There is no color model so far that tells how much saturation should be applied for the amount of contrast added such that perceptual expectations are met. The closest we have is iCAM06 and it really doesn’t like night scenes : https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1047320307000533
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To cut down on the cargo of bullshit above, I would like to remind people that filmic has a non-chroma-preserving mode with independent RGB channels handling for people who like to undo their color-grading before going to display. Just because IT IS NOT the default setting doesn’t mean that you can’t use it, build presets with it, and so on.
I also have made a video explaining why natural colors are not the preferred colors, especially regarding skin tones, so any attempt at making your “good looking” reference pass for natural is automatically nullified:
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Today I was developing some images from last summer and I had the DT set up for the autumn set of photos (like the ones above). I developed some of the images and then went to compare it with the original JPEGs. Guess what – my own results were complete mess. I therefore got back to the suggested defaults + highlight color reconstruction and suddenly the photos started to look very close to the JPEGs most of the time. And I was happy with it.
Originally I went with the color preservation set to none because of some nasty artifacts the other values introduce to out-of-focus edges with CA. This issue is still there as I’ve learned today.
Now… I’d love everybody to calm down. I believe Aurelien knows perfectly well what he’s doing with the Filmic RGB module and it’s still very well possible for all of us to go back to the pre-filmic era with pretty and unrealistic colors.
That’s for the CA module to correct earlier. Color preservation preserves invalid colors too…
I’m acutely aware vision is mainly a brain thing. It’s also a social thing. This understanding is the background to most of my comments and the reason I said “natural or believable”. It’s there to emphasize that a natural look is a social thing.
Just as in previous art discussions the fact that something is social doesn’t mean it’s arbitrary. It just means you need different processes, knowledge and skills to arrive at the solutions.
I don’t question the idea of producing a “neutral” base onto which further edits are made. The issue is that I and many others see some odd colour behaviour thats clearly tricky to control. That specific pastelly look (not solved by color balance rgb colorfulness preset) . See above. There’s also a difficulty in managing shadows. I can’t imagine these are impossible obstacles.
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It seems like this and several other threads are turning quite hostile. This doesn’t really help anyone. It also doesn’t seem fair to the devs to somehow pit sigmoid vs filmic, particularly when it starts to feel like personal attacks. These are tools, people, some of which have been in development for quite a while and work really well. No more and no less. I’m all for hearing the arguments in favor of one or the other, but I (and probably many other bystanders) couldn’t care less for the drama. I feel like @anon41087856 has been quite thorough in his explanations both here and on his youtube channel, and his approach makes a lot of sense: to separate each variable so that it can be independently controlled. It seems like the complaints haven’t been quite as thorough, though. In the end the devs are the ones putting in the work to build free (as in freedom) tools for all of us to enjoy.
That doesn’t mean that we can’t give any feedback. I think however, that the more specific we can be about it, the easier it would be to take actionable steps towards implementing said feedback, or to discard the suggestion after some discussion based on its merits/difficulty to implement/etc… Something like: When I do X I get Y, but I’d like to get Z instead. Or X would be easier/better/faster if we did Y. Vague feedback derail conversations and tends to frustrate devs. For example @nosle what do you mean by “that specific pastelly look (not solved by color balance rgb colorfulness preset)”? Can you show examples of the pastelly look, and of what you would like to achieve? Even if it’s from other software, so we all understand.
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Then perhaps you could code up the solutions
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Yeah. So I’m being told all the time. And yet I’m still making it up. So here’s one taken to extreme because I don’t have a better recent example. It must be obvious even for a dead and blindfolded person that something nasty is going on in there:
Sans filmic:
RGB power norm:
Preserve chrominance set to no:
Luminance Y:
Raw:
P1180493_01.RW2.xmp (7.1 KB)
P1180493.RW2 (18.6 MB)
Treetops against the sky is always a better example but this will do.
Now – I can work around it indeed. But not preserving the chrominance simply provides the best results.
You need some roll off you have created this with your filmic curve…set it to defaults and much of that artifact goes away…
Yes. That’s why I emphasized that this has been taken to an extreme. I know how to work it around. I’m trying to point out that it behaves wrong.
