic rgb (or sigmoid, it has punchy contrast and colours out of the box)
  • instead of color balance, use color balance rgb. To begin, just increase the vibrance.

Or, with darktable 5, apply the style:

image
image341×263 7.83 KB

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5.01 is a bugfix release. The styles for different cameras have not changed since 5.0.

I tried the new camera styles of 5.0 and found them disappointing.

All styles consist of exposure, color balance RGB, filmic and local contrast. The result looks completely different than the JPG - and not just in terms of the colors.

13

Yes, as Straeten already noted, it works with darktable-chart.

It calculates the difference from a ColorChecker target in RAW and JPG and creates a style with the color lookup table and tone curve modules.

The result is not very accurate, but significantly better than the 5.0 styles.

When photographing the color checker target you have to make an effort to get good results.

More about how this works can be found on

or on my website (in german, can be translated with google chrome)

I’ve been using these styles for a few years.

But now I use sigmoid together with color balance RGB as a standard for all my cameras. This also delivers stronger colors, even if they don’t correspond to the JPGs ooc.

14

This works pretty well actually as another way to do it…