Thanks Terry. In my experience you are completely right. Only with my “huge” tif files I had this problem with the tonemappers. Darktable also did not automatically apply the tonemappers. Allthough all other editing seems fine.
With the DNG format DT automatically turns on (in my case) sigmoid and applies it. The results are very pleasing.
I would love to just hop immediately to Darktable. But then again: “Have you seen the results from dxo pure raw?” I can literally use 2 stops higher iso and get wonderful results.
Thanks again 
Since the title is about scene-referred processing, I’m not sure that all this talk of tone-mapping is relevant because tone-mapping is an output-referred exercise from a non-dt point of view?
ICC: A scene-referred image is an image where the image data is an encoding of the colors of a scene (relative to each other), as opposed to a picture of a scene. In a picture, the colors are typically altered to make them more pleasing to viewers when viewed using some target medium.
I take “a picture” to be output-referred.
Pardon the mention of Photoshop in the link.
P.S. After I wrote the above, I had a look at Kodak’s scene-referred RIMM color-encoding paper and, to my horror, it says:
Examples of manipulations that might be applied in this [scene-referred] color encoding include scene balance algorithms, manual color/density/contrast/tone scale adjustments, red-eye correction, and dust/scratch removal.
Ho, hum … sorry I spoke … ICC vs. Kodak, Consistency ‘R’ Us …
Question for dt users: how many of y’all actually save scene-referred work for later output-referred adjustment e.g. for the web, the print shop, your phone, TV, monitor, na-ni-na?
The OP was wondering why he seemed not to need a tonemapper. That he used already processed images (and not raws) as input for darktable came out rather late in the discussion…
And in dt filmic and sigmoid help massaging the range of the scene-referred image to a range the standard LDR output formats can handle…
Sometimes if I need to combine images.
Otherwise, it’s just the editing info dt normally stores. Easier to adapt the edit to the final medium (as that also can involve cropping and downsizing)
As for ICC vs. Kodak: I don’t understand your horror: two well-defined standards can co-exist. The catch is in the “well-defined”… (anyone remembers the discussions when Microsoft had to create an “open” standard for Word documents?)
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Note that @ggbutcher usually uses his own raw processor (rawproc), not darktable, so his way of working may not be directly applicable to darktable. (Please correct me Glenn, if I’m mistaken.)
That is not too say the information is irrelevant; quite the contrary: Glenn has way more technical knowledge than I do.
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That is correct. rawproc hasn’t had much development activity, but v1.4 completely fills my needs both for my shooting and some technical work.
However, that doesn’t mean I’m technically adept. A lot of the heavy lifting in rawproc is done by others’ libraries. I’m just good at gluing things together… 
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Oh, yes it is
@simonb
Maybe you’d like to test my settings for a starting point?
Plus Sigmoid’s contrast 1,7
Because the TIFs are already tonemapped, not linear.
DNG will behave just as regular RAFs, but cleaned and presharpened.
We all appreciate your modesty, but that software of yours is an impressive piece of work!
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Y’haven’t looked at the code, have you??? 
best code is working code
Indeed. Like eating gumbo, don’t ask for the recipe…
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If it tastes good, it must be good 
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You might find putting up a suitably challenging image in the playraw category would let you see how different people approach editing using different free software. Also if you are going to use dox and it offers a DNG output I would try that as it may let DT perform more of its magic.
Thank you so much Michal. With DNG it works much better now. Thank you also for your settings. Just a question for my interest: “Why not deep prime XD2s/XD?” It seems to have even better denoise results as Deep prime (when I compare the views). The same with luminance. Some luminance also seems to make a better noise reduction.
Or do you prefer some small noise which I also would understand. Sometimes I add some with darktable
Thank you also for the tip with sigmoid contrast. Dxo pure raw in combination with darktable is an amazing couple for me.
Indeed, I have written somewhere on this forum it’s my beloved combo and gives quite fast workflow too - just put the SD card in the reader, drag & drop to Pure RAW and write DNGs to the hard drive. As the files are already demosaiced, Darktable runs blazingly fast with them.
Just being precautious - DXO’s manual states that those XD methods might “invent” some image details non existent in the original image, thus possibly creating artifacts. With classic Deep Prime I don’t even have to bother, so I feel safe with large batches.
I agree, however… being able to set luminance noise reduction to zero was the single reason I’ve upgraded from version 3 
I hate chroma noise, but I like luma grain.
Anytime
Try also to incorporate manipulating with Tone Equalizer - insanely powerful, for me especially in portraits to sculpt the light.
In general I’d say Darktable’s tools are state of the art. If you’re not familiar, I recommend e.g. @s7habo videos and various discussions here.
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Oh yes Michal. The same here. Coming from lightroom to DT it was a steep learning curve at the beginning. Not at all intuitive for me and often frustrating. You need someone to take you on the hand and introduce you to darktable step by step.
Now, several videos and months later (especially also from @s7habo) I would anytime prefer darktable over lightroom. I now do not understand why there are not more people recognizing this. Alone the masking tools are superior. It is amazing what such talented people are able to do and I am very grateful for this.
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