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.
Like my teacher used to say, it takes two to tango. If you feel like that’s what he is doing you can raise your concerns, but there’s no need to be nasty or for verbal escalation. You won’t be more right, but you can be more wrong.
For those looking for samples should have a look up thread. Darktable’s Filmic RGB defaults render this desaturated - #8 by Newerth
Here is where we need you to be specific. What am I looking at? I’m not on my computer, so I can’t check the xmp file, but it seems like the second image has a bit higher exposure (which I find better), but it lacks a bit of contrast in the highlights. I may be wrong, but it seems like the white slider of the filmic module has been moved too far to the right. Aurelien has explained this many times, and its only logical. SDR screens’ dynamic range is smaller than most cameras today, so we need to fit that data into our screen somehow. This is where filmic comes in. Since there is a rather limited space above mid gray to fit all the highlights, if you try to squeeze many EVs in that space, contrast will of course decrease. In order to deal with that lack of contrast (assuming your filmic settings are how you want them), you need to dodge and burn to increase contrast where you need it (tone eq and/or masked exposure). Additionally you can use diffuse or sharpen with the local contrast preset. Color balance RGB will help you add or remove saturation to your image as needed, further increasing contrast. I haven’t tried filmic v6 but it seems like the results are much better in terms of saturation.
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 2
Again, couldn’t check the xmp, but I suspect a bit of the same thing here.
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.
This is where it gets tricky. You haven’t told us specifically what the problem is, but you seem to imply that there is one, and it should be obvious to everyone. Since there are so many elements of a picture we can focus our attention to, and we are not in your head, it’s highly unlikely that we all will see things the way you do right away without prior explanation. If you want better feedback, you might want to be more concrete.
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 not sure what I’m supposed to be looking at in the synthetic sweeps. I can see a more pronounced transition close to the edges in the sigmoid ones, but I don’t understand why that would be desirable.
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.
Again, be precise. What are the “many visual pitfalls” you are talking about? I thought we were talking about a pastelly look, but now it seems like there are other issues. Can you point them out and give examples? I’m not trying to be an asshole, just to understand what you mean.
Have you used v6 yet?
Only very briefly. Opened a bunch of recent files of mine but the pastel look was immediately noticeable compared to RT despite colorfulness preset being used.
The compression of the highlights would still happen no matter the version. The more you compress them, the more contrast will decrease. There is only so much room between middle grey and your screen’s peak brightness. It seems to handle colors in a nicer way, though.
Extreme colours like orange warning signs at road works turned toward red with the latter preset.
The basic colorfulness preset does a couple things, it increases chroma (aka saturation in other programs), but it also increases perceptual saturation (I believe that’s what it’s called) for shadows and midtones, and decreases it for highlights. What does that mean? Shadows and midtones will get more colorful while becoming darker, and highlights will become less colorful while becoming lighter, similar to a painter’s pigments. Aurelien has also talked about this in depth in his videos.
I’ve been emphasizing that my comments are not about “punch” or straight forward desaturation. For many years my photos were desaturated compared to the scene now I’m inching closer to realism from the flat side.
I didn’t understand this last bit.
Thank you for the samples though. 