DT4.0 filmic v6.0 - 'mid-tones saturation' is gone

Software darktable
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With the new v6 filmic I’m missing the ‘look - mid-tones saturation’ slider. My camera, Canon 77D, out of the box had somewhat bland colors and adding 8% of mid-tones saturation was just right.

With the new v6.0 color science in filmic this option is gone. How can I get a similar effect another way with Darktable 4.0 ?

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Use v5…v6 was implemented for all those that complained about the way v5 worked…sounds like ti worked great for you so why not just use it??

1 Like
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The ‘color balance rgb’ module was created to do all things like saturation / vibrancy and more. And had a preset to add ‘basic colorfulness’, and new ones. You could try that.

(Basically, it was determined that saturation was not what filmic was made for, so it was separated, IIRC).

Although color-balance-rgb has a lot of tools, there is a general ‘global chroma’, ‘global saturation’ ‘global vibrance’ so quickly add something like this.

And, like @priort said, you can always switch filmic back to v5 mode in the tools/options tab (don’t know the exact title) if you can’t live without it.

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Ya @Markus_b my response was a quick one but as you seem happy with v5 and have come to find that your 8% bump is a good result then IMO there is no need to move away from that just because there is a new version.

With filmic the norms are always a big part of the end result and with the new math in v6 they will be different as well. So you can experiment with v6 but there might not be a lot to be gained since you have a workflow with filmic already.

Filmic is designed to be used with color balance rgb and a couple of generic presets are provided for that so you could move to v6 and then try them or try to get your own preset in that module to bring back your look but again it might be more effort and to what end if an 8% bump works in v5…

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Thanks I’ll try out color-balance-rgb and how it works for me.

I tend to try adapt to the tools as they evolve. As filmic v5 had the simple fix I just applied this to all new pictures. But I may find a similar or better effect with color-balance-rgb.

Thanks !

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The new look V6 filmic took me a bit of time to accept for the reasons you mention. However, I now use it all the time. I usually add some basic colorfulness preset form color balance RGB. Very controlable options once you get use to the change. But V5 is still in the drop down options if you like.