Sometimes better to share the results, far more interesting than the long talk about the process. An image like this took me about 3 minutes to edit, and that’s cos it needed quite a bit of rescuing, taken on a dull rainy cloudy late afternoon in November in the Northern hemisphere.
Otherwise typical photos are done in less than 2 minutes, when taken in good light.
I guess its horses for courses, does one want to spend lots of time on one or two pics, or achieve really good looking pics with minimal effort, and take so many more pictures with the confidence that editing will be a pleasure, and easy to achieve.
I love all the tooling and this is great for creating digital works of splendid art, but for certain pursuits like a hobby which this is for me at this time, the real joy is in taking the pics and admiring the end result., rather than hours spent polishing one image to perfection. Its never perfect, and there are thousands of variations of perfect on the same original image, so sometimes all that slaving away on one image - especially if it’s just a hobby, becomes drudgery and somewhat futile, ending up with several excellent versions of the same image, different but each of them excellent - some what futile cos each time you approach it - you end up with a slightly different result - so so no point in slaving on the pic, hit the main editing improvements in a few seconds, and spend more time admiring the result.
I guess its the same with cars, some like to tinker with them, I prefer to drive them, and only tinker if it saves me money.
As a work around add all your base curves one after the other. Export the xmp…People can just load a step and save as a new preset in the base curve module. They can just do it for each one…not pretty but should work…
So as an example if I has a style (Style 1)that modified 5 modules, and maybe introduced 1 new module as a 2nd instance, of an existing module.
And I want to choose another style.(Style 2) which makes its own changes, i.e when I apply the new style, I want the changes made bye 1st style to be completely reversed and replaced with changes made by the new module.
This way I can store a collection of module changes in each style and switch between styles in the same way I see on Lightroom demos of Lightroom presets on Youtube,
Is this possible in darktable?
This style/module append/replace toggle - where do I find this in darktable?
Styles panel is one place in lighttable and second you can also just take an existing image and copy the history stack ctrl c…and if you use shift ctrl v on another or others…you can select what parts get applied…If you apply the style in dark room then it uses the current styles overwrite mode from lighttable…
Thanks - something to take a close look at, appreciated.
Wow I seem to have made a few replies today, as a “new” user, so the forum policies have placed a 45 minute delay on posting this response - interesting. This explains any delay in my response.
I wonder how long it takes to become a non new user.!! I do understand - in a strange world, the conduct of some of us, causes these kinds of safeguards to be imposed on the others.
Display referred means tone curve comes early in pipe. Many raw editors work this way, but it is generally considered inferior because tone/colour mixing looks nicer done in linear, and a curve is non-linear. So modules after suffer. darktable has base curve for this.
Scene referred means tone curve comes late in pipe. Few raw editors work this way, but is generally considered superior because it allows lots of modules to work in linear before the non-linear curve. Darktable has filmic for this… But filmic is more complex than just a curve. First tab is log tone mapping. This means you can push data beyond clipping in earlier modules, and filmic can bring that data back. You do that by adjusting White relative. Black relative takes care of the shadows. These sliders also determine where the pivot point of the curve is. The curve shape is controlled using contrast, latitude and softness/hardness.
But you don’t have to use filmic for the curve - you can make the filmic curve straight, linear, and use another module for the curve. Tone curve, base curve (moved after filmic in the pipe), lut, and tone equaliser are all options. You can even use color balance, which has a few film like Presets.
I’ve been playing around with this recently, but it has only made me more aware of how remarkable filmic is. For instance, if I first make the filmic curve flat, set Black and White relative points, then go back to set contrast, latitude and hardness, I nearly always get better results than any preset or other module. And except for complex cases, its fast. The problem I was having initially is that default contrast is often too high and alters your perception shifting other sliders, which is why I now set it linear to start with. I also turn mid tones saturation off (prefer color balance), and use preserve chrominance: no, as default setting, then toggle through the others to finish. Now, I use a few favourite luts/Presets mainly for comparison.
