I shot this without using a fill flash, and am just interested to see how you guys would generally process for highlights, midtones & shadows.
There are so many ways to process within darktable, and I am keen to see who uses tone equilizer, and/or a tone mapper, and/or offsets within colour balance RGB.
If you don’t use darktable, could you include a brief explanation of how you adjusted highlights, midtones & shadows.
Well, here is one possibility. It is not my normal workflow, as both FilmicRGB and Sigmoid made this image look very artificial to me. I used the tone equalizer to very gently reduce the highlights and very gently bring up the shadows. The result is quite different from yours.
The lifting of the shadows definately brings out lots of detail, which is otherwise dormant. With the spotlights in particular, yours is more detailed but the blacks start to turn to dark grey to my eye.
So do you sometimes use the tone equalizer in place of filmic RGB ( or sigmoid)? I seem to be obsessive about using filmic RGB as the tone mapper between scene and display, for whatever reason, I have convinced myself that it’s a step the just has to be done.
Technically I didn’t find this image too challenging. The highlights were well captured and the shadows not too dark. I usually use Sigmoid as it gives nice colors straight out of the box while filmic tends to give dull colors that need lifting with the color balance rgb module. I also use the shadow and highlights module a lot with my images. Some people are critical of this module because it is old school, but it still works well in my view. _DSC4360.nef.xmp (12.1 KB)
Here is my filmic version. Some images with extreme dynamic range can benefit from Filmic’s magic but I don’t see this as the case with the image here. _DSC4360.nef.xmp (12.2 KB)
Sometimes with deep shadows or backlit images I ignore both Sigmoid and filmic and go to Base curve and use the fusion option. It can make light work of difficult situations. So now I have post my three tone mapping methods that I choose between. Sigmoid is my #1 go to option for most images. _DSC4360.nef.xmp (12.2 KB)
They are different tools with different uses:
tonemappers like filmic, sigmoid, and basecurve, do more than just adjust tones: they also convert the linear encoding to a log encoding. As such, they are the goto tools to make your image “suitable for display” (*). Tone equaliser does not do that linear → log transform, so cannot replace filmic. But it allows adjusting a part of the tonal range, which the tone mappers are much less able to do.
And you don’t want to use two tone mappers…
(* Of course, a tonemapper isn’t strictly necessary, tone curves can do the transform as well. In fine, a tone mapper is a tone curve, with some extra tricks added, like colour handling in the highlights. But using a tone curve is more complicated, and you miss out on the extras)
All very nice edits, it has become very clear to me that mine is too dark overall, which is probably why I am struggling with the blacks.
I didn’t realise that Filmic RGB converted from linear to log, so daft question if I may (and feel free to roll your eyes); does the camera record linear and the monitor display log?
I have never used base curve so I will have a play with it following this chat.
Does anyone use multiple instances of tone equalizer? I am still learning how to fully utilise this module and wonder if I should set the mask to only target blacks in one instance for example.
Watch episode 71 on @s7habo channel. It’s a very nice demonstration of the module. I usually have more than one instance of TE in almost every edit and sometimes use several. I also often blend it in single r g or b channels to tweak blown skies or tweak the color of clouds. Out of the gate the relight preset often does a nice job of lifting a dark image and you can use that as a base and just push and pull it as needed
The channel is Editing moments with DT…You can also check out episode 23 where all he uses are instances of the color balance module to do an edit…showing many ways to edit an image.
This is an older post but as it goes along it evolves into a detailed discussion of how filmic interacts with the display and output profiles to manage gamma correction
Hi!
I processed the photo in RawTherapee 5.11. First I used automatic levels and curve. I corrected the white balance and used the tone corrector. To make the shaded lamp more visible I used selective editing. In Gimp, I reduced and sharpened the photo.
Well, that was quite a read ! The maths was too difficult to follow, and I suppose isn’t aimed at me anyway. I have made some notes about the linear to log parts and 18% grey in particular.
Not watched Boris Hadjokovics video yet, but have added it to my playlist. I have, however, watched Aurillien Pierres video on the tone equalizer module. I need to watch it again while actually editing a photo, there is a lot to digest.
