Darktable's Filmic RGB defaults render this desaturated

I hate pale white skies. That’s why it’s bluer here:

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Thank you all so much for this many responses! :slightly_smiling_face: I can say I’ve learned something.

@kofa Yes, the lighting in this photo is tricky. The JPEG came out badly too.

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Actually, I do not care much about OOC JPGs and do whatever I like :wink:.
Here my quick edits in darktable 3.8.

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The filmic house image looks quite nice when you shrink it down to better see the whole tonality of the image. Very… filmic! The jpg looks a bit rough. I understand that some might want more saturation however.

The skin tones are pretty frightening! So far no one has solved it with their edits either. In my view @Thomas_Do is closest. I wouldn’t immediately react to that image. The others really look wrong.


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@Newerth I just wanted to welcome you to the community and say I like your photos. :slight_smile:

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Thank you, @afre. :slightly_smiling_face: I hope I’ll be able to offer a helping hand too.

To each his(or her) own.
But filmic is not trying to mimic the SOOC jpg , so expecting them to be similar sounds like a recipe for disaster.

And I don’t know if you are talking about filmic or filmic + color balance RGB with the default 'add colorfulness preset. It seems those two combined are more what most people want as a starting point (might be wrong though).

The 3.4/3.6 filmic added saturation of itself, the default setting in the look tab was at 10% if i recall.

Somewhere that was changed to be a default of 0, and the idea being you use color balance rgb.
At least this is what I’ve understood from the changes back then.

I find that the default stock modern workflow settings (scene referred and modern color ) with ‘color balance rgb add colorfulness’ never really need more color for me. of course depends on scene, intended result , mood, etc…

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Just to ground all this, I decided to do a render of the linear RGB, no tone curve other than the display profile’s so-called “gamma curve”. As a screenshot, so one can regard the processing:

This is the baseline image from which all other manipulations, software or in-camera, should be considered.

Here’s what a tone curve would do; no filmic, no log, just a control-point curve shaped to selectively lift the lower values; note where the steepest part of the curve is, that’s where the most contrast is introduced:

Comparing in-camera rendered JPEGs to anything in software is really just comparing different softwares’ predilections; I believe starting with the linear RGB is the only good way to know how to tone-curve your image…

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Just a couple of editing tips if you are unhappy with the lower saturation during the RAW processing. I often active the colour balance RGB module using the supplied preset “add basic colorfulness”. This can help lift the saturation substantially. I made my own preset where I copied the preset settings but placed the sliders only half the value used. I find this works nicely for many of my shots.

Another option is in filmic go to the look tab and move the latitude slider towards the right to increase saturation in the highlights and shadows.

DT gives you even more ways to achieve the results you desire. But these two are my first go too adjustments. And it is totally up to you how much saturation you like and then that is the correct amount to use. As a general rule people like more saturation, sharpness, local contrast and clarity in a landscape, but with a portrait a more subdued look may be preferable.

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Thanks for the tips, @Terry.

I eventually ended up with this, no additional saturation needed. The colors are well pronounced, maybe too much for a lot of people here. :slight_smile: It’s a documentary photo from our holidays, so no artistic intentions.
See the XMP for new Filmic RGB settings. The “preserve chrominance” default setting turned out to be the main issue here. Also with 3.8 I no longer need to stay away from the contrast slider.


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I see more a foggy, rainy day (DT-3.9)


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I use to play around with the preserve chrominance setting in previous versions of filmic. It is a good approach, however, I find the add basic colorfulness approach now achieves what I want and rarely look at the preserve chrominance setting in filmic now. I am not discouraging your use of preserve chrominance settings. DT has just so many options to achieve what we want with our images. That is what makes it great.

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@Terry I realized I can’t use the preserve chrominance feature anyway because it tends to emphasize TCA in out of focus areas, for example tree tops against light blue skies.

TCA can be handled well by the recommended module chromatic aberations, but there is another module which they have depreciated called defringe. You may need to type defringe into the module search window. Defringe at times works better than chromatic aberations. I use which ever one gives the best result.

TCA is also handled by the lens correction module.

I am going from memory but I feel like rawfiner demonstrated the CA module in his video by suggesting you start at 100 percent strength even thought this is obviously not the default…and then back it down and tweak the radius to increase or decrease the spatial application of the correction…

I need to go back and watch that…but I wonder if I am correct how many people will push it like that??

As @Terry and @paperdigits have already mentioned, darktable offers a lot of possibilities to get rid of chromatic aberration.

If your lens is supported, already in most cases, the correction can be done well with lens correction module. Here is one of the extreme examples:

This is what chromatic aberration looks like in one of my photos:

When I turn on lens correction module, the correction is already done, but not very well:

You can also correct it manually by turning on the TCA overwrite option and then readjusting the red and blue channels:

If you then additionally switch on and adjust the chromatic abberation module, the problem is completely solved:

From my experience, there are only very rare cases where you have to do something extra.

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in that last picture it looks less red overall - clouds aren’t as warm, sky is cooler blue, birch is slightly green