For the most part, I use a scene-referred workflow and the modules that go with it. But here and there - especially for more drastic or creative effects - I find myself sprinkling in some display-referred modules. Looking at various xmp’s from the play-raw category, that’s apparently not uncommon or verboten, but I was wondering, if that comes with certain caveats and what in particular to look out for when mixing modules?
With quite a few display referrer modules, you need to look out for artifacts from pushing the sliders too far. Things like haloing.
Artifacts can happen with scene referred modules too, but generally you have much more latitude to push before you get artifacts.
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Many of them are set to execute after the tonemapping to display space so often they are managed…if you use them before or without tone mapping then you might do non linear or lab operations in the middle of your “linear” RGB pipeline. There is a good article cited here many times that goes through most of the nuances. DT doesn’t clip data but the controls in the GUI of those display referred modules can only access data in the display range… so if the data presented to the module is outside that it could more easily introduce artifacts and not produce the correction on the full range of data. So for example the basecurve actually often works quite well now that it is later in the pipeline but you need to be able to make the exposure correct as its not going to deal with values above display max in the way that filmic and sigmoid will…
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I use display modules a lot and actually don’t try and limit myself to scene referred modules as this would be handcuffs I don’t want to wear. However, I also respect the pipeline order for scene referred and display referred modules and for me that it was is really important. Two display referred modules I use extensively are local contrast and shadow and highlights.
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I use local contrast and color zones quite often. The appeal of color zones over color equaliser is that it changes brightness in a wildly different way, which can often be handy and also i can change the horizontal spacing of individual nodes… which can often lead to ugly artifacts, but yeah. I love the color equaliser tho, it enables me to make color changes I could only do with masked color balance rgb
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Thanks for the reassuring feedback.
Local contrast, shadow and highlights, and color zones also happen to be the ones I most frequently use.
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I use both modules. They are nearly identical but with subtle differences. If I was hung up on scene referred modules, which I am not, then I might just use color equalizer but I like how I can place, within reason, however many nodes as I want in color zones. But in the end the difference between these two modules is like white sugar and raw sugar. They both sweeten and in the end you would not know which was used to do the job.
Me too, I didn’t choose the best words. For most of my work I prefer color equalizer now. It’s possible to push it much further before getting artifacts, and color zones serves now as a sort of cherry-on-top to tweak my edits