Definitely, as I said above, I agree.
Cool isn’t it? 
But yeah, it did take a while for me to get the hang of it. I only touched two sliders in my example though, after starting with the demosaicing no AA preset.
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Here I was responding to @kofa 
I don’t use/know Darktable, so I had to look up on the web what DoS is. Form what I understand, some other modules in ART could maybe do some parts of what DoS: Dehaze, and Texture boost/Sharpening.
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Gulp. Sorry!
Yes, DoS is a bit of do-it-all sharpness/blur/local contrast/texture/bloom module.
I think the designer considered that it replaced all the previous modules for those purposes in one sweep… but it doesn’t seem quite that simple in practice.
I do have slight reservations about it’s design/UI… but I don’t have any real understanding of the actual mechanics of it, so wouldn’t want to make comment on that.
It’s designed to run effectively on presets for non-expert use and does pretty well like that - I’ve got sufficient understanding of it to effectively tweak some aspects now, but you’re absolutely right that it’s not really user friendly.
Yes. But again, that’s a deficiency in my abilities, strictly speaking. It’s a difference of philosophies, really.
I don’t tend to sharpen too much, at least I tell myself to not sharpen too much. I probably do anyway but I find for my purposes, in ART I’ll tweak the RLC threshold mask down to only what I need to sharpen and then the defaults give a pretty pleasing bit of ‘life’ to it. Not too much, not too little.
Beyond that, I sometimes add a little High Pass sharpen through a mask in Affinity Photo (same can be done in GIMP). I sometimes I wish I could sharpen through a localized mask in ART, but that’s a major architectural difference. I’ve tried ART’s (local / masked) Texture Boost/Sharpening tool but not a lot yet. I need to play with it more and learn how to properly use it, since I usually end up overdoing things.
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Hear, hear! I just can’t thank everyone involved with FOSS — especially the developers — enough.
I’m glad you discovered the joy of using ART; I’ve never used ART or Darktable, but that’s ONLY because I use RawTherapee and it does everything I need it to do — plus a huge amount more — so darn well!
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So I’m just curious… random image shared here…
I was playing around because I had it from that thread so I just started to play in ART and DT… So the man has a mustache, stubble on the face and curly hair, there is lettering on the shirt. Fine hair on the forearm and a number on the handle of the axe and there are the details in the wood block where the wood has been chopped away… maybe even the hands holding the axe… These are some areas with details… or the potential to target the details if you wanted to… How would you edit that or in some other image if you want to demonstrate the optimal or “blows me away” result… I’m just curious to get a baseline to try to experiment with myself… I did a couple of quick edits and by adding default capture sharpening and output sharpening, both added using their defaults it did not appear to be so clearly different from DT with just the no AA filter on D&S…
This could be the image and the fact that I did not tweak the ART settings at all that’s why I am curious what you apply to see that sort of impact on your edits… again to learn not to say A is better than B…
Admittedly, I don’t use ART, but alternate between RT and DT, and when it comes to sharpness, I can never get good results with DT. RT in terms of sharpening is unrivaled. The sharpness of grass, hair and small structures is stunning in RT, so I definitely use RT more often.
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I did look at this image and I also didn’t find a clear difference in the handling of ART and DT. So, same results here.
Of course I did some further (ongoing) testing and I think that you need a tack sharp image to begin with. Because the “blows me away”-effect is something like a sub pixel thing - comparable to antialising on/off or just a tiny bit more resolution. So bringing sharpness into play was probably not very helpful.
Another picture where I found this effect visible, is this one:
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/bee-macro-always-having-trouble-with-colors-in-darktable-especially-macros-sony-a6400
Take a look at my screenshot
(must look at 100%!)
If I needed to describe, what I’m seeing, I would call it more clean in ART or (as I said) a bit more resolution, despite both being the same picture at 100%.
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I definitely see it, and in the headlamp picture post above it’s visible as well. DT does seem to start showing the individual pixels at a high zoom rate, maybe ART has some kind of interpolation?
Darktable attempt
The zoom rate is exactly 100%, so I would think, it shouldn’t interpolate whatsoever - I, mean … 100% is the level you want to be as accurate as possible, to check your picture.
But in any case, the export doesnt’ look different. I checked that. Here is a comparison of the exported JPG
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Can’t see much difference in the first pic either. In the second picture I’m unsure… might see a bit difference in the scratches, in the text and the metal thingy on the top right … these all seem a bit clearer in ART.
But yeah, it’s not as defined as in other examples.
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You’re right, it’s definitely there in the export as well, intriguing… Specially since ART looks very natural and it’s not trivial to achieve a similar effect in DT
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I thought it might have to do with the raw format, as the best samples here are .ARW (Sony) files 
Need to check that.
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With this one, I also see ART as sharper.
Nope. Here is an example from a .cr3 file, also a play raw…
(https://discuss.pixls.us/t/the-leprechauns-must-be-lost)
Gonna let the dust settle a bit 
In these examples, what diffuse or sharpen settings are you using?
The detail has to be there in the scene and file. @123sg examples above for instance (rodeo and car) have very little fine detail or texture.
I’m an RT user and the detail you get from RT/ART has been unrivaled for years. At least in practical terms as you can probably get similar results with other software but with RT/ART it’s just there.
It’s worth noting that capture sharpening in RT/ART does give a bit of pixel level “grain” to blurred transitions. Wide continous transitions become a bit noisy so for blokeh fest photos it’s worth tuning down or off.
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I’ve realised that now… 
Been playing with the last image @qmpel used as example, fiddling for the last 20 minutes with DorS, trying to replicate that clean yet pin sharp result from ART.
Can’t… (yet?!) this is as close as I got.
or maybe this…
Another potential downside is that this kind of thing is resource heavy - fine with reasonable GPU but very slow otherwise. I don’t know how demanding the capture sharpening in ART is though.
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That looks really good already 
Gonna compare it in detail.
Now I request your settings
Sorry, I see they are included in the shot
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Well, I see your settings are getting the image sharp at very fine level (I was also playing with a small radius and only the sliders 3 and 4, so we were thinking in the same direction, I think). But! There is a lot of noise and artifacts introduced, look into this 400% magnification of your screenshot and the ART reference.
[removed screenshot]
I think we are on the right track. Maybe tune it a bit down. I will try also with the edge sensitivity and sharpen sliders.
edit: faulty method on my side, showing the JPG enlarged obviously shows all the JPG artefacts, sorry 'bout that.
Here is the valid 400% comparison
This looks actually much better - if we tune it a bit down?!
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