filmic, a personal view

That would be a first log-like curve like this:

Followed by a contrast S-curve (sort of) like that:

But you see the drawback of not handling the saturation properly: blacks get a weird red saturation while highlights get completely washed away. Notice that I didn’t take time to tweak the curves to match filmic’s result, because creating a good log-like curve with spline interpolation is prone to cusps and really tricky.

Maybe I should drink water instead of :champagne:

That’s by design.

You will end up with out-of-gamut colors in highlights if you do so.

The non-linear part of the curve does not preserve RGB ratios, that is everything out of the latitude bounds. So it makes sense handle saturation depending on the luminance adjustements (that’s what every tonemapping algo does without telling you).

First of all, 15 years of digital photography have made people used to oversaturated and overcontrasted pictures. So that’s something to keep in mind when you compare “film-like” digital processing and “post-digital-era” processing. It’s designed to be softer.

Then, if you want to protect the highlights from desaturation, you might have to make them less highlights, that is use an exposure module, decrease the exposure, and selectively mask the highlights. Or use the neutral density filter module. Or wait for this: A tone equalizer in darktable ?

The thing is, a global transfer function like filmic will always have some caveats. The behavior shown in the samples above is what’s expected from a film emulation: compress highlights, raise mid-tones, desaturates bounds. It might not suit every need, but it’s not a one-size-fits-all anyway.

Alternatively, give more space to your white point (increase the white exposure), so your sky is not interpreted as pure white, and less desaturated:

But this falls back to basic Adam’s zone system, and deciding in which “zone” you put your sky. At the end, you need to think “how would I have done that with film ?” and translate that into filmic.

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Using your exact settings and with no other module in use (except white-balance), my curve is slightly different to the above and the results far ‘softer’. What other adjustments did you make?

Exposition: black level = 0.0050
Local contrast : default params + highlights = 152 %
Dehaze : strength = 0.10, distance = 0.250

The curve shouldn’t be different though.

Not a big difference but significant I think
shaper

set your intent to “contrasted” (== cubic spline interpolation). That looks like the “faded” intent (== Catmull-Rom centripetal spline interpolation).

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OK … I see that you used ‘contrasted’ … I had faded
My error

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Thanks @anon41087856. Makes sense !

My try to get close to @anon41087856’s result, using just 2 modules in Rawtherapee (auto-matched curve, and color toning w/ color regions)


Edit: I also turned on local contrast and dehaze

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See the reddish oversaturation near blacks ? I wonder if the tree in the foreground is in-gamut.

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Yes I see… It’s a bit better here I think:

Now, can you match that ? :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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No idea… I may try tomorrow… With just a laptop and a trackpad, it takes too much effort to try now.
I confess that your results are sweet!

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Nice one!
I guess your edit is the result of filmic + something more, or is it just the filmic module? If not, for the sake of comparison, could you post the result of filmic alone?

Thanks!

I thin dehaze and local contrast are important to add some “clarity” to that foggy scene. I also used those in my Rawtherapee rendering (I forgot about it, I edited my first post).

It would be that, with exposure and filmic alone:

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@sguyader , please could you post your PP3, I’d like to see what you did.

Here you go:
20181109_Cahuzeres_221.NEF.pp3 (12.7 KB)

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Certainly it is a different view … but it would be an end direction that I would pursue or find interesting. But that is why creativity is such a personal thing and photography is simply one tool in our arsenal.

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As close as I could get with RawTherapee.

Phyweyland-Filmic-20181109_Cahuzeres_221.NEF.pp3 (10.8 KB)

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Not sure if this rendering adds to the late comparison on filmic tools, but here goes a PhotoFlow alternative version.
First I got rid of some of the “pissy” yellow (which I prefer to think of as Titan yellow) with White Balance.
Then applied dynamic range compression and new filmic.
At last, three tone curves to get the punch (I think I could do it with only one, but I got lazy…)


20181109_Cahuzeres_221.pfi (49.4 KB)

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