This is great, thanks for yours and Freddie’s work. I was looking closely at this feature since it supported Fujifilm, but it got frozen with no progress for a few months. I think this is another great selling point for darktable.
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I think this is just marvellous. I have tried it with a few difficult sunset images, shot directly into the sun, and the result is so far perfect every time. With Inpaint Opposed as the highlight recovery method, Sigmoid defaults and reduce the color compensation slider to taste, I get such smooth, natural gradients from the white sun via a bit of yellow to orange. I also tried some of the same images in Lightroom, but the results there were really ugly, full of clipped ratpiss yellow and harsh transitions. Before this, I always thought LR handled these situations quite well, but now darktable runs in circles around it in this area as well. I might post some examples later, I’m at work now.
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It’s interesting to get different opinions with all this, I think it depends a lot on both the type of images and the user’s processing style (I mean style in a general sense!) I’m rather happy with the sigmoid “experience” so far, but after all, the great thing is that we have both filmic and sigmoid so can use whichever works best for us… obvious I 'spose but it’s good.
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Really fun to see the excitement here and all the testing going on! I will read it all and try to answer any questions and help out with clarifications when needed.
I have actually been contemplating setting the preserve hue value to 50% in the default settings of the module. Would work well enough on a lot of images and invite users to adjust the slider to taste (which I think one absolutely should do!). Interested in your opinion on that idea 
No need to create a new workflow as the workflow is still scene referred as filmic. What we need is a way to select your choice of display transform similar to how you can select between legacy or modern white balance. That option can then be debated on what it should be shipped with.
This is indeed a bit weird when coming from filmic but it’s one of the strengths of the modules in the long run if you ask me. If you still really miss the possibility of clipping white earlier (that is kind of what setting a white point does) then try to increase the display white target a bit, should have a similar effect! And please post images if you have any good examples 
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My thought exactly! I was thinking just a checkbox or something in the preferences, next to the options for scene/display referred workflow, but I don’t know what’s involved…
Just want to say thanks to @jandren too! A great addition I think 
Might it be useful to have a selection between filmic, sigmoid, and base curve? If I understand this correctly, all three of them can be used as the display transform in the scene referred workflow (right?).
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IMO no need for a new setting. This can be already done with auto-applied presets. You can create an auto-applied preset for filmic which disables it and then an auto-applied enabled preset for sigmoid.
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Sounds good, in terms of the selection… I’m not the person to ask about base curve though… 
Good point. I still think that for the ‘new users’ a selection in preferences would make it easier… but not sure.
There were recently several options removed such as ”auto-apply sharpen” (IIRC) for the very reason that it duplicated the preset functionality. I imagine there might be some resistance to adding new similar options, but it can be discussed with the core devs.
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Very true! I mostly wanted to point that a new workflow isn’t necessary. And there is actually a case for not having a display transform in some situations as well. Like digitalizing paintings, the data is already transformed by the artist.
But then it’s photographed or scanned, so where is this situation different from other images?
I know that the dynamic range will already be contained, so you probably don’t need any tone mapping. But that’s not the same as the display transform (basically lin → log)
I wasn’t clear, no new workflow, just a style for users that want something resembling ooc/other editors defaults that’s what newcomers expect when starting. Something that rawtherapee and ART already provide.
After playing a bit more, I found this too… except in this case it was dust clouds… but it plays rather nicely with tone EQ, which I’d often use with filmic anyway, to pull down the highlights so they didn’t get compressed. I’m still playing 
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My thoughs would be here…
I think both will prove useful…image type indeed might dictate a preferred use…
just set the workflow to none and then auto apply sigmoid…if that would be the main one… then easy enough to disable and add the other one to images that you prefer for now anyway…
What is it with the filmic results you like? I’m wondering if filmic users are concentrating on some factor that I don’t think matters as much as the salmon colour “shifts”.
I’ve basically not seen a filmic image that doesn’t have the salmon fire. Some photos show it more clearly than others but it’s almost always there. Skin look like dead salmon in a very unsettling way. Sigmoid RGB ratio also gives a similar dead but not really salmon look. The effect stays but is lessened by Color balance RGB presets. I’ve seen people post filmic images that are really terrible but refrained from commenting. I just can’t understand how people don’t see it.
So far sigmoid with per channel just seems to work. If my initial test are correct this is really brings a quick and mostly correct solution to the vast majority of files. One cool thing is that exposure changes with sigmoid enabled behaves so well.
For my use setting “auto apply pixel defaults” to none and auto applying sigmoid defaults creates a truly great starting point. For convenience I also auto apply the exposure module with unchecked “compensate camera exposure” and exposure set to 0.
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You can even create an auto-apply preset with filmic ‘to disabled’. Then create an auto-apply preset for sigmoid with the defaults you want, and it’ll auto-apply.
I’ve used this for a while to force me to use it…
Nothing I like over sigmoid… they are almost identical, so sigmoid doesn’t bring anything new.
In filmic I hit the ‘auto-white’ button and toggle between maxrgb or luminanceY depending on the look.
With sigmoid I toggle between the two color modes (don’t know the name at the moment) and adjust the skew to taste, which differs on basically every picture.
So workflow style, I don’t think one is easier over the other.
I don’t know the salmon-shifts you talk about. Specially on skin. My skin is never in the highlights area, so (almost) untouched by filmic and sigmoid?