Hi @Redbrook, and welcome to Forum!
Yes.
Yes.
Indeed.
- “White relative exposure” changes: White- and black-point and midtone-contrast by shifting
- “Black relative exposure” changes: Blackpoint, midtone-contrast slightly by shifting, highlight contrast(slightly)
- “contrast” changes: midtone-contrast, blackpoint and whitepoint (slightly)
- “hardness” changes: shadow/dark-, midtone-, highlight-contrast and blackpoint (slightly)
- “Latitude” changes: shadow/dark-, midtone-(slightly) and highlight-contrast
- “shadow/highlight balance” changes: shadow/dark-, midtone- and highlight-contrast, blackpoint(slightly)
This is not an exhaustive list, meaning: I did not try all combinations of parameters, nor all parameters, but only the quickly accessible ones. Also, as you mentioned, certain parameter combinations give inversions and clipped values. Some of these can be mitigated by switching to cubic splines.
To ‘learn’ the theory behind the sliders I suggest practicing a lot as well as looking at the resulting curves in @jandren 's tonecurve-explorer https://share.streamlit.io/jandren/tone-curve-explorer. Or, as others have suggested, make working presents and use them without fine tuning them too much after application.
EDIT: I should clarify: the “by shifting” expression used above means that it shifts the contrast slope that you have either up or down, effectively changing the contrast in the midtones.
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I think this encapsulates my struggles with filmic, and I can see hundreds of Lightroom refugees running away right now saying “I just want to set my black and white point” (which is almost instantaneous in Lr by double clicking the Black and White sliders respectively). There are just so many ways to adjust tonal values and countless combinations within filmic and I find it hard to “remember” what the best or my preferred ways are to go about setting the dynamic range I want. Note that this is not a criticism of the module, because such fine control is truly amazing, but I personally share some of @bastibe’s struggles.
One might expect that the white and black relative exposures should work the same way, but on opposite sides of the tone curve. But as @PhotoPhysicsGuy points out, this is not the case. Hence, I juggle between the sliders to set my black and white points and to get the look I want. I’m sure this is user error at not understanding the module properly, but I feel it’s a common struggle with less advanced users. So, to be more specific in line with the rules of this thread, what is the expected way to set your black and white points if you’re trying to maximize dynamic range (e.g. max black and white without clipping)? Is it even best done in filmic?
Adjusting contrast has also been one area of confusion for me. I find that the spline almost immediately registers an inversion when I adjust contrast in the Look tab, which means I almost immediately adjust the latitude to undo this inversion. This means I sometimes go straight to color balance to adjust contrast there instead. And maybe that’s not a problem. Is there any expert opinion on the “best” place to adjust contrast? Or is this simply personal preference?
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I think you are right and others can weigh in…but filmic sort of removes local contrast and trying to recover it with contrast in filmic might compromise other aspects of your filmic application to the image so I think using other means to achieve contrast is the way to go…I am sure others can weigh in but I think maybe people trying to adjust and achieve contrast using that slider in filmic might be some of the issues people are having…
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I kind of go the other way at this and consider my latitude and how big I want it to be. I might tweak contrast but I usually back off if the indicators show clipping and just add contrast with tone eq, color balance, local contrast and contrast eq or a combination…I rarely mess with filmic contrast too much.
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You’ve got it exactly right! Look bite the videos that I have sent.
Let’s try it this way. I will not be able to explain this mathematically, but as I understand it as a layman.
This is the initial situation without filmic:
Shematically, I only transfer a part of the dynamic range of my camera to the sRGB color space:
Now, I have also set filmic so that there is no compression. The look of the photo does not change almost at all:
If I now increase the exposure by one EV, the shadows are getting lighter and I get the warning that I have left the sRGB gamut in highlights:
So, we have this situation now:
Now with white relative exposure I bring the highlights back into the gamut. (Note that the shadows are affected because of the compression):
Now we have this situation:
Now I want to expand this darker compressed area a bit with black relative exposure until I have enough contrast in this area:
This is how it looks now:
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Just to make this very clear for people who want to learn the module: @s7habo 's simplified graphs is at the moment ever so slightly not how the module actually works. You can see this for example in the last step of his actual screenshots how adjusting “black relative exposure” also changes things a bit in the midtones and a bit more in the highlights.
