BTW, some examples of sky with clouds:
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The challenge is that we expect specular reflections of highlights to desaturate, while diffuse reflections should retain color.
For example, dry skin highlights should retain color, but reflections on sweaty skin should turn white. We always want both, desaturate some highlights, and keep saturation in others. Thankfully, the two cases usually differ in brightness.
Finding the right tradeoff between the two is the art.
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In my experience, specular highlights are already desaturated by the way light reflects without hitting any pigment, so when a tone market desaturates them, itâs double whammy and it winds up missing the expected color.
@kofa thank you for the detailed explanation and screenshots - the visual comparison is really helpful. As you said, I think choosing the tone mapper that works for this image and the look youâre going for is key (maybe you use AgX most of the time but a few images are better suited to filmic rgb).
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This is what I like about DT. We have choices. In a playraw recently I found filmic easiest to work with for a colorful image shot under UV light. I do most of my edits with AgX and never use filmic, but this UV image was the exception. For sunsets I like to compare sigmoid and AgX because they produce slightly different looks.
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Today I learned that the X-Plane flight simulator uses AgX for its PBR rendering pipeline.
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