I’m training to use darktable, and I found this cool website where I can get some RAW files and see how people managed to develop it (btw, if you have other such resources, please let me know, this is really helpful)
Unfortunately, I’m struggling with the “Thirl” picture. My goal is to reproduce, from this RAW file, this image (make sure to open the link, this small version lacks many details):
For now, I tried to play with filmic/local contrasts/… but I’m unable to get something really close to this style as it seems like my man got some sunburns ^^’ I’m not sure why, as I thought my white balance was reasonably accurate.
Your version lacks global contrast and needs less saturation. You can correct this very quickly with the brilliance and saturation sliders in the color balance RGB module.
It’s a tricky one for me, I’ve got a slightly messy set of adjustments going on in there.
It’s a bit late for me to explain everything - you can always load my xmp via the button in lighttable view, then step through switching off modules to see what’s doing what.
For the admins, I checked and it seems like it’s ok to share these images as long as credit is given to the author, Spectacle Photo, as linked in the OP.
We have the PlayRaw feature in the forum. Members share their images with proper license. Other share their edits via sidecars that you can then evaluate.
Rather than trying to match an image’s processing because I find that tedious I try to be inspired by a previous edit to edit the picture in my own style. That is what I have done here. I personally use sigmoid rather than filmic for most of my edits and I feel sigmoid is easier to master for people new to darktable. The PlayRaw category is great for developing your editing skills. There are some nice practice images on that website you found.
Thank you soo much everyone for your help, I do have a bit of time to spend on analyzing everything! (and that’s a lot for mentionning the Play Raw, sounds a great place to experiment!) The closer look is maybe achieved by @qmpel’s great work, but I don’t know why, my I try to import your style I get an error about temperature not having the good version (4 vs 3), and then the imported picture is significantly more bright than the reference image (same for your image Terry, but with sigmoid version causing an issue now). I guess I need to upgrade my system to get the latest version of DT.
That being sayed, I still have some questions:
Notably, I see in multiple xmp files that some modules are duplicated (e.g. color balance rgb, tone equalizer, or diffuse or sharpen, e.g. in @Terry’s solution)… but why is it needed? Can’t we just apply it a single time, and push the cursor a bit more if the goal is to reach a stronger effect?
In see (e.g. @qmpel 's solution) that the contrast is pushed to an extreme, and then the local contrast “magically” bring it back to a normal one. Is it a standard method? What is the advantage of pushing the contrast, if a local contrast is applied latter?
What version of dt are you running? I just realised that I’m on 4.7 too… but I don’t think I used any new features, so it should load ok in 4.6.
Odd numbered darktable versions are developement, or ‘beta’ versions, even numbers are releases, btw.
In the case of diffuse or sharpen, it has many different uses, eg, sharpening, local contrast, denoising, softening, bloom… and it’s often impossible to get a combination of effects with just one instance.
I use the diffuse and sharpen module with different presets for sharpening, lens deblur, local contrast fine (V4.7 only). I also on some images use it for denoising, but not on this one. At least two diffuse or sharpen instances is typical for me. Occasionally three but rarely more. Sometimes I use numerous instances of exposure to do localized exposure adjustments similar to dodging and burning traditional film in the darkroom.
I think you have some answers to the technical questions. As for my edit, which is kinda messy… I tried to find something like a recipe to match the style, but I didn’t succeed So I just eyeballed the look and made changes accordingly - at least a good training for the eyes (match tones, colors, contrast, sharpness).
The main ingredients in my edit are probably:
white balance on the catch light
lighten the shadows with tone eq
match the tones with a tone curve (easier than filmic or sigmoid)
push up the saturation except in the face, especially not in the highlights
restore local contrast, especially in the face, had to push quite a bit
The rest are some oddities I couldn’t find a good solution for:
the hat was a bit cooler, so I added some blue light in shadow/midtone and countered in the highlights with yellow
the cheeck bones where more saturated compared to the rest of the face, so I masked and adjusted that
also I had to turn the hue of the face a bit, it was to reddish
treat the catch light per mask, as they are far brighter than other parts
That said, I kinda learned to like the look while editing, but it’s not how I would edit the picture.
enough time burned with this.
