I’ve been fiddling with strange highlights exposure for some time. Embedded JPEGs of my old Sony often feature better DR/colorization of highlights. I’ve been unable to recover the color/DR using Darktable.
I use the scene-referred workflow - am I missing something obvious? Is the base exposure wrong? Would masking help?
A nice example is this car - compare the illuminated part of its trunk (top right).
Embedded JPEG - nice smooth transitions, nice exposure/coloration, blends in.
Developed JPEG - harsh transitions, discolored, stands out.
In my defense, I knew about those exposure tweaks you mentioned, it just makes the image very flat. Compare the look of the chrome parts (the tip of the bumper, slats, or door handle).
Quick question re local contrast - is an instance of the diffuse module with the ¨local contrast¨ preset better or worse than the local contrast module? Assuming you have a GPU that can devour the diffuse moduleś processing requirements.
Sorry if this is off-topic. I read that capture one sucks in color management and out of curiosity I’m trying to figure out how exactly.
Using this image I was able to get a color shift in the highlights using capture one. Following image was generated with capture one. Notice how highlights shift to orange:
IMO the embedded JPEG also shifts the highlights slightly towards orange.
However, the Capture One result looks much more “lively” to my eyes. The highlights on the bumper or slats are not muted but shiny. Compare that to the DT ones.
Also, C1’s image is brighter - when raising exposure in dt, I see the image becoming more orange, so it overall supports @anon41087856 explanations from one of his movies (I remember the example with the sky shifting from blue to cyan or even a bit green).
That being said, it looks to me that Capture One must be using some kind of basic basecurve. Well, they also add to the equation the “Custom crafted ICC profiles” they boast about.
