I have an image that, I think, looks acceptable using the filmic v5 defaults, and looks much worse with v6 (many of the photos I took that day exhibit the same). I was taking photos in the shade of the surrounding houses, with patches of direct sunlight also reaching the scene (for example, on the walls of the buildings).
You may treat this as a PlayRaw, if you wish, but I’m mostly looking for darktable advice / versions, without much tweaking. I think I just prefer the v5 look in general (not only for this series).
filmic v6, maxRGB norm; note the loss of contrast (e.g., in the trousers, but also how the striped shirts and the blue bags in the background and the blue coats):
filmic v6, maxRGB norm, with color calibration using a sample from one of the men’s white trousers. Note the overall yellow look, and the loss of detail on the fish, especially the tail fin.
Close-up of the last two. Note how we have more contrast in the trousers – and also how blue the original shadows were:
filmic v6 maxRGB norm, with the default ‘as shot in camera’ vs
The raw file and one of the XMPs (only the filmic and color calibration settings vary between the images): 2022-04-25_16-17-28_DSC_0451.NEF (20.6 MB) (updated with the correct raw file)
I’m experiencing the same. I used v5 and power norm rgb for pretty much everything. With v6 I often set the norm depending on the lighting - especially the highlights - of a photo. For sunlight stuff luminancy Y and none often work better for me. And in artificial light luminanc Y and euclidean is sometimes better. Personally I’m fine with that, since I have the options to choose from.
Actually I find that color rendering in dt 4.0/3.9 is significantly better than in earlier versions. However, I am not sure whether it’s filmic with new color science or color balance with the new darktable uniform colorspace or something else.
I want to make clear that I’m not displeased in any way. I also think there is an improvement. For me personally it’s just not the v5 rgb power norm no-brainer it used to be. Especially daylight photos are now prone to this blue tint in the whites that kofa showed. And blown highlights are often harder to handle for me. Note well in rgb power norm. But I think if there was one ultimate norm, there wouldn’t be all the options. And with v6 none got usefull, which helps too.
It may not have been exactly this but for sure because there is not the same level of desaturation then certain norms well create this in extreme highlights… I think the extreme luminance saturation and choosing a better norm or none plus the usual add more white rel exposure were some of the suggestions… no free lunch before people didn’t like all the desaturation and now you have to manage the side effects of the change…some of this was tangled up in some of the threads in highlight recovery
You can see some of this behaviour even in this photo…so just guessing but setting the exposure around 2 EV is not bad but pushes the white shirts…default filmic v6 with maxRGB will have strong bluish hue and not much contrast… you can select an area on the shirt with the color picker to monitor the channels…watching how they shift…
Switching to none or luminance as a norm and shifting the highlights slider and extreme highlights towards the shadows with extreme luminance also set to desaturate the highlights can produce nice white shirts…so somewhere on this spectrum might be what someone would want…
Secondly you can do it by using HLR in filmic instead…if you fix the blown highlights this way the norms don’t create the same issue… this is with max RGB but doing some HLR in filmic…
Indeed the blue in trousers in the max RGB image is due to the fact that v6 has much less desaturation in highlights than v5. You can tune this a little with the extreme luminance saturation slider. Also, max RGB is expected to flatten the local contrast a little. Different norms can give vastly different results. With v6, also the no preservation mode can be used with confidence since it’s now actually hue-preserving, you just get plenty of that desaturation in highlights.
Yes, I think with filmic v6 this may be more often necessary (but that’s why we have them).
I think for these photos (I’ve tried a couple more) preserve chrominance = no, luminance Y or RGB euclidean norm with extreme luminance saturation potentially turned up (so it re-introduces some colour in the highlights) works quite well.
I do the exactly the same although, if the highlights are not blown…I have been trying a lot of edits with no filmic and just instances of the TE… I find its hard not to lose highlight detail with filmic. the compression just blurs it… I do have a unity preset that I sometimes use and then rely on the tone eq to shape the image…
When 4.0 is release, we’ll release a new URL for the docs. Both of what you’ve linked are the same thing at different URLs: the master branch of the docs repo.
Going to have a play with this later, cause I’m curious to get to grips with this.
I noticed that latest commits to filmic (or something else in the last few weeks ) seems to suddenly removed the need to use highlight reconstruction for me.
In areas which are clearly indicated as sensor clipped (and thus are magenta with no modules enabled and lowered exposure ), i needed to enable highlight reconstruction to get rid of the magenta a few weeks back . Now i don’t often anymore , as if filmic sees that it’s extreme luminance and doesn’t preserve the magenta .
Like flannelhead said , only in some cases do i still get a bit of magenta and start toying with highlight reconstruction.
