Looking for "automatic" darktable style for processing digitized slides

Processing
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A few weeks ago I started digitizing my old analog slides using a projector and a SONY NEX. Overall I am quite satisfied with the capturing process. For processing I am using darktable. My workflow is to pick out one “average” image and do all the processing there (mirror, rotate, crop, noise reduction, local contrast).
And then I am copying this style to all other slides of the “capturing session” (on one evening I am doing 300-500 slides). But somehow I do not manage to get an automatic exposure and most of the slides are good, but some of them bad. I do not have the time to process every slide separately so I am looking for some miracle style turning all of them into great pictures - that’s where I would really appreciate help.

So I enclosed some sample RAW-files.DSC03693.ARW (14.1 MB) DSC03695.ARW (14.2 MB) DSC03697.ARW (14.3 MB) DSC03719.ARW (14.2 MB) DSC03762.ARW (14.2 MB) DSC03766.ARW (14.1 MB) DSC03893.ARW (14.3 MB)

Here some additional observations:

  • I have a minimal style mirror_rotate (turning slides from upside down to normality) - works great
  • I disable “base curve” (as the analog film already has a “base curve”)

But when I try around to get best processing and copy results to other images the processing stack gets larger and larger (with every try :slightly_smiling_face:).

So I would be happy also on advice on (darktable):

  • how to reset processing stack to “zero”
  • how to replay current processing steps with those from style (or is this done automatically).

I know :slight_smile: Loads of questions. As a small thank you I could contribute my setup for efficiently capture “all them slides” (i.e. provide a link to my youtube video) if anyone interested.

Thanks in advance!

Here some examples of processed images - all same style applied:

DSC03745
DSC037453000×2000 1.04 MB
DSC03747
DSC037473000×2000 1.93 MB
DSC03749
DSC037493000×2000 1.68 MB
DSC03754
DSC037543000×2000 1.89 MB
DSC03831
DSC038313000×2000 2.07 MB
DSC03854
DSC038543000×2000 917 KB
DSC03893
DSC038933000×2000 1.88 MB

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First in darktable preferencis - processing chose scene reffered and modern and disable base curve (see snapshot):

DTSettings1
DTSettings11113×790 52.5 KB

When you edit the first photo, did you set the exposure module to “automatic”?

DTSettings2

Did you choose overwrite mode instead append in history stack?

DTSettings3

discard history in history stack (see same snapshot above).

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@s7habo: Thanks for the great and detailled advices - I will give it a try this evening (“exposure” has been set to automatic, but maybe the combination with the preferences suggested are required).

Thanks!

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@s7habo - great advices (first had to switch to darktable-repo (leap 15.2 has only a DT 2.6 flavor) to get latest version of darktable - no problem with the advices given on dt.org). Handling of styles is in DT 3.4.1 now much clearer and functionality is great. So only thing I have to do is to optimize my style - but with your hints I will manage this.

Darktable is great!

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