I’m trying to redefine my workflow which currently uses RT for basic adjustments, including auto exposure. The image is then passed on to DT for the remainder of processing. Occasionally the image is passed on to GIMP for fune tuning.
I think I could probably do everything within DT now, but as DT doesn’t seem to have an auto exposure feature, I’ll need to replicate this somehow, potentially as a style (if possible).
I’m hoping someone(s) will be able to assist. If there is another way of applying an auto exposure scenario I’d be similarly interested.
If all this seems a bit weird, then maybe if someone could point to a YT clip of how to set an initial style that would give the same effect, a starting point as it were, that would be awesome too.
By autoexposure do you mean the autolevels in RT??
There is a levels tool in DT and it has an auto button but in the scene-referred workflow your goal is to set middle grey with exposure and not the boundries with something like autolevels… then when that anchor is set you use either sigmoid or filmic to map your tones on either side of that anchor…
As noted in @tankist02 reply you can use the picker and do an exposure that will at the start be based on the whole image using a 50% target value for lightness…this is often good and works okay with the tonemappers.
You can modify this by selecting your subject of interest or an element that should be middle grey and you will get an exposure calculation uses that target roi…
If you leave filmic and sigmoid off for the moment that often generates an image that has what appear to be blown highlights…don’t worry… its nailing your midtones that is the key in the modern workflow of DT…
Finally the exposure module does have an automatic setting that also doesn’t do a bad job in most cases out of the gate…
Hi @Baldrick, as already stated auto exposure certainly exists in DT. The exposure module in DT is very versatile. The default target position is 50% lightness, but if you are shooting a series of images where this is not appropriate then you can change that value. I do this a lot when preparing images that will be stitched together as a panorama outside of DT. The exposure module can also overwrite or respect camera compensation which is good for me because I usually do auto exposure bracketing to cover my butt when taking photographs.
Maybe the new darktable camera styles could be a suitable starting point for you in DT. My main camera that I own is a Canon R7 and you can see I have created a few styles of my own to quickly get me started with my editing.
BTW, I personally have a slightly unique approach to initial exposure in DT when editing raw files. If using filmic as the tone mapper I follow the generally recommended approach of using the exposure module to set the middle grey value to an optimal position and auto exposure is often sufficient for this. However, I mainly use Sigmoid for my tone mapping and take an unorthodox approach. I set the exposure to optimise the highlights, much like I do in my camera. Then I have numerous modules in DT that can recover the midtones and shadows. These modules include the shadow and highlights module, the tone equalizer module, the color balance RGB module and additional instances of the exposure module with localised masks. This approach is probably not recommended by many people, but it works well for me and to my mind seems a sensible approach to tackle high dynamic range images. Reconstructing highlight details is challenging but pulling details out of shadows is much easier. I respect that others will not agree with my logic, but it works for me. I do not advocate this approach if using filmic as the tone mapper.
