Use older color science version by default in filmic rgb

[nosle]

@priort

Filmic is just another module. We can use it or not but it seems like people talk like filmic=DT rather than seeing it as just another module. I don’t apply it by default on purpose. I want to see and evaluate the image without any particular manipulation so that I can see what happens when I do apply it.

Do you deal with a lot of images in one sitting? Say low hundreds up to a thousand? I’m a medium type shooter who only gets into the thousands a few times a year but frequently deal with a few hundred images that should become say 25 finished images all in the same style.

I mention this because your post above makes it seem you’re more of a low volume image crafting type of photographer. Now just saving some styles, and personal default will enable a quicker workflow but understanding the issues people tackle is important to understanding what solutions are appropriate and why they ask for certain features and workflows.

[priort (Todd Prior)]

I don’t and so you are right I can’t speak to that sort of volume… I would say though guessing if it was me I would be shooting raw and jpg and identifying my keepers from the jpg images and then diving deeper to get my 25 keepers and then doing my processing … Do photographers actually process that many raw files or do they at the very least look for key images and then apply that editing to the sequence??

Perhaps it would be good to hear from people that shoot that many images in a session using any software…

[snibgo (Alan Gibson)]

@nosle

Don’t you think it’s a reasonable goal to have the defaults result in something close* to what you see** with your eyes. (Taking into consideration the screen limitations and the chosen exposure, lens etc.)

That is a reasonable goal.

The problem is that it is a technically difficult goal. I mean very, very difficult. There is a big difference between light measurements made by a camera, and colours as they are perceived by our human visual system. For example, the physical light we receive from an object is not affected by the background behind the object, but the perceived colour of the object is affected by the background. A common editing goal is to change the image so it resembles what we saw with our eyes and brain. We transform physical measurements so that the image is perceived to be like the real-world scene as we perceived it.

A much simpler goal is to make the image prettier (for some definition of “pretty”).

Even simpler: make the image like the OOC JPEG. This is fairly simple for individual images, but difficult to reverse-engineer the OOC algorithms and translate them into darktable (or other system) operations.

[jorismak]

Kinda a hard statement. You say Darktable produces bad results out of the box , while the filmic defaults where for me a reason to take note and start using Darktable.

So, don’t confuse fact and opinion here.

I’m amazed with all the questions about ‘getting in camera look’ , while i often just need to set exposure , hit auto in filmic and look if i want to tweak saturation/colorfulness in some way to be ‘done’. Posts where people ask ‘how to get this look’ for me seem to always answer with ‘load, set exposure , set colorfulness and done’ ??.

Now, to be honest , for me it isn’t really the V5 / V6 change . It’s the change to maxrgb that trips out most people . It now really tries to preserve color even in very bright parts. And this is just a case of 'sometimes you want this , sometimes you don’t '. It’s awesome with skies and portraits , it’s maybe not what you want if you want specular highlights to show contrast and turn to white.

Yes, i do have some pictures where I like the V5 defaults more compared to V6 defaults… But they are few , and when noticing it afterwards I can almost get something out of V6 that i likeas well (most often changing preserve chroma mode , and / or playing with the latitude slider ) .

I didn’t read it properly, but ‘in my mind’ V6 is now even better than V5 in preventing hue shifts and staying true to the resulted color . This changes how highlights look , which can trip people up . The tool is made by the author to fix certain issues and to be a technically correct tool, that you need to master to get a desired output . It never is and will be a one click solution.

V6 is technically more correct , so it’s the new default. That you (and others , and maby most) like other results with fewer clicks … Setting up a default more suited to your liking is easy enough.
(But like priort i never noticed filmic has special auto settings , i always hit the auto button to get a start point after my exposure and tone equalizer has done its thing )

[mver (Marko Vertainen)]

I shoot occasionally couple of hundred pictures and process small set from those. I have been using DT for this under one year now. Before that I used it only every now and then.

My current process for this is following with scene referred workflow (this is still evolving as every day I learn more and more how to use darktable more efficiently):

1. Created presets to enable only for my Canon cameras: demosaic (AMaZE + VNG4), diffuse or sharpen (sharpen demosaicing (AA filter), color balance rgb (basic colourfulness: standard), denoise (profiled), chromatic aberrations
2. While on lighttable I hit ‘f’ for sticky preview mode, and scroll through photos. Set one star for photos I want to look closer in the darkroom and reject bad photos.
3. Next I filter photos for one star and go darkroom and hit ‘F11’ to go full screen, Tab to show only the image, and ctrl+b for color assesment view.
4. Couple of weeks ago I bought Loupedeck+ to make my life easier for this step. I have set exposure and master tab sliders from the color balance rgb to it (had to create own labels for knobs). Using only these 13 knobs I can change exposure and all chroma, saturation and brilliance sliders, while I look one photo at time in full screen color assesment view. I have also set up color zones tabs on the loupedeck+, if I need to make some lightness, saturation or hue changes for specific colors.
5. I use some 30 sec to 1 min turning on knobs in loupedeck+ for each photo and if it looks like a keeper I set two stars for that.
6. Next step is hit to tab and set filter for two star photos.
7. Now I have only candidates for keepers and go in lighttable to see what kind of set images I have selected for keepers. Might drop some photos back to one star if I have too many similar photos or go to look for some more if something is missing.
8. Then I go back to darkroom and make final tuning for the photos. First I check white balance in color calibration and after that I usually fix horizon with rotate and perspective, crop photo to my liking, set highlight reconstruction if there are blown highlights, probably make some local fixes with masks and might remove some distracting spots with retouch.
9. Final editing step is to go filmic rgb. There I usually select first auto tune levels and after that make slight tuning to white and black relative exposure. After fine tuning I set three stars for the images I want to export.

For me this works much better than my previous process, where I made RAW conversion with Canons DPP and final photo editing and exporting in Gimp. I have also used Lightroom previously. For me darktable gives much better final images than those tools I have earlier used. It is just amazing how powerful darktable has come in resent years.

Here is link to example set I have done few days ago: Fin5 2022 orienteering photos

[paperdigits (Mica)]

@BigSerpent

But I really don’t understand why not to enable some natural looking settings by default. It is simple. It costs nothing.

Then provide those settings. You said you’ve contributed before and it if this task is so easy, as you say, then please provide those settings to the project.

I’d bet that it will cost you at least some time, but what do I know?

[priort (Todd Prior)]

Nice photos…very “realistic” I really like the one with the graffiti on the wall…

[BigSerpent (Alexander)]

Here is a sample style for FilmicRGB V6. It produces results as close to reality as I managed to get. It was tuned for my Sony A99, so it can differ in exposure for other camera manufactures.
Filmic_V6_sharp_highlights_Standard_matrix.dtstyle (1.7 KB)