I find the 3.8 filmic much easier to use with its new default settings. Have you tried it?
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Contrary to diffuse/sharpen for example, you apply the transform to display space once per rendering intent whereas diffuse/sharpen you can put it at different places in the pipe with multiple instances either in scene-referred space and/or display-referred (I think).
If you mean why one should be bundling display-transforms (plural) into one module: maintenance and backwards compatibility were the reasons if I recall, please someone correct me if I am wrong.
I wholeheartedly agree. I would exchange your curve with concept though, but I agree.
I also 100% agree with this but feel that this is a different argument. IMHO There is a difference between:
āI think Filmic isnāt nice to handle - Oh, now itās better!ā
and
āI want a display-transform that does yada-yada - Ah, Filmic was never designed to do this like that!ā
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Yes it is, and I have tried. It keeps giving very good results in most of my photos.
But that is not the question.
It keeps being difficult (at least for me and I am not the only one) to have good results in highlights when you want to dramitize sky, for example.
There is an alternative that is easier to grasp and a programmer that has provided an alternative.
It would be great to be able to opt for one path or the other.
But if @jandren has abandoned the project there is no point in continue talking about integrating it in DT mainstream.
I understand the precautions main developers have about integrating other modules that have great impact.
May be there is a way to add the modules as external plugins (that would be great) and thus is the user who decides.
And if there is no easy plugin mechanism, alternative modules like this could be provided in a separate tab named alternatives or third party.
So it would be clear that that modules are not completly endorsed by the main developers and be the responsability of the author and the user that wants to try them.
It would be enough to test that that modules keep up to a minimum standard and do not break completlly the workflow.
It would be a way to attract new developers that would begin to develope alternative modules that can be tried by people easily.
I was meaning alternate scene to display conversion algorithms, not meaning that you could use several modules of that class.
Of course you have to opt for filmic or sigmoid in a given photo.
Sorry for my english, I don not practice it enough to keep it fluent.
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Nono, my bad!
That would brake the saved status of an image if you do not have the plugin.
Yes that is true.
And that would need to be clear when you activate alternative modules or plugins, that in future releases that modules may not be present, they are the responsability of the independent developer.
If the plugin or module is not present, it should be simply not applied and be warn in someway (red zone for it for example) and it would be the user who has to decide how to substitute it.
May be it might be provided in advanced setting in DT, disabled by default and warned about the concerns when you enabled that function of plugins (or alternativ/3rd party modules).
Thus mainstream users wonāt use it just people looking for that functions.
I donāt think its on filmic to do this. I use tone equalizer or tone curve.
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No, it is not a filmic task.
But filmic comprises lights a lot to get great results in midtones, that is my impression.
You have to fight a lot against it in order to counteract and I get not so natural results.
I will try with tone equalizer (I have used it several times but not with that specific objective).
My point is this is the focus and vision of the current development that is in a large part why it is as it is ā¦not that it canāt be done or wouldnāt work in some way, similar to if you only use and tone curve and then choose not to use filmicā¦
I guess my point is the software is developed by a group of people to make the tools as they see fit and to suit their technical needsā¦I have said it before we benefit and get to tag along and or participate if we have the skill but there is no target audience or product path to a targeted consumer base. This is my pointā¦not suggesting in any way if it should be there or if it is better or worse than what is currently availableā¦just clearly there is not enough internal support or interest for that featureā¦at least for now
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OK, may be that is why jandren is not upgrading his module any more, or it seems he is not.
It sounds like not too much place for other contributions or alternatives.
This is really a huge issue. Hopefully it will get sorted but itās been like that for a very long time now. There are some rather serious assumptions built into the new tools and workflow. Problem is that those assumptions are only valid for certain types of photography. It seems geared towards studio work in particular.
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This is an interesting assertionā¦I look forward to any responses to thisā¦ Personally I see very few examples of studio work offered up here for examples in playraw so I guess I have not seen such a discussionā¦and Boris seems to have no issues making beautiful landscape editsā¦
It would be good to have some feedback on this commentā¦
We have had countless threads to try and problem solve, but please start another and be specific about these serious issues.
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My post initially had a paragraph at the end where I said something along the lines of ādespite all play raws being landscapey type stuffā. Funny that you should post it as some kind of counter argument right below my post 
. I removed the paragraph because I felt unsure if my feeling was correct. Perhaps I had missed lots of studio playraws, feedback, and questions.
I was a darktable users and compile every now and then to see how things are moving along. Iāve participated in some threads and have gotten some great tips on how to get better results with darktable. This have consistently been getting better.
However
Still stands. For my type of photos the above really is the case. I photography mainly buildings and spaces, generally go for a natural or slightly desaturated look, often have very high dynamic range and sky in the frame.
Managing detail in highligts/clouds is really quite difficult. I feel Iām fighting the software and my edits aim for dull, strict and non spectacular. They leave no eyes bleeding from strange contrasts and oversaturation. I do want some detail in highlights such as clouds or exteriors viewed from inside. Itās just difficult to control.
