The trouble is, one may have a camera for which the reference white values are wrong (Sony and Olympus users seem to have problems). This does not imply that those users also have the knowledge to fix the issue by creating a pair of custom presets, one for white balance, one for color calibration, that switches back to the legacy chromatic adaptation settings for those problematic cameras.
No it won’t !
That’s a solution, I think…
The solution is to use the new workflow as we have redesign/simplified this part.
Do you think those problematic cameras will be fixed?
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@Pascal_Obry
If you check Sony A7 (m2), color calibration module, sometimes quite different colors compared to legacy whitebalance, not always - #28 by priort, you’ll see the D65 multipliers are
2344/1024 = 2.289
1024/1024 = 1
1664/1024 = 1.625
darktable’s reference values are:
2.758
1
1.239
With dt’s defaults, picking an area from the blanket’s label in color calibration:
With the multipliers reported by Todd, picking the same area (dt’s multipliers on the left, Todd’s multipliers on the right):
Disabling color calibration, picking WB from the same spot in the white balance module:
(compared to the 1st image, exposure slightliy adjusted to match up with that)
Compared to the 2nd image (that used Todd’s multipliers):
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IMO there were some very good reasons for keeping the CAT and workflow preferences separate – they both require a pair of modules working together to achieve their default settings (white balance / color calibration, and exposure / filmic, respectively) and a user might have good reasons to deactivate either one (see above conversation). These settings are different to things like the ‘auto-apply sharpen’ setting (whose removal does still make sense) as they can’t be easily reproduced with a simple preset on a single module.
I wonder about this, I owned the ILCE M2 (it is broken now). With this camera colors were fantastic with filmic 3,4, 5 and CAT. Absolute no problem, even without fiddling color issues… 
That’s part of it. Both scene-referred filmic/sigmoid are using color calibration & display referred is using WB.
What was the logic behind linking those (otherwise unconnected) things? For example, to have filmic/scene-referred workflow and legacy CAT, a user is now required to manually set modules on every image (since it is not possible to set WB with a preset).
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I haven’t built for a week or two… so the only way to use legacy wb only now is a preset and the go in and set to as shot???
Maybe I am misunderstanding??
It would seem at least that legacy wb is a good fall back to the ground truth as shot wb for each camera whereas relying on the d65 numbers provided by DT doesn’t always achieve that.
I’m not sure how well this will be received…
I guess time will tell…
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Yes I think you’d have to choose one of the scene-referred modes then have a preset to disable color calibration and manually change the white balance to “as shot” on every image. I’ll be honest I haven’t built master for a while so I haven’t tried it yet.
See issue where discussion was done. We favor the modern workflow so scene-referred + filmic/sigmoid and so color calibration. People wanting to mix display referred workflow + color calibration can use the None setting and create auto-applied presets. But again this is not a combination that we want to support.
EDIT: The goal was to simplified the prefs by proposing combination that are working well together.
No, they can’t, because you can’t create auto-applied presets for white balance (to select “D65” or “as shot”). This was the whole point of the separate setting. For example, let me arbitrarily assign goodness to some combinations of things…
- scene-referred + modern CAT = very good
- scene-referred + legacy CAT = OK
- display-referred + modern CAT = bad
- display-referred + legacy CAT = very bad
You’ve made it easier to do “very bad” and “very good” but the two middle options are very difficult because both of them require a setting on the white balance module that can’t be automated with a preset. Scene-referred defaults involve some interplay between exposure and filmic and those can’t be easily automated either.
If the goal is to propose goodness, the solution is to do away with (deprecate) the legacy stuff altogether (though I’m not convinced that is a good idea either).
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My comment would be that the argument for this change is fine if you can guarantee solid D65 values to the user but when you can’t it is now harder to simply fallback on a more accurate solution ie the wb as-shot data strait from the camera… The technically superior modern CAT is rendered inferior in this case where the D65 values are off.
That was my concern… as I very much like the ‘OK’ option.
In terms of “combinations that work well together” the module order should be entirely unconnected with the CAT method (since all CAT should take place in scene-referred space anyway). I have just noticed, though, that color calibration appears after base curve in the legacy module order – IMO this is just incorrect. Similarly with the other newer modules (color balance rgb and diffuse/sharpen).
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I thought the legacy module order was unrelated to the workflow settings? I remember reading how the base curve had been moved later in the pipe… not sure in what context this was.
Not just reference values… If your shot is too far from ‘daylight’ , the camera matrix / profile messes with the colours in a way that color-calibration can’t fix them.
Modern color workflow works fine for shots near enough to daylight , but simply doesn’t work for tungsten dor example. Those cameras seem to need a tungsten matrix , where others don’t seem to care .
I’m probably feeling this way because of my issues , but the color-calibration as white-balance workflow seems not usable for quite a portion of the user base , in certain lighting situations.
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This fits with me… I find that for my sort of photography, the color calibration workflow is just an unnecessary step, that can actually cause more problems than it solves. I’m really not ‘bashing’ ( 
) the CC module, as I think it it’s really useful, both the other aspects of it, and the chromatic adaptation in situations where it’s needed. It’s just that it doesn’t give much benefit in some situations, which happens to be quite often with me.
I’d be willing to use presets if need be to get back to the ‘legacy’ wb’ settings, but it sounds like that’s not currently possible. If someone could confirm whether it is or isn’t it would clear things up a bit. I’ll try to make time to try it myself later, but I’m on my laptop right now and need to run… 
