I think this should be fixed in current master. The new automatic workflow (exposure/filmic) should now only auto-apply to new edits and discarded history stacks.
Filmic V4 autoapply pixel workflow defaults question autoapply:
I have a question regarding selecting “scene referred” at the autoapply pixel workflow option.
Aurélien’s video and also the tooltips indicate that this should use “exposure” and “filmic” when starting a new edit of an image.
Unfortunately my install (master 3.1.0-git2144) seems to behave different:
If I have checked this option and create a “virgin” duplicate of an image it applies “Filmic” AND “basecurve” !!
If I re-import the images, then “exposure” and"Filmic" are used. So there it looks fine. But I would also expect this behavior when I add a virgin copy of an image for a new edit.
Has anybody seen the same behavior? Am I expecting something wrong here?
Any hint would be welcome.
Cheers, Martin
dt 3.1.0+2118~gee137f589, Ubuntu 18.04
For me it works as expected. Filmic applied and no basecurve when creating a “virgin” duplicate with duplicate manager.
Did you check if in preferences → processing you accidentally selected auto-apply per camera basecurve presets ?
Edit : Sorry, I made a mistake. I just checked again, the setting I mentioned has no influence. And I could reproduce your issue :
- Launch darktable with setting “display referred”
- Create a duplicate with duplicate manager : everything is fine, basecurve applied
- Change workflow to “scene referred”
- Create another duplicate : basecurve AND filmic applied !
Workaround : Exit and relaunch dt after changing the workflow setting.
All of those preferences state (in the preference tooltip) that they require a restart so this is not a workaround - it’s what you’re supposed to do!
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Hi,
thank you for your input and also confirmation.
Will take a deeper look here, but have the feeling that something is a bit inconsistent. Had the impression, that without restart the changes were somewhat done halfway (as basecurve and filmic) were applied. I would have expected that NO change would be done without restart …
Will play a bit more around and see if I can find a pattern here …
Thx, Martin
You may be right but then if you’re not restarting after making any of these changes then I suspect that any adverse or inconsistent consequences should be unsupported.
I saw the “needs a restart” in the tooltip but I misinterpreted it. I thought that it refers to “display referred” only. Perhaps putting “needs a restart” on top of the tooltip could make things clearer.
Did I ask to get such supported? But I think that such inconsistent behavior is for sure not something you want to see in a software. So if it can be omitted it should be. That’s why I asked for other experiences before filing a bug here.
Even after relaunching, I did come across an old image that, when opened, had both filmic and base curve applied. I assume that it already had base curve enabled previously and that exposure+filmic were applied on top because of having selected the scene-referred workflow.
For now, I will personally select “none” for “auto-apply pixel workflow defaults” and enable filmic manually to ensure consistency.
(Also, I am not sure that I see why exposure is automatically applied with +1 EV specifically. That seems to assume that middle grey falls at a specific raw level below sensor saturation (3.5 stops, right?), but there is no reason for that to be the case, and using in-camera metering, that’s going to vary a lot from camera to camera. Apparently, some Panasonic cameras even have negative highlight headroom, meaning that if you expose for a 18 % reflectance card, then 100 % is already beyond sensor saturation.)
Makes sense
Depends what version of master you are running. This shouldn’t happen on current master - the filmic and exposure defaults should only be auto-applied for a new image or when you discard your history.
No. I was just making the point that there’s not much point investigating it.
Another suggestion would be to popup a dialog for every setting in preferences which needs a restart. This dialog could appear in addition to the hints in tooltips. This dialog could look like this :
You changed parameter xyz, this requires a restart of dt
- Option 1 : restart later
- Option 2 : restart now
- Option 3 : cancel (return to previous setting)
where the third option could also be excluded. LibreOffice (for example) behaves like this. IMHO this could avoid misinterpretations and faulty operation.
I’ve already had some suggestions in Missing Close / Save button in preference window. · Issue #5293 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub
popping up dialog on every “restart required” change would be annoying if user’s doing bunch of those configs (eg fresh install by experienced user) so option 1 should come with visible gui wargning that “changes that need restart were made, plz restart at earliest convinience” 
Yes, I see this “problem”. Alternatively the warning could appear one-time when the preferences dialog is closed and one (ore more) modified setting(s) require a restart. And in any case the warning should contain the message that risk of malfunction exists.
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This is my preferred solution.
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Me too!
Thanks Chris do you have any idea is that recent or was it fixed sometime ago??
If you mean the fix to ensure that the scene-referred defaults aren’t added to old edits, it was merged to master 3 days ago (better initialisation of history stack by elstoc · Pull Request #5414 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub)
Just to be consistent with the rest of the darktable preferences I’ve left the “(needs a restart)” at the bottom but put it on a new line so it’s clearer that it applies to the preference as a whole.