It’s always nice to pick up pictures from others and try your editing skills on!
Here is my attempt using the latest Sigmoid branch that I’m slowly progressing on.
_MG_0653.CR2.xmp (45.8 KB)
It needed some fiddling back and forth with the sigmoid contrast and skew parameters as I haven’t implemented good orthogonality between them yet. But not too much really and the majority of the work is performed in other modules anyway, and that should be the case when using the filmic module as well.
Note that I try to stay scene-referred in my edit, i.e. no modules above the display mapping (read filmic or in my case sigmoid). The only module that I prefer in display-referred space is the wonderful color zones module. That one really needs a scene-referred sibling!
I basically wanted the blown-out highlights to go fully white as the highlight reconstruction isn’t very good in darktable atm and I believe it should be bright as that is where the sun is. I then used a combination of masked exposure modules and the tone equalizer to lift (dodge) the grass and bring down (burn) the clouds to my liking. A bit of local contrast as icing on the top.
As for this usability thing of filmic. My personal feeling is that exposes a lot more control than it can give. It thus gives a false impression on what it actually can do (read: a masked exposure can take you very far) as well as being a bit inefficient to work with. You usually need to change multiple covariant settings for changing one single effect especially if you try to pay attention to the validity of the curve.