Hi Phoebe, I think that if you want really accurate colour reproduction you have to adopt a colour managed workflow with the first priority being your monitor i.e. you have to have your monitor calibrated and then load the resulting colour profile into your system for image display. The logic here is that unless your monitor is truly accurate you can't judge what to do in darktable (or any other image processing software) as what you see on the screen isn't reality. There are some extensive notes on the darktable website blog on how to go about this but unfortunately setting up your operating system and monitor for colour calibration is not easy - if you are starting from scratch and getting professional help I would suggest asking that professional to calibrate your display and set the operating system up for colour management with it. After that darktable, or any other colour management capable processing tool of your choice, should have the correct starting point.
Darktable does as you say have some good tools for colour manipulation and there is a module called 'colour zones' which lets you adjust any part of the colour spectrum plus independently of the rest plus a 'colour filter' which allows you to apply an overall if you wish (actually two overall tints as it distinguishes between shadows and highlights). There are actually other tools and ways of manipulating colour as well but these first two are good ones to start with, if you do then end up using darktable seriously there are plenty of folks here who can offer advice as you go along. That said though it is really important to get your original colour reproduction as good as possible so that you have the minimum to do afterwards with colour reproduction. It is possible, I can take pictures out of my window as raw images, load them into darktable, display them on my (colour managed) screen and the colour reproduction is essentially exactly as I see out of the window. If you aren't getting somewhere near that level of initial colour fidelity it needs sorting out before you start manipulating colours in darktable (or anything else) I think. Rgds, Rob. -----Original Message----- From: Phoebe Nix [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 15 February 2014 01:06 To: [email protected] Subject: [Darktable-users] Confused Newbie Hello. I heard about Darktable through a forum for Digital Photographers. I joined the forum because I am having great difficulty getting the colors in a particular acrylic painting I have done to appear to a level of accuracy I can tolerate. I have been working on monitor and printer calibration for over a week. I have been working on getting the lighting and camera settings as correct as possible. I have hired someone to come tomorrow to try to help me figure out why this has been so difficult. I do suspect it is an issue with the camera, a new Nikon D3200. In the meantime I have been attempting to edit this particular image with PSE12 and recent addition of Light Room 5. To no avail. So I thought I would try Darktable. I have NO idea what I'm doing but while fiddling around I discovered I could do something with the image in Darktable that I haven't been able to do with my other editing software. I have been trying to make one particular color appear more accurate. It is a color that is supposed to be a tint/hue/shade of a green. This color is on a background of various shades of blue. With your software I find that I can actually manipulate all instances of this color. My problem, other than fine tuning the actual color, is that I am trying to do this independent of the blues. I will then need to adjust the blues independent of the greens. I have tried to ascertain how to do this by reading the Darktable manual but it is very complicated reading. Is there a way to help me with instruction I might be able to understand? Also, I am trying to determine if I can have layers like in PSE 12? Can't figure the answer to that one either, sorry. I look forward to any help on these matters. Regards, Phoebe Sent from my iPhone ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Android apps run on BlackBerry 10 Introducing the new BlackBerry 10.2.1 Runtime for Android apps. Now with support for Jelly Bean, Bluetooth, Mapview and more. Get your Android app in front of a whole new audience. Start now. http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=124407151&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk _______________________________________________ Darktable-users mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/darktable-users This email is confidential and is intended for the addressee only. If you are not the addressee, please delete the email and do not use it in any way. 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