I did fiddle with that, ‘back in the day’ as it were.
I also did use v.5 with no preservation at one point.
Dunno really - I think my skills have got (a little bit!) better over time, and I would probably be more able to get filmic to do what I want now. There’s a lot which is just down to approach I reckon.
3 Likes
I have switched over to Sigmoid the moment it became available. Highlight color used to be my primary criticism of darktable. Perhaps it’s a matter of personal taste. How should a hot sunset roll off?
- Fade orange to white, as in Sigmoid with color preservation?
- Fade orange to salmon, as in Filmic?
- Fade orange to yellow, as in Sigmoid without color preservation?
Whichever you choose, will apply not just to sunsets and fire, but also to skin tones. To my eyes, a slow fade to yellow, then white, looks best in most cases. Yellow is “brighter” than orange, so that makes visual sense as a brightening of orange once orange hits the ceiling of its gamut. Salmon just looks categorically wrong to me, as it looks like a brightness reversal.
With modern Sigmoid, you can even choose the highlight decomposition color. In truth, though, that’s an adjustment for special applications. In almost all cases, I’m fine with Sigmoid with 50 color preservation.
10 Likes
Great topic. Loads of useful info and experiences
3 Likes
This reflects my experience as well. After initial frustrations with Filmic, my skills and understanding got to the stage where I could get the results I wanted from it. And when I started turning off “preserve chrominance” in V5, I started to like the actual “filmic” quality of the module. But then Sigmoid came out and did the same job with much less fiddling, so I migrated to it. I can use either module now very comfortably, but Sigmoid is just a better fit in my workflow because it needs fewer adjustments.
Initially, I was put off by the lack of highlight detail preservation with Sigmoid. But then I learned to appreciate it when I started to get over my obsession with sharpness and detail. I now look for simplicity in my images, and selectively losing detail, for example in skies, can be an effective way to do that.
And even when I want to bring out highlight detail with Sigmoid, you can always use the Tone Equalizer and a local contrast module. Or – and this may be a bit of a hack and not particularly recommended – by adding a little boost to Sigmoid’s Target White slider (enter a number beyond 100% and stopping just before you blow the whites), and adjusting the skew to add contrast in highlights, I can get very close to what Filmic does without using any other modules.
5 Likes
That is my experience as well.
I don’t feel that has to be the case. It depends on your skew settings and what you do with other modules including the tone equalizer. I never feel I am unnecessarily losing highlight details in Sigmoid if I bring them back with tone equalizer. I also don’t set final contrast in Sigmoid and usually do that in color balance RGB to be able to preserve the highlights. I tend to darken shadows, brighten midtones and leave highlights alone in color balance rgb module. This increases contrast while protecting highlights.
I like details in the sky, so I came to this approach. First I squeeze the dyn with tone equaliser (downward steep, guided filter on), then with another instanse I boost the hihglights separately (GF off). Those two may be arranged as a preset, given that they come after exposure module so they more or less in place from the beginning. Works with both filmic and sigmoid.
Your approach sounds very interesting, Terry. Maybe you could share a sample xmp?
As mentioned above… using the tone EQ and RGB CB as mentioned in both posts… coupled with local contrast and diffuse and sharpen and often you don’t need sigmoid or filmic to develop the raw…
1 Like
@kanyck I am unsure what dyn is. What interests me about your approach is the different filtering approaches. This is something I have experimented successfully with before but had faded away from my workflow. I must revisit the filtering options in the tone equalizer and take a fresh read of the user guide for the module. The use of two instances of the tone equalizer module is something I hadn’t thought of but would be worth considering.
@HansBull I will try and find a suitable example to share, however, there are so many different and valid ways to edit in DT. There is also no single best way that will satisfy ever image we have to process. @priort has inspired me to try many different approaches to my editing and he inspired me to use tone equalizer more to achieve the look I wanted when I posted a thread asking if I should ever use two instances of sigmoid. Should I use two instances of sigmoid
I think he means dynamic range… and as for the two modes… if you go back Boris has a two or three part tone eq video set that looks at preservation of details and the use the the two modes… I’ll amend the link when I get a chance
Episode 54
My subjective interpretation of both modules is based on simple observation.
With filmic I’m constantly battling color artifacts in high contrast areas (tree tops → sky). Also anything bright yellow seems to be oddly desaturated by default. This desaturation applies to things like fire/bright night lights/etc.
Sigmoid is feels way more natural. However, it tends to produce way out of gamut colors (mainly greens). So keep an eye on that.
2 Likes
Sounds like you need lens correction.
1 Like
Lens correction would just treat the chromatic aberration, right?
The artifact I was talking about is hard to explain. The sky tends to be blue but you often can’t pull the highlights to get uniformly blue sky. So you end up with rather light blue sky. But near the dark parts, like the branches, the light blue gets way more darker (or saturated?).
3 Likes
In my experience:
Sigmoid: I like the ability to do quick edits with Sigmoid. But I think it lacks a curve representation like Filmic, which would help understand what is being done in the shadows and highlights. I think it used to be (too) simple, now with the new primaries settings I feel it is a bit too complex for a non-color-expert person. I understand the benefits of the new settings for neon lights and complex lighting conditions, but I can’t understand what is really behind of “purity”, “rotations”, “attenuation” and “base primaries”, and what a mix of “recover purity” and" preserve hue" will really do: I just adjust to my taste but I don’t understand.
Filmic: I use it only for HDR pictures because it is very easy to set the DR and contrast where needed. Colors can be tricky in highlights. I used to think it is too complex, but now I understand most of the settings. Also it is hard to use it in low light pictures.
Good point, I think. I must admit I have no idea what I’m doing with the two main controls in sigmoid other than waggling them around. I’ve read the manual and can understand what they do in theory but as to having a simple model in my head as to what each of them is doing during the waggling; nada.
I was really determined to master Filmic RGB for a long time, every iteration of it as it was evolving. But I have never been satisfied with its output. Just “Yuk!” or “Meh…” at best…
So my deepest feelings for basecurve were flourishing.
Until Sigmoid came 
And since its launch, a die-hard fan of basecurve such as me, has switched over to new workflow.
For most of the time I don’t need to do any other operations than rising the exposure, increasing the contrast in Sigmoid (which also gives me proper saturation and I don’t even have to touch Color Balance RGB).
3 Likes
The dynamic range. Sorry for being unclear.
Did you see the example I provided using the exr file…basically in the waveform you have the sigmoid curve…you can just move the sliders and see what happens to the roll-off and steepness of the contrast… its a very good visual if you need that…
Are you aware of this sort of color representation…
Imagine that you are rotating/repositioning the vertices if the triangle with the hue sliders by redefining the position of red green or blue and then purity is like saturation… your moving back and forth from the white point in the middle… Attenuation is just unidirectional ie you can’t boost purity only pull it back… if you take something like an image of a color chart and just crop the the main row of red green blue yellow cyan magenta and use the vectorscope …make sure to select the two check boxes in the color picker… now you ill have 6 color samples …just play with the sliders and watch how they move… its quite easy to see what is going on…
EDIT:
@Donatzsky did a nice little annotation… that is also the typical 2D representation of a slice of the colorspace…they are actually 3D volumes…
If you are interested…
No. Where is it?