I totally agree with you Boris after all Photography is much more than a craft … its an art… Darktable is a very capable TOOL for CREATIVE expression (among others paid or free), the camera and lens are too… still as someone said its not the pan that makes the cook 
Really happy to hear that !!!
Thank you once again and keep up the good work @s7habo
And of course, switching to a different program means retraining, which takes time. Time a professional may not be able or willing to spend, unless they are sure the investment is worth it.
I think there’s also another (maybe closely related) factor. FWIW, this is just my observation and neither a criticism nor in-depth analysis since both approaches are valid.
Many users prefer to work on a more purely image-visual level with a little less obvious color science than darktable exposes. For example, in terms of UI there might just be sliders to adjust something, rather than the underlying options that support and affect the slider. Although the exposed color science has defaults that – at that level – can be mostly ignored if desired, it’s still there competing for attention in the UI. Plus, the capability to make “underlying” adjustments in one area can affect other areas, so that complicates matters if the user wishes to keep it simple. That’s intrinsically neither good nor bad, it just is. It’s kind of like an automatic transmission rather than a manual – Not as precise nor ultimately as (theoretically) powerful, but since it’s sufficient for their needs there’s no compelling reason to change.
Again, I’m not saying one is better nor worse, just different. Speaking purely for myself, the ideal tool would have the power of darktable but a slightly more visual and less "color-sciency "UI (or maybe just have the color science more hidden). But that’s highly personal to my preferences. Then again, the power of darktable may be inextricably tied to the ability to make underlying manipulations.
Open to ideas, but it seems like a very direct trade off between control and easy of use.
I suspect you’re exactly right.
The idea of always hiding the more detailed / “non-mandatory” advanced capabilities behind an Advanced button (in UI terms) is tempting but I don’t know if it’s worth the effort considering those advanced capabilities are basically what makes darktable what it is. Also, where do you draw the line, i.e., what constitutes “advanced”, broadly speaking? I guess you could have multiple UI personalities (like Hugin does) but that’s even more work for a potentially minor usefulness gain.
Again, that’s just my personal take on it anyway.
A fairly radical approach to this question is to separate between the simple use of (selection between) presets, and where one start to move sliders oneself - UI tools that could be hidden until one depart form just the use of presets.
But I agree a basic character of dt is its granular control, and initially hide most of that, may be somewhat awkward.
New Episode: Color harmonies part 2:
@s7habo is there a significant advantage to using iterations of color calibration rather than using color zones? I know color zones is display referred. And, since it is display referred are you just trying to avoid any artifacts that might be produced by using it? Or, does color calibration offer more control and/or precision?
Yes.
The precision of the masking. Masks and masking refinement options are unbeatable. Among other things, because you do not always want to change certain color in the whole image.
With channel mixer I can change colors much more precisely/selectively across the color spectrum. And that’s in addition to masking.
Color Zones is more intuitive and also more effective when you want to make rough changes. But if you make the changes after the tone mapper, you run the risk of creating artifacts:
Awesome. Thanks for confirming my assumption and explaining it well.
After further close study of Boris Hajdukovic’s YouTube episode 56 (explaining the channel Mixer) and 57 (processing high dynamic range raw files), I revisited this image of the river Derwent in Borrowdale, English Lake district. It was late evening and the light was reducing rapidly but I was attracted by the colourful sky. I carefully set the exposure so that the sky was just short of highlight clipping but that meant the remainder looked very underexposed.
I used two instances of tone equaliser to balance luminosity and increase contrast. I set WB with colour calibration then removed some red from the sky with channel mixer. I used two instances of Colour balance RGB one of them to liven up the green using a mask. Finished off with an instance of diffuse and sharpen for local contrast and a 2nd for sharpening.
2nd image is unedited.
Comments welcome.
CC BY-NC 4.0.
Thanks for the second part, it is really informative — by the time one has done this 3–4 times, the process is fairly mechanical, but it is good to see various color harmonies.
I appreciate that you have a “light touch” and do not always constrain all the colors to the mold of various harmonies. The end result may have less “pop” than carefully graded fashion images, but it looks natural and pleasing.
Finally, a question: would hue shift in color balance rgb with masking be an alternative to color calibration for this purpose?
Yes, these first two episodes on color harmonies were more about - what I will call - “extended white balance”, i.e. improving the color comnposition without strong color changes. The next two will be more about color grading, where it’s more about improving/changing the mood.
Sure. That and 4way tab in color balance rgb will come up more in next two episodes about using color harmonies for color grading.
I wanted to go slowly into this topic to give viewers the opportunity to become aware of the color composition of the photo before venturing into color grading, which is a much more delicate undertaking and requires a bit more knowledge and caution about selecting and balancing color combinations.
Watching your episodes of the color harmonies is like leveling up. I mean, sometimes you get an eye opener and your horizon widens… it is like that.
Thank you, it’s really appreciated!!
Thank you for this excellent tutorial on a subject I really want to learn more about. I’ve tried to apply the techniques you demonstrate in this video, but I find on a lot of photos that I can’t fit the main colors of the scene within any of the color harmonies (without it looking unnatural). Are there specific types of photos where this will work well and others where it won’t?
For example, this image:
The only one that seemed to roughly fit the colors was the triad, but altering them to fit within the harmony causes the grass to look unnatural:
I could try something else like tetrad, but then would I need to artificially create some color to fill the 4th part of the harmony?
Thanks!
Maybe a bit more blue in the green channel… or other option to pull green away from yellow…you might have pushed too far that way??
Before considering what color harmony will fit, you should first make white balance. If colors are distorted, the color harmony will not be correct either. In your case, the photo looks very bluish. Hier after white-balancing:
The next step is to see what is the main subject, and how does it correspond color-wise with the surroundings. Then think about the color harmony that can help to emphasize the subject.
The cherry is the main subject, and we have “cross” in Vectorscope, so either tetrad or square will fit:
When I select square, yellow and blue need to be adjusted (with appropriate color saturation) and I have color matched the photo:
You can also try tetrad to see if it fits better.
Thank you, this is a very helpful explanation of what I was missing!
New episode: Color harmonies part 3:
