Hi everyone,
I’m having issues with darktable importing and displaying the RAW file from my Panasonic ZS-100 correctly. I was wondering if you have any suggestions or if this is a known issue with this older and probably not so popular camera.
The RAW files import in a strange underexposed and flat looking way. I wind up needing to do a lot of adjusting to the image which gives pretty poor results.
I’m able to import them into Rawtherapee and SilkyPics and the file looks fine in those.
I’ve also used darktable to edit jpgs of film scans and out-of-camera jpgs successfully.
I’ve uploaded 3 images so you can see what I’m seeing. “Cam” is the out-of-camera jpg. "RT is from Rawtherapee with no adjustments. DT is from darktable with no adjustments. Out-of-camera jpg is using the “Vivid” setting with some boost to colors and contrast so I understand why it looks more vivid than the RAW but I can’t understand why Rawtherapee has a better default.
Happy to upload the RAW file if someone can help me figure out how to do that!
Do you have auto-matched curves (or any kind of curve) turned on in RawTherapee? And in darktable (base curve or filmic)?
Without curves, RawTherapee also looks flat – see Editor - RawPedia
For this specific example I used the “Panasonic Like” Base Curve module, but I had similar but different results with the Filmic module.
Rawtherapee indeed had Auto-Matched Tone Curve turned on. I seem to like this starting point a little better. I’ve not used Rawtherapee yet beyond opening the RAW just to see if I other programs had the same import issue.
These videos got me thinking and I started messing with the Preserve Colors option in the Base Curve module in DT. Default was set to “luminance” but I find “none” matches jpg a bit better. Will have to play with this a bit more to see if this is a better starting point for me.
The issue I was having was that I was needing to make large adjustments in various modules to get close to the camera jpg setting that I liked. It was very easy to over-edit and get some nasty output.
I’ll do a little more playing this week and see if I can get better results. Most of the time the camera jpgs are fine for my purposes but it’s nice to use a RAW on occasion for lower noise, better sharpness and addressing some very high contrast scenes.
If you’re starting from scratch, I’d highly suggest you skip the base curve and learn the scene referred workflow and filmic rgb. It so much better, but doesn’t look as good as the start.
I felt like this first, but I have to admit that in the past few months filmic rgb’s “natural” look has grown on me.
Specifically, after I deal with b/w relative exposure and add (usually) a tiny bit of contrast, I no longer feel compelled to “boost” the colors wholesale the way a lot of cameras have ended up doing for default JPEGs. To put it another way, when all of my colors are vibrant and saturated and whatnot, the eye is distracted from the actual subject/composition I want to portray. So I do a bit in color balance rgb, but usually end up dialing down almost all the modifications and just keep a few, preferably masked. YMMV of course.
All his videos are wonderful…however the last few really are must watch for people getting in to Darktable…it covers so much ground and really illustrates the elements unique to DT that often confound some people moving to DT.
Hey all thanks for the help. I watched the last 10 or so of Boris’s videos and tried the scene-referred workflow he suggested. I don’t think I’m quite there yet but much improved from previous attempts. I think I’m going to have to put this image to rest for the time being and try some other images.
