Pentax K1-II, difference between Jpeg and DNG

The lighttable preview is merely the embedded jpeg thumbnail (identical to the OOC jpeg). A raw file by nature looks dull, dark and flat - ready for you to work your magic. That’s the whole point of raw to begin with.

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What, in camera, JPEG settings do you use?

I don’t know about the MkII, but with my original K1 with Base Curve set to “Pentax-Like”, I get an image that is a little brighter with less saturated colours. Perhaps the Mk_II isn’t being detected properly and it’s not auto-applying the “Pentax-like” curve?

Here is a quick test I did; original thumbnail on the left, basecurve on the right.

My settings are “auto-apply pixel workflow defaults” to “none”, and “auto-apply chromatic adaptation defaults” are “modern”.

To test, I imported the image, duplicated it and went into the darkroom for the one on the right. I enabled basecurve module and selected the preset “Pentax-like” (it wasn’t detected by default, but it might only do that if you’re using display-referred workflow - I think the last time I used basecurve was with my K5.)

If you want to use the display-referred workflow (I consider it a good choice for people who are new to darktable), I’d recommend that you make sure that the basecurve module is correctly picking the right preset.

I strongly recommend the modern, scene-referred workflow: you don’t have to worry about blowing highlights when editing, for one. I find it way easier to use, and all the new tutorials use it, so there’s more (recent, high-quality) info about it than the legacy display-referred one.

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Pentax K-1 II from https://raw.pixls.us/getfile.php/3345/nice/Pentax%20-%20K-1%20Mark%20II%20-%2014bit%20(3:2).DNG

Embedded JPEG extracted with dcraw -e filename.DNG

Raw file with Base curve set to Preserve colour: None

Raw file Filmic + Local contrast + Color balance


Filmic.zip (2.1 KB)

I second this, especially for new users. If you start by using display-referred workflow, you will need to unlearn a lot of stuff when moving to scene-referred. And you will move, because scene-referred editing is much more robust and predictable.

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The filmic results are quite odd and have a sort of pastelly over saturation. (Impossible but what I see :slight_smile:

Disabling all the clever stuff in the filmic module usually improves things. (Mid tone saturation, hue )

Not just a non color managed browser? Loaded the sidecar file and the raw file?

The middle tones saturation slider is no longer the suggested way to handle colours; in 3.6, it’s already set to 0. See the manual.
If by ‘hue’ you mean preserve chrominance, I find disabling it hardly ever improves the image. This might be a question of taste, though.

The link of the DNG file actually points me at a TIFF.

Replace .TIFF with .DNG
Always gives me an issue when downloading files from raw.pixls.us with Firefox.

Ah. Why all this magic? Changing the extension of the DNG, zipping the XMP?

Not my choise. At least not with DNG. You can try download from raw.pixls.us and check yourself. CR3 becomes MP4, DNG, CR2 become TIFF.

Weird, I have no such issues, neither on Windows nor on Linux.
Anyway, if you find the image overly saturated, maybe you should process it differently. Your XMP contains a saturation boost in color balance, plus in mid-tone saturation in filmic. That’s hardly the default look.
This is how the 3.6 default looks:

Turning off exposure (it seems we don’t need to correct it to get what your out-of-camera JPG looks like):

So why did you see .TIFF?

I didn’t. My target was not to imitate the JPEG with the last Filmic print screen but to show a picture with more colour and better highlights. In camera JPEG was a bit pale.

Hmm. Strange. I have never experienced it. Using the same browser and OS (Firefox on Windows) I can get the DNG without a problem from this post: Revealing more refined details using RT (a random example) – it does have a lower-case extension, though. However, using Chrome (Brave, actually), the link in your post really points at a file with a DNG extension. Weird. @patdavid, any idea?

I didn’t. My target was not to imitate the JPEG with the last Filmic print screen
[/quote]

Then sorry, my bad: I misunderstood.

Download a raw sample from https://raw.pixls.us and try.

If someone is new to RAW processing and gets discouraged and quits because they get a washed-out photo as soon as they go into the darkroom, then they won’t move because they won’t start. They’ll stick with Adobe products, or try other RAW processing software until they find what they want.

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If that’s all it takes to put a user off, then I’d suggest that darktable probably isn’t the right tool for them and better they discover that early on.

We’re working on trying to improve the documentation for such users but darktable will always need an investment of time and effort.

Other software is available if that doesn’t float your boat.

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