Another thing I find confusing about filmic RGB:
_DSF1845.RAF (21.3 MB)
_DSF1845.RAF.xmp
CC-BY-SA-NC
This image has bright and dark parts. And I like to adjust the darkness of the dark parts and the brightness of the bright parts with filmic’s “black relative exposure” and “white relative exposure”. However, while “black relative exposure” mostly changes the darkness of dark parts, “white relative exposure” changes both bright and dark parts.
For example, here is the same picture with “black relative exposure” lowered by two EV:
Notice how the highlights look very similar to before (86.46 vs 86.85 L* on the bright bark on the left) but shadows changed visibly (18.72 vs 16.13 L* on the dark tree trunk in the top left quadrant)
And here is the same picture with “white relative exposure” increased by two EV (and black relative exposure reset):
Highlights are lowered (77.35 vs 86.85), but crucially, shadows are now much lighter (22.15 vs 16.13).
There are probably sound technical reasons for this, but it leads to “white relative exposure” acting more like an overall enlargement of dynamic range than a localized adjustment of (mostly) highlights. “black relative exposure” however acts mostly on shadows.