So many useful tricks here. Keep them coming!
Denoising ISO1600 on MFT (Probably ISO6400 on FF)
-
Hot Pixels - threshold 0.01 - strength 0.7
-
Demosaic method amaze - color smoothing five times - match greens disabled
-
- Denoise Profiled - wavelets - strength 0.250 - blend mode color
parametric mask on L channel 0 0 0 15
- Denoise Profiled - wavelets - strength 0.250 - blend mode color
-
- Denoise Profiled - non local means - patch size 4 - strength 1.0 - blend mode average
parametric mask on L channel 0 0 0 15
- Denoise Profiled - non local means - patch size 4 - strength 1.0 - blend mode average
This gives nice analog looking grain.
2 Likes
Thanks for sharing, David. Yes, it does do wonders! 
I do my rating/culling as chris describes. Works fine and fast. RAW files show the JPG preview if no processing was done so that’s fast.
I setup this Tone Mapping preset, but I’m not seeing much changes in the dark areas. I do confirm the mask is picking the very darkest parts of the picture. Maybe its because I’m working with jpg?
One more:
soft light illumination with bloom module.
this is the starting point:
I would like to draw even more attention to dimly lit houses on the horizon
So first I need to brighten up this local area (exposure module with drown mask):
Now I’m activating “bloom” module in “effects tab”, increasing size to 70% reducing threshold to about 25% and increasing strength to 70%.
blend - uniformly
blend mode - multiply:
Here is before and after:
One more before and after:
The values of bloom module, which I mentioned above, are of course adapted to the corresponding motif. Accordingly, they serve only as an orientation.
It is important to first illuminate the area of the image that you want to emphasize according to your own imagination and “bloom” module makes sure that this emphasization is smooth.
18 Likes
Hi Alan;
This preset will only effect the very darkest elements of your image .. (those values between 0 to 8 on the gray scale of 100). If you click on the mask display you will see exactly which area is being changed. The changes are also progressive so that the darker the element, the greater the change.
It is possible to change the 8 value to a higher number so as to effect a wider shadow scale. Tone Mapping can be a very aggressive function if used over wider areas so you should understand it better and use it with caution .... it is not a quick fix for underexposed shots.
If you are having under/over exposed problems sometimes using 'fusion' processing (in the base curve module) can assist.
darktable is designed primarily to be used with RAW camera data and not JPEG files that are already preprocessed and compressed within the camera. The use of the Tone Mapper on JPEG files may well not produce the designed results. If you are serious about getting the very best out of your personal skills and the camera's capability, you should really work in the RAW format.
Cheers;
David
1 Like
Hi Alan;
This preset will only effect the very darkest elements of your image … (those values between 0 to 8 on the gray scale of 100). If you click on the mask display you will see exactly which area is being changed. The changes are also progressive so that the darker the element, the greater the change.
It is possible to change the 8 value to a higher number so as to effect a wider shadow scale. Tone Mapping can be a very aggressive function if used over wider areas so you should understand it better and use it with caution … it is not a quick fix for underexposed shots.
If you are having under/over exposed problems sometimes using ‘fusion’ processing (in the base curve module) can assist.
darktable is designed primarily to be used with RAW camera data and not JPEG files that are already preprocessed and compressed within the camera. The use of the Tone Mapper on JPEG files may well not produce the designed results. If you are serious about getting the very best out of your personal skills and the camera’s capability, you should really work in the RAW format.
Cheers;
David
1 Like
Thank you! I love the softer vignetting. Here is my quickie attempt, before, after the technique, and fully edited (including applying Norman’s denoise trick above). 
IMG_3461.cr2.xmp (12.0 KB)
2 Likes
My current favorite trick to get postcard landscapes is to
-
Use three exposures in base curve sparingly to get a bit more detail if there is a lot of dynamic range
-
Apply a gentle base curve like the Leica preset because the next step adds contrast
-
Use the filmic tonemap operator with maxed or high detail. Set blend mode to multiply and reduce opacity to taste.
-
Enjoy very saturated postcard look.
1 Like
Here’s another one of Harry Durgin’s tricks I must have missed until the third viewing:
Using a parametric mask with spot removal module. With a high contrast border, create the spot removal area and adjust the parametric sliders to restore a portion of the underlying image. See Harry’s example in this vid at about 20:20 minute marker.
4 Likes
I’m not sure why the fence posts became green but the sky looks like it is supposed to.
I use a Mixture of Exposure and Color Zone to even out Fade in skies.
Settings (Masking should be identical for both the Exposure and Color Zone modules)
Use the “H” parametric mask to select only blue sky region, and not mountains, trees, etc…
Make sure to change the “L” parametric mask to be subtractive, then use the eye dropper tool to help you set up you 100% and 0% sliders as shown above.
For me, typical exposure adjustment is somewhere between -0.05 and -0.2
In the Color Zones module I just boost the blue’s saturation (with the same mask and parametric masks applied as were used in exposure module) until the regions appear to have similar hue/saturation.
Using “Small” view can help to see the Fade more pronounced.
Example below is a merge that came from enfuse.
Before:
After:
Mask:
This can really save images that get “Halos” from HDR or enfuse.
Hope this helps others.
17 Likes
Great trick — I played with this technique after shooting a Parade where I had no choice but to shoot into the sun. When highlight recontruction failed, when grad density filter failed, this worked very well. Thanks!
Keep em coming folks. I am loving this!
1 Like
Do you guys think we could have a common, shareable, easy to edit resource where we could put all these tricks? Something like a github repo (*), where we could organize all the tips/tricks in this thread, link to youtube tutorials for example, include screenshots etc?
I have a note on my computer with a number of these tips, recipes, notes from tutorials I watch, and I believe other people do the same. If we can collect all these bits of information together that would make a valuable addition to the excellent (but sometimes not up-to-date) online manual.
(*) I had this idea looking at this repo – the subject matter is another one altogether but it doesn’t matter, it is to show how it’s done, a simple readme.md file: https://github.com/softwareunderground/awesome-open-geoscience
5 Likes
I think it is a very good idea!
/Claes
We have several shared resources in our github organization, but we don’t get man commits at all.
You’re totally free to put this in an article on the main website (also a git repo) or I can start a separate repo for it. I’d prefer the former, though.
Maybe it could be under the “awesome” umbrella as well?
I like this idea alot as well, but am not versed in github. Looks like a wiki, kinda…