How to handle out of gamut colors using color calibration

Software darktable
1

I’ve recently been working on some photos with LED lights using darktable 3.4 and color correction and the new, improved clipping warning module in saturation only mode. Initially, it shows the snow above this light to be fine:

out_of_gamut_1
out_of_gamut_11672×1126 241 KB

Here are the settings I’m using in color calibration:
color_calibration

Note that I have gamut compression set very high on color calibration in order to bring back other pixels which are also out of gamut (maybe there is a better way to do this).

After I increase saturation on the image overall (using output saturation in the color balance module) because it looks too desaturated (due to the gamut compression), these pixels now are out of gamut:

out_of_gamut_2
out_of_gamut_21686×1130 241 KB

How can I increase saturation on the image overall but not allow sections like this to go out of gamut? Or, should I not be concerned about these warnings? Thanks!

1 Like
2

You can’t. For now… Because add a new colorbalancergb module by aurelienpierre · Pull Request #7347 · darktable-org/darktable · GitHub will deal with saturation increase by checking where the current color sits in the available gamut.

https://discuss.pixls.us/t/color-spaces-nightmares-gamut-clipping-wtf

1 Like
3

Cool, that sounds great!

Thanks, after reading your explanation it’s clear to me now that I don’t need to be concerned with these gamut alerts on my image. What is the use case when you should do something about clipping shown by the saturation only mode of the clipping warning module? Just if a large part of the image is out of gamut or if there aren’t smooth transitions (as you said in the linked post)?