I appreciate that I can move the order of modules in the pipeline. However, I am wondering about the developer’s logic of placing RGB Levels and RGB curves before Filmic in the pipeline. For me Filmic is about compressing or expanding the dynamic range of the captured image into a usable range and getting a nice starting point in terms of exposure and contrast. Tone Equalizer then comes into play to recover shadows and highlights. But then I often want to do tweaks with levels or curves. I like to use curves in particular for fine adjustments of colour, contrast or brightness by carefully crafting the shape of the curves. This lets me draw upon my extensive experience of being forced to use curves in other programs for many years. However, I don’t understand why the developers have placed levels and curves before Filmic in the pipeline. I am not being critical here. I am just wondering if there is a reason I should not move the RGB curves to after filmic in my pipeline. Does it muck up how filmic is designed to work?
Before filmic means the module works in linear space, after filmic means the module works in scene referred space. The order you see is the order the modules are executed in, not the order you use the modules in.
Hi Mica,
thanks for your response. I am not sure this addresses my issue. So what is the advantage of applying RGB curves in linear space rather than the scene referred space. I also understand the order shown in history does not represent the pipeline order. I sometimes reorder the pipeline. For example when using negadoctor the color calibration must come after negadoctor so I move its position. It is actually a really nice feature to have control of the pipeline order. When I teach students to use DT I always tell them to leave the order alone unless they really understand what they are doing and why they want to move them. That is why I am asking the question about the placement of RGB levels and curves. I want to understand why they are placed where they are in the pipeline. Logic tells me I want them after filmic, but maybe that would be a mistake.
Modules after filmic are dealing with display referred data, and that is less than optimal for a module that expects scene referred data.
But, you should move RGB curves around and see what it does.
I guess it depends on the image but on this one I don’t see much of a difference between applying a S-curve before & after. After is a bit more contrasty with less compressed highlights, which I actually prefer (tried to replicate with the before setup but didn’t quite managed).
(left is rgb curve before filmic, right is after)