So to all the learners: expect some “crosstalk” of the sliders. Don’t be frustrated if that happens, it’s how it works at the moment. In that regard the module is a bit more iterative than what you might be used to or what you expect.
But, and that’s the important part, everything else that @s7habo showed is exactly how many people would use this module and how it can give fantastic results.
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I find that ev mapping graph a nice way to understand it and as you have pointed out you can see shift and changes in contrast by the slope and spread of the mapping lines between the scene and display ev zones…I think this map is good for beginners because you can see that the graph does not change if you crank up exposure…18% is mapped to a lighter value but the relative mapping to white and black does not change…if you did this to a histogram with a levels display you would see the difference…I think many people still have that sort of relationship in their heads…
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I agree with the first part. This is how a curve works (filmic is a glorified curve adjustment).
I disagree with the iterative adjustments part. As @europlatus said, we aren’t dealing with the white and black sliders of Adobe, where at 0, by the way, we aren’t even at a neutral starting point. It isn’t about bending specific tones to one’s will. For that we have tools that deal with local contrast, colour or tone; e.g., local contrast, colour balance or tone equalizer. In contrast, filmic adjusts light ratios and roughly sets the shadows, mids and lights to where it makes sense for our nonlinear eyes. Therefore, it is more of a “set it and forget it” kind of module rather than a “tweaking until I get all the tones I want” tool.
A useful illustration would be to picture a slinky toy or mechanical spring. If you move one segment of it, the rest would sure follow. One could hold or lock multiple sections in place, but at some point, we would be applying unnecessary and possibly harmful tension. In the same way, we can’t have the curve be static / unchanging at other points without bad things happening such as not having enough tones to go around and artifacts.
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Perhaps that is what it should be but then you need to hide all the sliders. It is funny that exposing them is what gives full control but likely also what causes problems with excessive tweaking. I must admit to being guilty of fiddling too much with it just because I can to the point where I can’t decide on what looks better. 
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I encourage people to watch Aurélien’s demo from our last informal meeting. It is quite obvious that while filmic plays an important role there isn’t an over-reliance of it. He only goes back when there is a problem working with the other modules and he thinks it may be due to poorly set parameters.
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I personally don’t have the trouble with filmic others seem to have, so perhaps detailing my methods might help someone. I start with a preset that has White and Black relative at default values, contrast 1, latitude default, shadows/highlights -25, mid tones saturation 0, both hardness options set to ‘hard’, pres chrom ‘rgb Power norm’, 0 noise in highlights. This gives a very flat look not suitable for most images, but an easy starting point. To start I set exposure so focal point looks nice. Then in filmic, Auto click White and Black relative sliders. Sometimes it’s perfect, sometimes they need slight adjustment. How to know? Highlights should be neither blown nor flat. Shadows should be neither crushed nor faded. Then I increase contrast. 1.35 is a good default, but it varies on dynamic range. High dynamic range, less contrast. Low dynamic range, more contrast. Sometimes adjusting contrast gives the orange warning for shadows or highlights. In that case, decrease latitude til it’s gone. In tricky case it may require readjustment of black relative, but that is rarer. You could finish there, or toggle the pres chrom options. To resaturate, I use other modules. Typically channel mixer, but you could use color balance. So after applying preset I usually only have to adjust 3 or 4 sliders, and its rare I have to go back over them. Do one, move on to the next.
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Thanks for sharing I had missed those due to work and wasn’t sure if they were recorded
Unfortunately, only the first part was recorded.
Maybe this is another point which makes filmic so difficult to unterstand for so many users: It has no “neutral” setting. Resetting the module gives a starting point which alters the picture in some way. How this result is achieved is not transparent, to not stress the word “intuitive” again.