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Iām not looking to problem solve. I just very much recognized @ariznaf s problems and wanted to show that more people are identifying the same issues.
edit: I just wanted to emphasize that darktable gets better and better also for this use case.
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That is my feeling with some photos.
When there is an overexposed sky it is not easy at all to expand that lights to the mid tones.
You have to make many adjustments and layers in order to expand them a bit.
I have made some improvments, but could not get a pleasent result.
And I am not talking about generating dramatic skies, but natural looking skies with more details and clouds.
In other photos filmic produces superb results without touching anything.
I like it very much for that photos.
I had tried sigmoid some months ago for a while, and it seemed to produce easier to obtain results for that photos.
I am not saying there is no way to get them with filmic, but it is nnot easy.
It is not just me there has been many people with the same problem.
But of course developers may take that into account or not, it is their toy and their time and we will be grateful anyway.
There are a lot of things I like in darktable, and I like filmic too, but nothing is perfect or solves every problem or every case.
But the reality is that there is many people that has problems with skies and with clipped highlights.
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Thanks for flagging your interest in what I have been tinkering with the last year @ariznaf!
First of all, I have not abandoned this display transform method at all and I still hope it will be accepted in some form or another. I will make sure to push a recent rebase soon so you can use/test it with the 3.8 tools if you want!
There are two things you (who read this thread) can do to help me move this work forward quicker:
- Contribute with tests and images where the sigmoid module fails, works, or even is better than filmic. Constructive (both positive and picky about if it is good enough) discussion in this thread fuels my motivation to move forward!
- Help out with figuring out how this can/should integrate with darktable. UI, module(s), and code-wise. (This is what I in the end need from the dt devs.)
About options. Every single display transform will have its drawbacks as the point is to compress an infinite space to something finite. The compression implies loss of information and every method has to make a choice in what information it wants to discard. The current filmic moduleās choices are good for some images but quite frustrating for othersā¦ And donāt despair if you struggle with filmic sometimes, itās just due to the fact that it isnāt always the optimal tool for the task at hand.
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Thanks for your answer and for your time and efforts in investigating other paths.
And thanks to all developers of DT. Sometimes when you point some flaw or problem you have it may sound like a negative feedback or seem ungrateful.
But it is not, I have an idea of the time and effort it takes and I am grateful for it. DT is great in so many aspects ā¦
Jakob, I am on windows, I can do tests on it.
But compiling DT in windows is not easy, it has many linux dependencies.
Is there a windows executable, somebody that does the compiling of your sources?
I remember I installed it from an executable, but now I cannot find it in your github place or anywhere.
If there is no option to download an executable, I will see if I can compile it for windows.
Then I will make some test with photos I donāt have good results in filmic and try with both.
@jandren should I put them here or better in a separate thread in the play raw space?
I think it may be better in play raw and here just a link to it, so others can contribute there.
As you say, it is obvious that the information in the photo has to be compressed to fit the output device (screen, file or print) as almost alwasy it has less DR.
So you have to loose details.
In the case of DT and the nonbounded space that compression may be more important.
Filmic opts for giving the most importance to the midtones and compresses highlights with the curve in a way that in some photos makes you have no details in sky with clouds, for example, when you are back iluminated scene.
That is why having other ways of doing scene to screen conversion would be helpful.
Even if there is a way to get it in filmic it is not an easy way and has too many sliders to be able to configure it properly.
Mapping [0-inf] to [0-255] is a bit like projecting the sphere over a plane: there is no perfect way of doing it and each way is suitable for a need.
Cilindircal projections are great for latitudes near ecuator, but of no use if you are organizing a polar expedition.
From a user stand point of view (I donāt know the technical details that seem to make your module somehow not compatible with the new modules) it seems not all that difficult.
This modules is in the final steps, so you just select it and deactivate filmic.
If you like it more, you use that module, and if it creates some eflaws like changing color a bit, you try to counteract it using other tools below it (or above it).
If it gets a better result (to the user taste) with less effort in that photo, you use it.
The tests I did let me think sigmoid was promising being it easier to get better results in skies.
Having to use two installations of DT with two databases renders sigmoid to be used just for testing or very specific use in the most problematic photos, as you canāt be back and forth between both.
If you can select among sigmoid and filmic, and you are providing upgrades, I think a solution would be to use your distributions and have both worlds.
It may seem picayune, but all these filmic/sigmoid/basecurve transforms are not the display transform. That occurs in the application of the export/display ICC profile. What youāre doing here is just a tone curve to manage dynamic range.
The two curves cumulatively determine the tone transform from linear to whatās viewedā¦
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Yes, you are right.
And that is why I donāt understand how it can be so incompatible or problematic with other prior modules.
If it just comprises tones in a way more simple that filmic it can do it better or in a less optimum way (it depends how you define that optimum) but wonāt hurt other aspects of the image.