what's so hard about darktable

[giusarg]

@martinus

Thank you for this background, but can you tell me than, which module in darktable should be used for dealing with shadows & highlights in a scene referred pipeline ?

If I may reply for @EspE1:

@EspE1

But I think that Aurélien and others have been clear that the point is not really seeking to create a mask that covers the whole DR of an image, but, to reduce the risk for artifacts, rather use several instances of TE with one mask covering the highlight end and another for the shadows.

Although most of the time your tone mapper of choice should be sufficient, IMHO.