Filmic - adjusting with Levels vs Exposure module

[anon41087856]

@Dave22152

This advice seems to depart from the guidance that I’ve seen from the write-up and video tutorials, where the recommendation is to first set exposure and then adjust the mid-grey slider.

There is no point in setting both exposure AND scene mid-grey, they do exactly the same thing. It’s either on or the other. I mean, you can set up both, but that will only add one step, and no benefit.

As I said, set filmic grey to 9% or set filmic grey to 18% AND add +1 EV in exposure, you will get the exact same result. The difference is, in the former, your filmic S curve will be de-centered so adjusting its shape might be more wonky.

@Dave22152

But in the same light I would think a better workflow for a module is to have all the necessary controls for a module within that module - even if it does cause some redundancy elsewhere.

But that’s just a matter of ordering the UI so both controls are close from each other. Duplicating features is only a less straightforward way of doing it.

@Dave22152

I would only argue for keeping levels, while redundant and possibly limited compared to other modules, because its a standard tool that most reasonably experienced users recognize and use and is therefore helpful for newcomers to transition to DT.

I would just love if users focused more on what the tool does, rather than on how the tool looks. Because the critics we hear most of the time is darktable having 5 different ways to do the same exact thing, and then people get confused because, in their head, there is an exact 1:1 correspondence between UI widget and image processing filters, so 2 different widgets should perform 2 different operations, and they try using them all while they only undo in one what the did in the previous.