Help, cannot get white balance right

Hi, i shot an event yesterday, and i have issues with white balance. Embeded jpg looks best but i cannot achieve that look.
If i set as shot in camera in color calibration IMGP0515_01.dng.xmp (8.0 KB) it’s a bit blue.
If i use area from that guy’s sleeve, it’s too yellow and it is classified as custom illuminant
IMGP0515_03.dng.xmp (8.4 KB)
Both AI methods looks

raw:
IMGP0515.dng (43.1 MB)
embedded jpg:

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Try filmic with “preserve chrominance: none”. There have been other threads talking about e.g. “rgb power norm” and others can make bright whites blueish.

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Just setting “preserve chrominant” to “no” within filmic rgb gives me similar results to the jpeg.

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thanks, this was it.

there’s clipping in the sleeves, so you won’t get a reliable wb there:


maybe the black vest or cap or even the white window frame is better for a white balance.
the image was taken in the morning so the camera jpg seems a bit too cold

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Aurélien posted a video talking about this issue. Funnily enough using your picture :smile:

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i know, we talked about it on IRC

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I don’t see issues with white balance, you are just fighting with artifacts introduced by the filmic module

Well then have a go at it and show how to fix it.

RGB filmic tone mapping (no filmic module )and white balance as shot.
IMGP0515.dng.xmp (12.3 KB)

Edit: IN MY OPINION Filmic module COULD be the best choice when sometimes rgb per channel curves fails, but really should be considered like an alternative.

In my opinion it mess too much with saturation

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Disabling chroma preservation works like an RGB curve (is applied to independent channels), but:

  • hue is restored
  • shadow oversaturation if prevented (highlight desaturation is not)
    ‘Luminance Y’ is quite similar, ‘Eucledian norm’ being milder (preserving less saturation) than ‘max RGB’ and ‘power norm’.
    I agree that filmic ‘max RGB’ can exaggerate the tints in highlights – but that’s why we have other norms.
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Thanks for the explanation @kofa .

While reading your post I asked myself why “max RGB” is selected by default. After reading some posts in this forum I assume that disabling chroma preservation works better for the majority of the cases. I apply myself a default preset for my edits where it is disabled.

So, does someone know if there is a reason for being “max RGB” the default value?

When filmic desaturated by default, we complained too much about desaturation; now it does not, and we complain about that. We, users, are a crazy bunch. :smiley:

But seriously: bright flowers, bright sky may look better with that norm. There’s always a compromise, due to colour spaces (and especially display spaces) being limited: you cannot have saturated, bright areas. You either desaturate, or you drop brightness. The norms give you a choice.

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Ah yes! You are right! Now I remembered this thread: Darktable's Filmic RGB defaults render this desaturated - #9 by priort :smiley:

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My feeling is that filmic is set with preserve chrominance as a default because it shows what your sensor is producing including highlight artefacts when channels clip. It then leaves you the choice of how to correct it. Using preserve chrominance = no might be thought of as hiding problems under the carpet. Personally I am quite happy with hide under the carpet approach but not everybody might be…

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According to the manual, the chrominance preservation is there to correct for a side effect of applying the S-curve to each colour channel separately. But to correct for that, you have to use a value taking into account the three channels. There is no “one true way” to pick that value, hence the different norms that are available. But that function is only there to deal with what’s done within the filmic module.

Sensor clipping artifacts are generated earlier in the pipeline, before filmic even sees the data. And filmic cannot recognise a clipped highlight (play around with exposure/tone equaliser). So those should be corrected earlier.

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Indeed we are. For me, the challenge is to understand how each option affects the image and then how to mitigate the secondary outcomes.