Basecurve in comparison has a neutral setting.
Does this help? But what’s the point? (Remove the .txt extension, import into darktable.)
filmicrgb_close-to-neutral.dtpreset.txt (1.0 KB)
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May this help you:
from filmic manual
"Note: filmic rgb cannot be set with entirely neutral parameters (resulting in a “no-operation”) – as soon as the module is enabled, the image is always at least slightly affected. You can, however, come close to neutral with the following settings:
- in the look tab, set contrast to 1.0, latitude to 99 percent and middle tones saturation to 0 percent
- in the options tab, set contrast in shadows and in highlights to soft.
In this configuration, filmic will only perform a logarithmic tone mapping between the bounds set in the scene tab."
And most important:
“Despite the technical look of this module, the best way to set it up is to assess the quality of the visual result. Do not overthink the numbers that are put in the GUI to quantify the strength of the effects.”
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Since this is a thread about learning what the module does, the advice to not touch the module too much is at least a bit odd. Learning the module is 100% about bending tones to one’s will. Otherwise there would be a huge conceptual problem of “why expose controls that do not do what the user wishes”.
I agree with @priort : it’s easy to fall into the iterative tweaking trap. But the iterative trap exists because of access to controls which the module is lauded for. By managing expectations of the user, the teachers can prevent frustrations.
That’s specific of the current implementation. Other implementations exist and users might/will expect otherwise. Managing those expectations will avoid user frustration.
Yes, it is indeed the case that you can get lost very quickly here.
But, it can be very helpful to see filmic not as a styling element, but as a module with which you can create the optimal conditions for modifying the photo in further steps. The filmic is excellently suited for this and in most cases - under this condition - very easy to use.
Let’s take your example for that.
We push the exposure up until everything is “optimally” illuminated. “Optimal” is a personal assessment and depends on what you see in the photo as the main subject.
I have increased it here to 3 EV because I still want to see the details in shadows:
As you can see in the histogram, the highlights are hard on the edge of overexposure. So, my goal now will be, with the help of filmic, to expand this margin, i.e. - to compress the highlights and to see that the details in the shadows do not disappear into the black. In filmic, I increase the white relative exposure and black relative exposure until I have enough room for further processing.
The fact that the photo now looks very flat and low-contrast doesn’t interest me at this moment. Note also the values in the histogram:
Now I have, so to speak, “set the scene” and can concentrate on the processing. This also means that most of what happens now happens in the pixel pipe after the filmic.
Specifically, I now want to increase lost contrast again and there are countless possibilities. In this case I will simply - after the filmic - use a new instance of the exposure module with multyply (or multiply reverse) blend mode for this. Let’s see how it looks like:
Now I have again a nice contrast with all the parts I want to have: the shadows are not too dark (you can still see the details) and highlights also show the nice transitions and even there the details are still clearly visible (look at the brown bark of the tree in the middle).
I can now use Tone equalizer to subtly lighten the shadow areas and that’s it:
I could now play a bit more with saturation and colors, but that is not necessary for this demonstration.
_DSF1845.RAF.xmp (9,2 KB)
darktable 3.5.0~git1357.578d3ffa7-1
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It appears I am not capturing the nuance in my remarks. There is a difference between iterative learning and constantly tweaking a tool in hopes it will do what one thinks it will do. False expectations is why we have dozens of threads and heated conversations on filmic.
@s7habo says it well in the post before this one. filmic is
In light of his comment, I think mine would make more sense.
I would add that it is about being thoughtful about how to use the tool as opposed to randomly moving the sliders and expecting good things to happen. I understand some people learn by doing, which is totally a valid way to learning. I am that type of student. However, if I am in the experimentation phase, I need to realize that things won’t go my way and that I need to step back a bit to evaluate what I am actually doing. I run into this trap all the time when exploring G’MIC. I mindless sink hours obsessing over dumb things, hours that I can’t get back.
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