Wow, 3.0 is several years behind. Power of FOSS, I guess.
LOL I used PS7 from 2001 up to about 2012 as no matter how many times I tired GIMP I just couldn’t get use to it LOL. My problem with GIMP was I could not get used to the tool icons and what tool they represented. Discovered Krita and after two days all was good 
I just wanted to add that that module is not new… tone equalizer is preferred, technically speaking. I think the big difference in dt 4.2.1 is the new highlight reconstruction algos?
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It’s a pity that such a large percentage of the edits posted show the very highlight reconstruction failure that the OP was complaining about, and contrasting with the simple, reliable, no-fuss reconstruction of highlights that he got from Lightroom.
This thread really serves to emphasise that DT really should be delivered with a default highlight recovery that is as reliable and fuss-free as almost all the software we get from camera manufacturers and the big independents.
Yes, the power and flexibility of DT highlights recovery is fantastic, and appreciated, but we shouldn’t be seeing so many problems that need addressing.
Now, I will close by contradicting my above rant: I ran the OP’s file in my DT 4.2.0 and the default ‘inpaint opposed’ highlight recovery worked fine! 
I then proceeded with a quick personal edit of the OP image and got this look, just sharing for fun.
PK1_3540.DNG.xmp (14.8 KB)
cheers
so then?
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Yep, that’s the funny thing about this thread - it was started when dt was indeed lacking a decent HLR algo, but now, in 4.2 the OP’s issue no longer exists - as you found. The new default HLR settings work perfectly on 95% now, instead of, um, 30%? before.
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This image was one of the many images we (@Iain @garagecoder and me) investigated in depth while developing “opposed” and “segmentation based”. In images like this a smooth transition from non-highlights to reconstructed-because-blown-out was sort of a challenge. So if you evaluate the different algos and applications handling such issues → watch out for those parts of the image
About the 30% in question. I would also use a question mark here While deciding to make “opposed” the new default we checked for “how many images fail” on the algorithm and in fact there are very few (maybe the 5% you mentioned). With the old clip algo we also had only few images failing completely (well we had a constant color shift due to white balance - let’s forget this now) but we had a failure rate of close to 100% if we wanted any detail recovered
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Seeing the good results of that effort of yours, we can just say Thanks a lot for the work done!
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Thanks for all the work you put in! My 30% figure was a bit (very) unscientific. I was thinking more of images where the image stands all falls by large blown areas… like this one… as opposed to 30% of images all together. But sorry - didn’t mean dt was all that bad before!
Haven’t played with darktable for quite some time and I want to get rid of the rust that has been building up…
This one seemed a nice one to start with again. I remember doing this one using RawTherapee when it was originally posted and having a rather hard time to get a meh result.
The one below isn’t perfect, there’s for example a small cloud cluster that isn’t prominent enough for my taste, but it isn’t all that hard to get to the result shown here:
darktable 4.3.0+978 (14.4 KB)
In dt 4.4.2 the problem simply does not exist. Highlight reconstruction with default settings (inpaint opposed) fixes it. Decompression with filmic and tone eq, local contrast with diff & sharpen, small color adjustments using cc channel mixer.
PK1_3540.DNG.xmp (10.0 KB)
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Hello,
Here’s my colorful interpretation of this beautiful photo.
Reading this thread, it’s easy to see how Darktable has evolved.
PK1_3540.DNG.xmp (24.2 KB)
Darktable 4.5 & Sigmoid + one of the profiles I use for my Pentax K-1
Pentax K-1 Camera Vibrant.icc (528 Bytes)
Greetings from Brussels,
Christian
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Yes, it’s certainly a good example this one… it caused no end of issues back in 3.8 or whatever was current when this thread started. Go DT!
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I really like the proposal of @hanatos with vkdt. I leave mine with Ansel (DT fork).
PK1_3540.DNG.xmp (9,9 KB)
Cheers
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