My answer was in the context of having a general (or in my case camera specific) neutral starting point.
I’m not all that pleased with the default setting (and the presets) that filmic rgb comes with out-of-the-box as a starting point. This might still be a partial (?) lack of understanding on my side of things and/or the fact that I do start with the exposure module to set the exposure (=set middle grey to 18.45% in filmic).
I’ve tried starting with the neutral settings @s7habo shows in his latest on a handful of images (different dynamic ranges/camera’s) and am liking this starting point much better, even when I compare them to the 18.45% based presets that I’ve experimented with.
And @anon41087856 reply makes clear that we can only approximate some sort of neutral state. I do need to experiment with the values he mentions in combination with my camera’s to see if there is an even better “neutral” starting point for my hardware.
But all the above is just a starting point, things absolutely need adjusting from that point on for that specific scene!
For me, the ideal starting point would be the following:
exposure module with color picker (point and area) for middle gray (linear 18% gray), so that exposure module automatically brightens (or darkens) the image based on the selection.
filmic without medium grey slider (18% should be fixed value) with “neutral” position as @anon41087856 mentioned: Contrast 1 Latitude 100% White exposure 2.45 EV and Black exposure -16 EV.
the exposure value from the exposure module can then be added to the white exposure in Filmic to start compressing dynamic range.
This separates exposure from compression logically and makes it much easier to understand what each module does.
It does make more sense logically, although I’m not yet sold on getting rid of the middle grey luminance slider and hardcode it to 18.45%. Maybe after testing/playing around with the neutral setting, be it yours or a adjusted one, for a while I find that using it isn’t needed any more. I’m not unquestionably against removing it, by the way.
Setting it to 18.45% by default would be a good start.
@anon41087856 explained somewhere (here?) that the defaults as of now are a bit better “ux” since you start with ok-ish image, but actual good value would be 18.45%, since it makes curve more well behaved if you need tweaking.
Could you get this by using the auto mode of exposure…I would have to see what settings might allow calculation of middle gray at 18.45 %?? Not sure if percentile could be set to approximate this??
I wanted to have it at the end of the pixelpipe so that no artifacts are created when other modules come after it. I often do this with other modules as well.
For example, color balance module always comes before Filmic. But if I want to make additional contrast or other corrections after Filmic, I move color balance (or new instance) over the Filmic.
Interesting I had not really looked at the order of those two. CB is always tweaked after filmic so its interesting that it executes before….maybe good practice to use CB changes related to WB and color grading in one
instance and contrast and tone ones in a second instance……
Any other re-ordering that you do often or for special circumstances??
It’s like cooking, first the water comes and then the noodles. The question is, when does the salt come? You can put salt first in water and then in pasta. Some people think salt should come at the end, otherwise the pasta will be too salty if you put salt at the beginning.
There are also people who break all the rules and put noodles in a pot first and then water. This makes them a little brown, which enhances the taste. It is even possible that they take a completely new path and thus bring completely new tastes into culinary worlds.
The cool thing about darktable is that you have many ingredients on the table, which you can combine together.
And even cooler is, if you put them together wrong, you can always undo everything and start over again with a different combination.
At some point you learned what the ingredients do and how to combine them.
Of course it is nice to get some tips from other chefs on how to combine the ingredients well. This is right, and can be a good help in the beginning.
The danger is that you get stuck with these tips and always cook the same recipe.
Be courageous and play around a bit. You will not break anything. At least not what you can’t fix quickly.
I’m definitely ready to help if there are any difficulties.
Sure I will …I did at some point play around with it but I was not sure of the module order and as I have the bad habit of compressing to keep my history compact I had a few times where I moved a module and I was not sure where to put it back to revisit the difference. I guess if I do it enough I will remember where they should be…I think if you hold some thing down you get a pipeline list I will do that and print it off for reference…I guess I could use duplicates if I am going to mess around with the order…
I hope you don’t mind me asking a slightly off-topic question about the way you
present your (snapshot) end result.
You do this full screen and I am able to reproduce this by first collapsing the right panel, then the left panel, taking a snapshot, unhide the left panel, select top in history then selecting the snapshot, go full screen again by collapsing the left panel. A lot of steps that I do not see in your video.
Is this just clever video editing on your side or is there a better way to do al this. For instances: is it possible to collapse both left and right panel at the same time.
Please let me know if you don’t want this off-topic thing in this thread, I’ll remove this post.
I have also bound a key to create the snapshot (S) in preferences - shortcuts - modules - snapshot - take snapshot
I then do this by first selecting the first step in the history, pressing TAB, pressing “s” key, pressing TAB again to have both side menus again, activate Snapshot, press TAB again and then I have Snapshot in the window without side menus.
Yeah, but I think it’s normal. The new colour has to be calculated and that takes time. You also have this delay if you lighten or darken the standard color very much. My problem is rather that chroma offset sliders are connected to the saturation slider, so you can’t change hue without increasing saturation.
(I am not a stickler for such things but some are!)
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