Play with Hue, brightness and contrast adjustments in GIMP 2.10.30
Maybe I should play with higlight reconsideration module, or the reconstruct tab in filmic rgb?
Yes, there are several diffuse and sharpen instances in @dqpcoxeas sidecar.
I don’t think there’s any need… if I drop the exposure way down (-2 or -3ev) it’s clear that the raw file is not clipped. I must confess I was a little puzzled about the intense yellow on the left of the sunset portion of the image. Usually filmic rgb will tone down that kind of thing slightly, especially in v6 ‘preserve no’ (non-expert here btw).
I think the harsh transition in the bright sky was caused or enhanced by the brilliance settings in the color balance rgb ‘centro’ module. I fiddled with it slightly and got this (below) without touching anything else, except also the saturation setting in the same module.
But it seems a surprisingly challenging image, especially if one wants to keep the bright color in the sky!
20221125_081712_0057_02.ORF.xmp (56.6 KB)
Oh, and yes, the slow response you mentioned will be the d&s modules. Try switching them all off and see if things speed up!
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Another try using different settings in that color balance rgb module. Slightly different but better IMO. Used the 4 ways tab for darkening instead of the brilliance sliders. I don’t really get on with the brilliance adjustments for some reason 
20221125_081712_0057_02.ORF.xmp (56.6 KB)
Edit: Oh help… I’ve done something strange and messed up my last version… not sure if that .xmp is correct. I think this one is more or less the same and hopefully correct:
20221125_081712_0057_02.ORF.xmp (56.2 KB)
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The options for highlights recovery and ton mapping starts to get a bit overwhelming to me. A lot of things to try during wintertime 
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Here my first try using sigmoid. In addition, I used the masks tab in Color balance RGB to color the highlights.
20221125_081712_0057_01.ORF.xmp (38.3 KB)
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If it helps…
The Darktable version I’m using right now is : 4.1.0~git897.6bb53e25-1
Indeed, I use multiple instances of diffuse or sharpen depending on the needs.
Saúdos.
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Use v5…better for skies like this use safe or even try soft for the highlight shoulder. Use some latitude and tweak midtones saturation up or down as needed. Use color pres at no and slide the latitude towards or away from highlights. These tweaks can usually produce a pleasing result for color and saturation…
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I’m watching Aurélien Pierre’s video on highlight reconstruction, it’s very informative.
I ended up with the following version, where I took advantage of guided laplacian highlight reconstruction (with 5 iterations and a 512px diameter). Filmic rgb with v6 color science and max RGB preserve chrominance.
It’s not as spectacular as several alternative versions I saw here, but I’m nevertheless very happy with my result, considering that just few days ago I was stuck with what I could get out of OM Workspace.
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.xmp (81.9 KB)
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As well as his videos, you could have a look at Boris Hajdukovic’s (@s7habo) videos. I haven’t watched that many but the ones I have are great, very informative and he shows quite a lot of different approaches.
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One nice one he has shown is to use the tone eq and blend in one of the color channels to add or sub track…for example using blue you can boost the blue in an area by hovering or if you take the blue away make it more yellow… it can be a nice tweak for skys… you often need to use opacity as well but it can be just the right little touch or tone down that you need … same for green in areas or reds… Obviously only one way to do this among many…
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.xmp (13.0 KB)
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I’m exploring the new features of RawTherapee 5.9. Some of them are arcane, others are unreasonably complex. For this image I employed abstract profile.
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.pp3 (14.2 KB)
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Hello,
Nice processing, it motivates me to learn Rawtherapee,
Greetings from Brussels,
Christian
no nonsense approach (although I do like all the edits to bring more color and reflections in the clouds).
Filmic v6 with max-rgb seemed to do fine here. It made it a bit flat, so I used rgb-levels just like I would use a ‘levels adjustment’ in Photoshop. To ‘use more of the histogram’ so to speak (although completely the wrong explanation).
There is a tiny bit of sensor clipping in the bright part on the left, but nothing inpaint-opposed can’t handle, and the metadata for the file seems to be spot on.
How you want that bright part to look, is completely subjective, of course :). But just reconstructing the clipped part and turning the exposure down (without any tone-mappers or other stuff in there), you can see what the data kinda is like:
This is my - boring - output:
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.xmp (10.0 KB)
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And did a Rawtherapee one for fun / trying:
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.pp3 (19.0 KB)
I did this ‘blind’ (as in, I didn’t look at all at my Darktable one… I did do them pretty close back to back, though).
Surprising how close they are (RT is a bit darker overall, but otherwise…).
Although in Darktable I had an easier time masking the sky + clouds, and controlling how much drama I want in them (as in, in the end I had an opacity slider that could go from 0% to 100%, and at 100% it was way too much. So I could dial in just how much I want in the end by a single slider).
With RT I’m still clearly learning the spot tools. I had a hard time getting it to trigger on the clouds + sky, but it always had a little edge of the trees + town in the far distance. And this was a local-contrast in easy mode spot-tool, but pretty much maxed out. So to get more, I would know what to do? Just do another spot tool? .
The way I approach them are clearly different, but I have to say I don’t really feel RT as much as I do DT, so I’m biased.
But in DT I clearly set the exposure and the feel where I want it, ‘then I deal with the highlights’.
While in RT, I start by lowering exposure so much as to not clip any highlights, then deal to get the overall brightness of the image back up to where I would want it without letting the highlights go out of control.
Basically, I’m saying that I miss scene-reffered when I’m toying around in RT 
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this is my take using dt 4.1.0+593˜g2d5f6a137
In scenes like this I usually prefer to use the RGB power norm in filmic, it seems to preserve better the contrast in the highlights, even if this means desaturating them more than max RGB.
20221125_081712_0057.ORF.xmp (17.2 KB)