If you ask me, NO!
We have plenty of tone mappers. OpenDRT sounds like the ultimate one. But it took me quite a while to adjust my workflow to AgX. I’m not interested in doing this again that early and I’m can’t think what problem I can’t solve with AgX.
I thought @Christian-B is developing some new local contrast module. It seems I lost completely track, even though I’m on this forum daily. As I’m already spending too much time on the internet, It seems I have really to rethink my activities.
He throws out a nightly …it has 3 modules…contrast and texture, scene basecurve which has and ODT option and a module he calls the spectral tonemapper …
There is a link near the end to the daily build…
The modules have some gamut control features as well…
But if a new tone mapper is introduced you don’t have to learn it, you could just keep using AgX.
I’m a big fan of having options, but only to some extend. At some point it starts to get a mess. If there is another tonemapper, fine. I can live with that. But how many tonemappers do we have then? I think there is a point where too many options is bringing no more improvement but is confusing the user. I got, that you can seperate colours from contrast in OpenDRT. I don’t know what else makes the difference. But if that’s the main thing. Why not implement a checkbox in AgX: “Separate colours from contrast”, instead of introducing again a new module.
Thing is it wouldn’t be AgX then… 
I think the way it handles tone curves and the individual channels is an inherent part of the… whatsit… algorithm?
I do get what you’re saying, however I do think it’s important to remember that modules are just tools. A new module may be perfect for one person, but another may find it pointless and that’s seriously ok. We don’t need to learn or use a new tool unless we want to!
Ok, I know we all know that but I needed to get it off my chest!
Exactly.
The whole idea of AgX is to make use of the per-channel side effects. If we used a norm, like the luminance, it would become a different tone mapper.
This sounds a bit dogmatic to me. But I understand this position.
In the end I didn’t want to criticise but point out my concern, about having darktable flooded with modules.
It’s not just dogmatic: if you map the norm, and don’t want salmon sunsets, and want desaturation, you need additional code to implement another tone mapping algorithm, with different sliders, as the other algo will have different params → it’s basically a new module. Or you can use filmic + color balance rgb.
Kofa’s edit made me realise I could get more out of the reds (and the black scales), so I’ve added more blue colour and red contrast to my ‘no clipping’ sRGB edit. Surgical rgb curve instances. Feels a bit messy (but I’m happy with the image).
