Now let’s look at the “Moody” style:
This low key style seems to be a kind of imitation of the technique used in analog film known as bleach bypass:
For example, Polish cinematographer Janusz Kamiński used this technique very effectively for the movie “Saving Private Ryan” by Steven Spielberg.
Bleach bypass is often reproduced digitally by using of multiply blend mode to combine a monochromatic version of the photo with very low saturated original.
So what are the characteristics of this style and how we can reproduce it in darktable?
As it looks, in shadows and mid-grey area darker greenish-brownish olive tones with low saturation prevail and the highlights look more grayish-bluish, also with a low saturation. The reds, however, seem to stand out both in contrast and saturation.
Let’s start from the point where we put the second instance of the color calibration module above filmic and selected CAT16(CIECAM16) illuminant adaptation in the CIE tab:
Since in the “Moody” style the colder colors are darker than warmer ones, in the “brigthness” tab we will darken green and blue channel and lighten red one:
In the next step we take color balance module above the second instance of color calibration and try to achieve a brownish basic mood, especially in middle gray area. And we also reduce the saturation of the photo with both input saturation and output saturation:
Now we mimic “bleach bypass” by applying multiply blend mode to a monochrome version of the photo using colorize module.
We turn on the colorize module, set it above the color balance module, select a colder color there and apply multiply blend mode. I recommend to select RGB (scene) in “blending options” and then multiply blend mode in the menu:
We are already pretty close to the basic mood of the style, we just need to increase the saturation a bit for warmer colors. For this we use color zones module and with the help of parametric mask we limit the effect of saturation only to darker middle gray area:
More examples:
