Perhaps because the dt manual is a reference (only), where APās article explains theory and practical use of the module.
I am using the WB/CC controls in their default setup. I am adjusting CC, leaving the WB alone (as advised). I hardly ever get offered a colour temperature control. I find a hue control to be counterintuitive.
I found this counterintuitive at first but with a bit of rethinking, now I find I can get good results very quickly. In colour calibration, If you first click on āas shotā to ensure that it is using the camera wb, then if you want to change it, click on custom.
Think of the hue slider as the colour of the light source. I tend to just leave this alone in most cases.
Think of the chroma as the amount of correction you are applying to correct for the light source. So for example if you had a warm slightly red tungsten light (I guess not many people have those anymore!) slide it more to the left to reduce the amount of correction and get a warmer look. Or slide to the right to correct it more and get a cooler more neutral look.
I find this approach quicker and achieves more a natural look than messing with temperature and tint sliders.
Hope this helps. It is an example of darktable having a different approach but actually it is quite logical and easy to use once you get used to it.
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I will try that, thanks.
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There is a small glitch in CC module. I have defined a preset that is āas shotā to get the same WB setting as in camera. See the issue in Changing illuminant to custom in color calibration changes image tone Ā· Issue #9968 Ā· darktable-org/darktable Ā· GitHub.
Is it less practical than it can be for the majority? I guess we have the forum and other resources to fall back on.
Thatās exactly how I use it ā¦
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I think the text does explain it and for what itās worth I saw several request from people for more examples and sceenshots much like rawpedia when the move was made to the new documentation format for the manual and this was rejected as a bad idea or for some reason and so the Spartan text is I believe a conscious design choice
Good to know. I am not advocating one way or another. Just acknowledging the untechnical audience. Even though I am always super considerate, my supervisor constantly reminds me that we are the experts and canāt expect others to be at that level or have the desire to be such.
Anyway, sorry folks for the detour. Letās talk about WB modules!
Me either but I do like visuals I think here @kofa is a good example He writes thoughtful detailed responses often with a nice string of screenshots offering nice clear explanations. @s7habo Boris does the same. I think in this day in age if you arenāt visual people often tune out quicklyā¦ So clean text based information might be lean and mean but might be lacking for some
The manual is a manual about how to use darktable. It is not there to explain the many confusing concepts around digital image processing.
Yes, āspartanā is a design choice. The manual is 300 pages and right now is mostly the one man band of @elstoc. We had hoped that moving to markdown would encourage new contributors, but we have not had landed anyone that has stuck around.
The more that is in the manual, the more work it is to maintain. Screenshots and other types of graphics are especially costly in terms of time. Text is the most effected in terms of cost to maintain. Since it is mostly a reference manual, we also assume that you have darktable open in front of you while youāre using the manual.
What other app is shipping a manual this long now-a-days?
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I was just pointing out it was by design that it took this format and not incomplete although maybe some sections are. Itās more than adequate and as you say a very resource intensive undertaking for a small group so the simpler the betterā¦ No intended criticism of the documents
Heh. Iām an old fogey. When I search for how to do something and it gives me a video, I look elsewhere for a good textual explanation.
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Since the Color Calibration effect is applied by default, I was also confused by the red warning about white balance applied twice. I wish the error message would tell me where I should have changed it, instead of me having to search this forum to find out.
There is a tooltip telling you so 
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Oh, thatās neat! Tooltips on error messages arenāt really the norm, so I didnāt think to look for that.
Many are quite descriptive and often include the associated shortcut keyā¦ Also you may or may not know or be interestedā¦ignore if you are notā¦ but the concept of using CAT for WB often seems overly complicated for new DT users and it is possible to revert to just using the legacy one but there are reasons for using this approachā¦
Its well explained here. The math may not be exactly the same but you can also skip down to bullet point or section 5 for a quicker explanation of why DT is using this methodā¦
The rest you can consider extra context if you have any interest in itā¦
Chromatic Adaptation explained.pdf (3.7 MB)
You also could perhaps have tried looking in the manual at the description of the Color calibration module. Thereās a section titled " CAT warnings" in there.
I know, Iām old-fashioned, I use the manuals for the tools I useā¦
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Hello,
Thank you for the information, on a few stubborn photos I got excellent results.
Greetings from Brussels,
Christian
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I donāt think I said anything new but glad it helpedā¦