I don’t know if the screenshot will adequately show it, but the image’s focus plane is clearly not on the cat. Even if it was, f3.2 won’t help much with the whole cat.
So, detail in an image is about contrast and edge definition, and there are a number of ways to enhance both. The two obvious tool types are, aptly named, contrast and sharpen, but color saturation can also play a part. The cat has some nice gradation in its reddish-brown fur, so dialing up color saturation a bit can also help make things stand out.
So, right after the blackwhitepoint tool, I put in just a scooch of HSL saturation and convolution sharpening, and then a light filmic curve, in the order given here. Here’s the web-sized rendition:
The look you see in your ooc JPG that you perceive as sharpness is really a compilation of tone mapping local contrast and sharpening. It’s the manufacturers secret sauce and why your camera costs so much.
You can try the details threshold slider with masking to try to focus and enhance your sharpening. Basically you will simply have to experiment to find a combination of tools that provides you with something close to what you are looking for. Sharpness is very very subjective…some people need it to hit them in the face and others see a light touch as the right amount.
Also you for sure need to assess it at 100 percent…Sometimes JPG images look better on first glance at a preview but when you zoom to 100 percent and compare to the raw edit…the JPG falls apart…
For sharpening always use diffuse or sharpen module. It has been specially developed for this purpose. And it works in scene reffered workspace.
For the example above with the cat, just use two instances one after the other: first the preset lens deblur hard and then sharpen demosaicing (AAfilter).
Don’t forget to turn on the denoise (profiled) module first, as sharpening amplifies noise.
I modified the image license. Apologies about the focus (cats move fast!).
Thanks for all the edits and suggestions, I learned a lot.
@s7habo: Indeed Diffuse & sharpen sharpen + deblur fast works neat. So in Darktable 3.8 Local contrast and Contrast equalizer are kind of redundant and should not be used?
Sorry if this is a dumb question, but how do I “add” the xmp files people post here in lighttable so that they appear as edits for a duplicate?
Y’know, that’s the only challenge I see to an otherwise fine image - composition and exposure are quite nice.
To that end, it amazes me how recent cameras have made such a tizzy about finding eyes in autofocus. Doesn’t much help us poor landscape photographers…
