The channel mixer is basically 3 modules in 1:
- using the red, green and blue destinations, it allows you to effectively
do a matrix multiplication on the [R,G,B] vectors:
[Rout]   [Rr Rg Rb]   [Rin]
[Gout] = [Gr Gg Gb] x [Gin]
[Bout]   [Br Bg Bb]   [Bin]

You use the sliders on the red, green & blue destination tabs to input the
9 coefficients of the matrix. Transformations between (linear) colour
spaces are usually achieved by matrix multiplications, and you can use such
a linear transform to "tweak the primary colours" of your
colourspace (basically transform to a different colour space with slightly
different primary colours). This is a fairly technical thing, and if you
try to find suitable coefficients by "trial and error" I think it may be
quite difficult to use unless you keep the adjustments very small, or use
it with a mask. The following article has an example where this feature of
channel mixer was used together with a mask to adjust the blue light from
LEDs to bring them back into gamut.
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/darktable-3-0-for-dummies-hardcore-edition/15864

- converting the image to monochrome. Basically, for each pixel it is
setting the R,G,B values to the same value (which is a well-behaved
colourspace results in some shade of grey). There are different strategies
for how you decide which [x,x,x] value to map an [R,G,B] vector to (eg.
averaging, max, etc.). Here I think there is nothing wrong with just using
the presets to find a suitable look.

- using [R,G,B] values to influence Hue, Saturation & Lightness (HSL). I'm
hard pressed to understand what you would use this for in practice, and I
saw a discussion on github which seemed to indicate the implementation here
may even be broken.


On Wed, 2 Sep 2020 at 05:05, Mikael Ståldal <[email protected]> wrote:

> I have tried to use the channel mixer module, but I don't quite
> understand it. I have only been able to effectively use the presets.
>
> I have read the user manual, but it didn't help much.
>
> I also looked at this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGvkSTjjtMw
> but it seems like Bruce Williams was quite confused as well.
>
> Any suggestions for documentation or tutorials?
>
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