It was a very warm after sunset sky over an autumn landscape. More or less the tones of my original edit.
@anon41087856
What you say makes sense and you get here more than I’ve got from this image (I love shadows and midtones of your first image). Indeed clipped highlights are disturbing.
This said, I wanted to illustrate that Log + S curve (filmic like) manage quite well shadows (one curve controls the other one) and midtones, but tend to sacrify the highlights (both curves compresses the highlights). The @Carmelo_DrRaw photoflow image seems to confirm this.
Saturation remains for me a difficulty, at least for this kind of image, to get more or less the right one both on shadows and higlights.
I share the need to desaturate the shadows but I may not want to desaturate the highlights…
Then balance shadows/highlight
s has another pupose (shaping the S curve) than managing saturation. Mixing the effects doesn’t turn the module easier to use. Independent saturation balance would make more sense to me.