Well it now behaves differently again in v6…and does not look like that… also what happens with the norms is that in extreme highlights channels that are clipped or near clipped in v5 don’t get corrected properly so you get essentially and exaggeration in the other channels making them hard to correct… you can using TE and blending with channels…
This is no with all defaults
Maxrgb
Luminance
powernorm
EUCLIDEAN
EDIT : Note no artifacts at the tip as scene in your image which are created by your extreme CA settings all maxed out…
Looking closer you have also cranked the chroma and saturation out of gamut and the setting you use in the CA module have created most of that blue tip…add that to the curve you use and I am not sure what you really expect to see?? Maybe explain your "its not working right " in a bit more detail…
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@Newerth
First, the manual clearly states that there is no one proper setting for “preserve chrominance”.
Second, using normal settings is not “working around an issue”. Using settings that break the image in other ways could be considered creating one, though.
If that’s how you want to discuss failings in a module, good luck, and have fun
Well… I don’t know what to do now. I tried to crank all the values so that the issue would be more obvious. I also went with the CA module as high as I could so nobody could say I have to compensate that before filmic comes in. Now all of it is to much apparently so I’m told I’m doing it wrong again. How shall I proceed?
This is hilarious. You’ve quoted my comments that’s why I’m in these threads… Trying to set misunderstandings/misrepresentations straight.
Those concerned about the attempts at constructive criticisms of some of filmics behaviour should have a look at how aurelien, completely unprovoked, behaves towards other contributors.
For those looking for samples should have a look up thread. Darktable's Filmic RGB defaults render this desaturated - #8 by Newerth
There are also lots of side by sides in the Sigmoid thread see this post for instance. Note that the sigmoid RGB ratio looks very much off as well. New Sigmoid Scene to Display mapping - #545 by jandren
Most files will show it but portraits will reveal it more clearly. If people don’t see it from these samples and can’t recognize it in other files I don’t know what to say. It’s not as simple as desaturated on straightforwardly tinted. @jandren s synthetic samples probably reveal something for those that don’t see it in photos. I’m surprised so little difference can be seen in the synthetic midtones because in photos the effect appears to be very prominent there. It could be one of the many visual pitfalls I guess, the actual issue could lie elsewhere.
Looking at your image the default CA corrects it nicely but you used such a large radius you created a massive artifact…The authour rawfiner does a nice job working through the CA workflow. Using first raw CA then manual TCA on the lens and the the new CA module…normally you would need all those steps…as for filmic…you have few blown highlights …not too many but the norms exaggerate things in the extreme highlights at least that is what I experience. The new v6 filmic has a slider to tweak extreme luminance saturation so that can help…On your image testing I just used auto exposure and the default filmic settings…v6 now uses max RGB but you can use any…you can see the norms working if you pull back the exposure on your image…look at the original data and then you can see what it does…
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This is your image with the exposure dialed down to show the original data with only WB…note the blue channel…
Adding filmic starting with no…
Now see how the preservation modes attempt to restore that…depending on which one determines the final look…
Maxrgb
Luminance
Powernorm
You get the idea…
This problem can come in extreme highlights with clipped or near clipped channels as not all the information if there to do the best correction…although I believe just in the last day or so AP added an adjustment to the math and this should help to handle them better…
It was just in the example you used you had a few extreme settings and these will be compounded by filmic. You can for some edits you can add things after filmic so that you don’t have these sorts of interactions as well…
Well, is the look of the rest of the image the result you want?
If not, start by showing the issue in an image that is otherwise what you want. If it’s not visible there, even when knowing what to look for, is there an issue?
In addition, in this particular case, the manual states that there is no right setting for the chrominance preservation, so you have to pick the one best suited to your image. If that is “no”, so be it…
Everything can break if you push hard enough. That’s not a fault of the tool, though, if it’s used outside design parameters.
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Thank you for the elaboration. I’ll look forward to the v6 then. I wouldn’t to drop into this discussion again if there wasn’t for @aurelien’s comment. It’s just not as straightforward.