is there a tool that mimics RawTherapee's soft light tool

[Damian_J]

Is there a tool or setting in Darktable that mimics
the “soft light” feature known from Rawtherapee?

[Terry (Terry Pinfold)]

I am not familiar with RT and the soft light feature. Can you explain what it does or share an image for us non-RT people?

[Damian_J]

This tool provides very subtle enhancement of the contrast between light, shadow, and color.

[tankist02]

From the book on ART (which has the same tool as RT):

The Softlight tool emulates the effect of blending an image with a copy of itself using GIMP’s “soft light” layer blending mode. The resulting image has a little extra contrast and saturation, which is generally visually pleasing.

Strength: You can control the strength of the effect with it.

Shadows/Highlights balance: Only has an effect if Strength is greater than zero. It shifts the histogram left/right.

I don’t think DT has something similar. You can increase contrast and saturation with some other tools.

[Masterpiga (Daniele Pighin)]

Is it very different from Diffuse&Sharpen with bloom preset, a 100% mask with blend mode set to multiply and a low opacity?

I haven’t used the Gimp filter in like 15 years, so I am just fishing here.

IIRC, I had seen @s7habo doing something similar in one of his videos, maybe he can help?

[kofa (István Kovács)]

@tankist02

The Softlight tool emulates the effect of blending an image with a copy of itself using GIMP’s “soft light” layer blending mode.

Add an instance of exposure, but don’t adjust the exposure level. Drag it to the top of the processing stack.
Set blending to uniformly:

Set the blending mode to rgb (display):

Then set the blending mode to softlight:

Left: original, right: softlight.

[age]

The blending mode in darktable that better matches the Rawtherapee/ART’s softlight is overlay with srgb working profile

original image

RT/ART softlight with 100% strength

DT overlay with srgb working profile

An alternative is to use the following rgb curve with whatever colorspace

In this dtsyle there is the rgb curve
softlight.dtstyle (3.2 KB)

[Terry (Terry Pinfold)]

@kofa

Set the blending mode to rgb (display):

I am on Windows DT5.3+999 and I don’t seem to have the same blending options. I have never seen soft light in my options on windows.

[priort (Todd Prior)]

You are not clicking the right spot…those as the display referred blend modes…

Try local contrast and what do you see… it can be based on the module by default…

[Underexposed (Bill Martz)]

What module are you using with overlay?

[priort (Todd Prior)]

@tankist02

I don’t think DT has something similar. You can increase contrast and saturation with some other tools.

Given your provided definition for gimp…I just made a duplicate and then blended in softlight with the composite module… If the image needs a bit of a kick its a nice effect and opacity = strength slider…

[kofa (István Kovács)]

exposure may be less expensive to execute, and without adjustments, it just creates a copy of the input as output.

[kofa (István Kovács)]

@Terry

I don’t seem to have the same blending options

See:

@kofa

Set the blending mode to rgb (display):

[Terry (Terry Pinfold)]

In case anyone else gets confused like I did the color space for blending modes is in the hamburger highlighted in orange here. Thanks everyone for pointing that out.

[priort (Todd Prior)]

That would be better. I thought the result was different when I compared them…I should go back and compare it again…maybe because of where composite was in the pipe…I just thought it looked better when I was tinkering