In the end I think it comes down to workflows…the good thing about DT is that you get a real sense of the raw without too much intervention and then there are all the tools and many ways to come up with a workflow that gets results and at the same time suits the style of the user…For some this works the other way and is overwhelming and the learning curve to get to a workflow is too daunting.
You seem to have found yours…
Your example is a nice edit but also its a starting image that maybe you could easily get by with the jpg… for example using the old dehaze preset and shadows and highlights on your screen shot jpg give me an image on quick review that is equal or maybe even better in some spots …but it becomes this vs that… I think some images can only be saved by editing the raw for sure but many esp if they are just going to be posted on a screen for sharing could easily be done using touched up jpg files… This is another element that often isn’t mentioned ie what is the intended use of the edit… Just some random thoughts from me…
@s7habo: Dear Boris, thanks for making all these very nice tutorials! I actually wonder, why you are using brilliance of highlights and shadows to increase contrast. Is there a technical difference to the contrast slider of the same module in preserving the hue or is it just about a finer control?
This is why we’ve got a section in the manual to cover a basic processing workflow. Of course I can’t make people read the manual but it really should be the first port of call for someone who’s finding it a challenge.
My wife is the same way with me any time I shoot. Thats why I save raw in one card and jpeg in another. She can have the jpegs immediately. And I personally think my camera jpegs are pretty decent. The photos I edit are the cream of the crop anyway.
Thank you for your sharing your expert knowledge so generously, the video was very useful (as were the previous ones).
One quick question: I remember Aurelien advising against a heavy use of the Perceptual Brilliance Grading section of the Color Balance RGB module in one of his video, because the underlying algorithm was not very robust. Indeed, I noticed that if you push the highlights slider a bit too much to the right when there are strong highlights in the image, large white blobs make a sudden appearance. Did you notice this and have any thoughts about it?
It’s tied to all the gamut mapping I believe so when you push to the upper border you get white or there was an attempted fix but that went to black I think…I think it’s known but not fixed yet
Yes, this is a known issue. I have written a bug report about it:
The temporary solution to this is to turn off filmic highlight reconstruction (quoted from flannelhead’s post):
“[…] Turn the threshold all the way up to 6 EV and transition slider all the way down to 0.25. At least with those settings I could no longer reproduce this sort of artefacts. […]”
Great video Boris. This will be very useful esp for many new users of DT. I have one question. I notice that you don’t set the mask in rgb CB module, even just with the autopickers… would this not give you slightly better results for selected tonal adjustment… So setting the white and grey contrast fulcums using the autopickers??
In this example I did not use it because I had good result immediately without these settings.
Where this can play a big role is for example when editing photos with sunset. With fulcrum and masks you can adjust the color transitions much better.
Maybe I should choose such an example at the beginning of the next episode and demonstrate it.
Ya out of habit I set them (white fulcrum and contrast gray) every time assuming it will give the best mask for shadows mids and highlights for a particular image and therefore make the adjustments selected more targeted. Its also quite amazing some times just tweaking mask middle gray fulcrum to the left or right… I admit I don’t often play with the fall off sliders… Just the 3 mentioned… Your videos are always so very impactful it might be nice to see you explore this aspect and demonstrate how you would leverage that mask to enhance the adjustments…
Thanks a lot @s7habo. Your demonstration of hue shift in darktable and gimp (2:07 ff) and the following demonstration of hue preservation is excellent!
This video is a must watch not only for portrait photographers.
Really nice, It took me some time to get what you explain here, hue shift really is a big one on the annoyance to get rid of.
I also really liked the other video you pointed to and how he highlight the fact that desaturation on highlight convey additional sensation of brightness when the coloured zone/object is already at max luminance.
