I decided to try a free Capture One trial and edit a few photos as I’d like them on there, then see if I can get an equivalent or better edit on darktable. So far I’ve had no cases where I couldn’t.
The first photo is from Capture One and the second is darktable. What do you all think?
The colors aren’t 100% matching but I just went with the same style and did what felt good on darktable.
One thing I learned is that the advanced color editor on Capture One can easily be emulated by using a new instance of the color equalizer module for each color you want to select.
In Capture One you can select a color with a dropper and then edit hue, saturation, and brightness right away, and you end up with a list of all of the colors you’ve selected for tweaking.
In darktable’s color equalizer you just use the dropper, slide the nodes until a node is on the color you selected, edit hue, saturation, and brightness, then make a new instance of color equalizer for any other colors you’d like to select.
I downloaded a free trial of Capture One and I abandoned it so quickly and came back to DT. Capture one just didn’t grab me. I am not really knocking Capture One but I just find DT the very best editing program for my needs and like the variety of ways to edit images including how you have managed to use color equalizer. I would suggest making yourself also familar with color zones. It is very similar to colour equalizer but a little different. The main difference for me is that color equalizer has a fixed number of nodes while color zones can have a single node or as many as you can physically place along the axis. I use both modules in my edits.
Main difference is the colorspace: color equalizer is in the unlimited scene referred colorspace while color zone is display related. That doesn’t imply color zone is not usable at all, but more prone to artifacts especially for larger changes
Also CE only selects on Hue whereas you can also specify hue sat or lightness as the selection…not sure how much people would use all the possible variations but they are there in CZ
I recently discovered the color look up table and yes it does similar. I like the gentle fall off I get from color zones if I limit the number of nodes. CLUT tends to be limited a specific color more in my very limited experience, but I would encourage you to explore it yourself and read the manual. I am also sure there are some good posts on the CLUT in this forum.
@MStraeten mentions the different color spaces used for CE and CZ. In my experience I see little difference in the results and have never experienced artefacts, but that may be because I don’t go too heavy handed. The number of nodes available in each is more significant to me. I do use both modules and don’t restrict myself to just one and the CLUT is something that I should use more often. A video by Boris introduced me to the CLUT. Boris’s videos are a great resource if you like learning through videos.
