I believe with a style you can do the whole range of what is available in the dt menu, whereas a LUT is just about color. LUTs are compatible. Is that correct?
Looking at this links Teal&Orange:
Is this ol’ style fully compatible with dt 3.0.2? The above loads wonky and needs a serious wb correction, but then delivers the effect. I wonder what is more suitable here, a dt-style or a LUT?
A darktable style can take full advantage of every module in darktable, but the style can’t be used in other applications.
A LUT is color, it is literally a “look up table” or a mapping of one particular value to another particular value (more or less) LUTs can be used in any application that supports the particular LUT format. It useful doing color grading and other artistic type of things. You won’t get things like local contrast or a low pass filter with a LUT though (like you can with a style).
LUTs are made to a particular gamma/gamut, and if you use that LUT in a different gamma/gamut to the one intended/created you might get colour shifts. Further, in order to reduce file size, they use interpolation. If they have attempted large file size reduction by using fewer sample points (eg. 17x17x17 or less) you are more likely to see banding in smooth gradients. For most real world scenarios, ‘standard’ sampling of 33x33x33 will avoid banding, but no guarantee. (Darktable website says, “…that above 48x48x48 one cannot see the difference any more.”) More sampling points are better, but bigger files result. Interpolation algorithm will also play a part.
I haven’t used styles, but if they utilise darktable modules I doubt they require any interpolation, meaning no potential artefacts like banding (unless of course it uses an extreme adjustment which results in banding). But of course, unlike LUTs, they are limited to darktable.
I am testing some LUTs. They show in the preview but not in the main editor in darkroom? Is that how it’s supposed to work? This said, they do show in the main screen while the display is on working.
I tried a few. All the same. You want more weird? Okay…
I mainly use darktable as a portable version on my USB drive, so I can move around without syncing anything. The LUT work on my laptop (i5, 8Gb RAM) but not on my desktop (i3, 16Gb). That the same USB drive, so it’s the same darktable folder/installation.
I can run darktable-cltest.exe - output is quite long. What you want me to look for? Just tried it on the working laptop. Will try the not working desktop tomorrow.
Here are 4 files in 1 zip. “home” doesn’t work. “laptop” works.
I am already one step further. When I disable OpenCL on the home PC LUT is working. I think the issue is that the home PC has some OpenCL support issues. Graphic is onboard Intel 4400 which should support OpenCL 1.2