But assuming a linear filmic curve, I’m wondering if anyone can explain the pros and cons of base curve vs tone curve (both placed after filmic in pipe)?
My workflow is usually pretty short, consisting of exposure/Filmic, local contrast, tone equalizer, color balance (saturation, contrast, and tweak shadows, midtones, and highlights), and sharpen/contrast equalizer, and the finish with crop. Most of the time I don’t even need to touch Filmic because the default settings are spot on at the start.
That usually takes me about two minutes. Darktable has a nice system to copy and paste history, so I’ll frequently work on one image and then copy it to the rest of that set. I can usually get through 150-300 images in about an hour. After that I’ll go back and play with the really special pictures to get them just right… that might take awhile.
So, it’s great to have a program like DT (and Rawtherapee, too) that can accommodate so many different ways to edit photos.
Base curve is just a tone curve designed to approach the tonal adjustment that would produce the camera JPG…I think that is all really esp now you can move modules around…before quite often it would produce blown highlights for many images…The other modification is done with DT -chart. That will create a style that has a tone curve and a lut combo to match your image to either your jpg reference or to the reference values for a color chart…if you don’t have a chart then for general lighting you can often find raw/jpg pairs for common cameras on imaging resources website. Its a crude approach but I tried it for a few people and they remarked that it was a better starting point than the base curve…
Please note that a straight line in the filmic chart does not mean a linear mapping: the x-axis is logarithmic (it’s scaled in EV).
Just consider this: the filmic mapping is defined by 5 points: mid-grey (fixed), white relative EV and black relative EV, plus 2 points for latitude. A truly linear mapping is defined by just two points. This means that if e.g. black relative EV is -5 (mapping it to LAB L = 0), and mid-grey (around which filmic builds the mapping) is always mapped to 50% LAB, white relative EV would always have to be +5EV (mapped to L = 100%). However, you’re free to change the white and black points, and filmic changes parameters of the non-linear mapping in the background.
Sorry, I didn’t express this correctly: of course this is not linear, either:
if e.g. black relative EV is -5 (mapping it to LAB L = 0), and mid-grey (around which filmic builds the mapping) is always mapped to 50% LAB, white relative EV would always have to be +5EV (mapped to L = 100%)
It’d be ‘linear’ (a straight line) when mapped in log->linear space; however, what I meant is that changing the white and black points would change the slope in log → linear, which would also move the y value mid-grey is mapped to; however, filmic always ensures a neural mapping for mid-grey.
Same Image processed three different ways. With some other modules like tone curve, and contrast equalizer applied in each… 1st time I ever did this. In this example, Not much to go on between the different approaches. Who knows, maybe it depends on the image. Without examining them side by side, they look pretty close.
Can you expand on this? When I set contrast to 1, and highlights and shadows to ‘soft’, I get a straight line. When I adjust white and black relative sliders, the orange circle moves up and down the line, and if I now add contrast, functions as the s curve pivot point. So is it correct that the log tone mapping part of filmic (scene tab) always pivots around mid grey (as determined by exposure/previous modules/mid grey luminance slider? While the curve (look tab) pivots around the orange circle (as determined by white and black relative sliders), which is not necessarily middle grey (is only middle grey when white and black relative are inverse of each other, eg. +5 and -5, +6 and -6, etc…)?
Check out this ramp. Filmic is shown, but it’s disabled; the marked area (visible due to ‘display sample areas on image’ in the global colour picker) shows mid-grey, or LAB 50%:
Thanks. I don’t have the latest build with all the new filmic labels. I thought the scale in visual diagram stayed the same and the orange dot changed position, but its the other way around. Orange dot always represents mid grey, and its the scale that changes.
You might like this even if you don’t shoot Nikon…to look at the curves associated with various looks… https://nikonpc.com/ its like a basecurve editor for Nikon…
I have in earlier posts on this thread outlined in detail, the source of my LUTS, this most likely is one which I generated from a web based tool here :
Suggest you read the earlier posts, which provide quite a bit of information - please note, the LUT was the 70%, and I must have used other modules to fine tune to the image posted here. i.e the remaining 30%.
