In my case, the challenge is that I’m working on a whole bunch of possible code changes… Although I’ve realized that I MUST expose a whole pile of parameters that are currently hardcoded in darktable as sliders, otherwise I’ll lose my sanity producing example cases. - I think I have 5-6 example images for my WIP which seems excessive except as its own thread.
Examples are:
Current darktable master (undesirable for various reasons)
Attempting to alter the exposure weighting approach while maintaining linear blending (severe haloing)
Various approaches similar to what you get when exporting +0, +2, and +4EV JPEGs and feeding them to enfuse (with various weights)
Pierre Aurelien’s tone equalizer algorithm (currently handles highlights the best, but results in unnatural-looking colors in the shadows)
Right now, I’m seeing that most approaches to exposure fusion need a better way to roll-off highlights… Most weighting algorithms have such low weights in the highlights that it turns out that the highlights of +2EV and +4EV exposures aren’t weighted low enough (relatively) to keep them from contributing more than they should. So they contributed less to the highlights than the current darktable exposure fusion algorithm, but still way too much, leading to blown highlights.
Since all of the relevant parameters (target brightness, brightness variance) are hardcoded in DT, it’s hard to generate comparison cases without recompiling. Which means I need to venture into the realm of stuff I suck at (UI/UX design) to expose those parameters as additional sliders.