Its not the workflows really the choices seem logical except for the choice of how CC now works with them… If this is the way ie to always try and force the modern WB then WB should have a legacy or CAT setting and control it from there. If you choose CAT you get CC enabled with CAT and the WB sets to reference. Workflows as is and with their intentions intact but WB not requiring an auto preset or able to land at a combination of settings that are incorrect. That is just bad practice.
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Isn’t that behavior exactly, what White Balance ist supposed to do? If you don’t like the result, then go on without color calibration. Or change the tones you would like to change in a second instance of color calibration using the channel mixer mode. Nothing wrong with either one. The problem with a color cast is, that it usually effects all colors in the image, which you will often want to change, whereas with channel mixer you stay in füll control of your colors.
Fixing that manually for like 400 holiday photos isn’t quite what I’d call a good user experience. Good starting point is a must. Also, the thread is now over 80 posts long. It’s not a simple topic, I suppose. 
Have you looked at this script… perfect way to get around this…indeed to use whatever combination you want and also to do things like auto set the mask for CB and tone eq so they are in place for each image when you go to make adjustments…
Not yet. So far I’m good with how I set up the 4.2 for my purposes. But I’ll keep that in mind. Thank you. 
Even if you did nothing other than have it set the tone eq mask and CB tonal mask its worth it… just those two things alone saves many clicks… many people never even bother to set the CB mask and so their adjustments in shadows mids and highlights are not targeted as individually as they could be…
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A filament light bulb is around 2800K which is far off 6500K required for D65
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I would then tend to use whitebalance (as shot in camera) only and probably also create a basic processing preset as a dt.style to apply on all images as a starting point. Good luck with your project.
16 posts were split to a new topic: Initial workflow lua script
Just wanted to express, that I’m also unhappy with the current state of white balance / color calibration.
I generally like to use a scene referred approach even if I’m mostly not using sigmoid or filmic at the end of the pipeline. But the WB module works simple and good for my workflow, so I don’t want to use the color calibration (it would require me to get better D65 values, but I’m not confident, that the result would be better than just staying with the WB module, mostly as shot).
So, presetting “as shot” in WB doesn’t work (puts always into user modified). I then looked at the initial workflow script, but I like to have a “slim” (or minimalistic) approach - using a minimal number of different components that get the job done. Also I like to edit every picture individually, so I don’t need a script that performs automatic steps for me (not bashing on the script, I think it is generally very usefully).
I would consider using the display-referred mode, but I’m unsure as this is also messing with the blend modes of the modules (and other stuff, unknown to me?).
Short recap of my workflow, that I currently am not able use:
- white balance with WB (mostly “as shot”), CC off
- scene referred pipeline
- tone curve with, err, tone curve (sigmoid off, filmic off)
edit: fixed typo
Why can you not use your outlined workflow? Iirc, one of the options for “auto-apply pixel workflow defaults” is “none”. Combine that with “auto-apply chromatic adaptation default” set to legacy, and you are almost there. You just need a preset to disable filmic (most users want some kind of default scene-display conversion, so filmic is enabled by default, even in workflow “none”). That will get you WB as “as shot”, and no CC.
The only other thing you might want to disable is “highligh recovery”.
This is for version 4.2.1, btw. And I think you need to restart darktable after changing the workflow settings.
Keep in mind that “scene-referred pipeline” is mostly a matter of which modules you use, and where you change the image: roughly,
- changes before filmic|sigmoid|basecurve are “scene-referred”,
- changes to the image after those modules are “display-referred”.
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I don’t understand you.
white balance with WB (mostly “as shot”), CC off
That’s the ‘legacy’ way, and is usually safe. What is the issue? That mode does not rely on the D65 coefficients for your camera, as far as I know.
tone curve with, err, tone curve (sigmoid off, filmic off)
Since that module cannot handle lightness > 100%, you have to introduce heavy compression (tone mapping) using other tools, right?
Thanks for your time and sorry for not being precise and understandable.
I currently have switched to legacy, as this is my only option for the described workflow (as far as I can see). My problem with that is, I’m not sure what I am loosing this way. I can see, that the blend mode now defaults to rgb display, and maybe there are other improvements regarding the pipeline I am missing in legacy mode?
If I undestand you right, than I just should stay in legacy mode and be happy?
That’s actually a none issue for most of my images . In some images I have to pull the highlights down with tone eq and if I really have an image with a large dynamic range, I probably have to compress anyway, or I will loose details in shadows or highlights (in rare cases I resort to sigmoid).
I have tried filmic, sigmoid, tone eq and tone curve for tone mapping, each in several hundred of pictures, and the tone curve actually suits my workflow best, I think.
I have made presets for precise copies of the curves from C1 and ACR, and I find these very well suited for the bulk of my images.
Being happy is nice, isn’t it? Use whatever works for you. Darktable is flexible, so you can establish your own workflow.
Am I missing something. I like to see my images with out filmic or sigmoid. I also like the normal WB so I just select workflow to none and I get as shot WB. I have added only one step. I have color calibration applied by default in bypass mode. This is to offset the new change that activating CC will by default enable the the CAT which normally I don’t use and so I use CC for the other tabs mostly ie as a channel mixer or the bright/color/gray tabs… I think it fits with the needs described above by @qmpel so then proceed to add whatever is needed ?? Other than the exposure bump and filmic or sigmoid what changes… do the blending modes shift… I have often found them to need changing in some modules even when scene referred was the workflow… I think the Tone eq was like that but might be fixed now?? I guess that could be the only thing… but now with the flexibility of auto presets and multiple instances you can pretty much activate what ever combination you want??
Thanks for helping out. I think the settings have changed a bit on 4.3.0, I’m on the weekly build.
Ok, this wasn’t clear to me. I thought, there might be some things I’m missing out, when I’m not officially (as per settings) on a scene referred workflow.
The other thing that’s still worrying me a bit, are the blend mode defaults, which turn to rgb (display). Not sure, if thats a draw back, or if there is even an influence on the image rendition.
Will propably read more up in the user manual, trying to extract information.
Yes, you are right. I think its just my confusion about what the “auto apply pixel workflow defaults” in the case of “scene referred” exactly do. I was thinking something hidden was maybe happening, which I’m loosing, when setting to none. But I’m nearly convinced, that “None” is the way to go for me
Thanks Todd
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Well also I guess if the scene referred workflow is now consistently changing all the mask blending then you could also auto apply all your key modules but initially set as deactivated where they might be optional but with the mask blending set to scene… so when you enable them to apply them it has the setting(s) that you want. I do this sort of thing with filmic and sigmoid. I apply them both deactivated so I can toggle one or the other on and off when I want them but initially I see the image with out them…
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