Hi all,
I tried to find a solution to this about a year ago, but I was never quite
satisfied. Also, my pc at the time was too slow to use DT on a regular
basis, so I just let it rest. Now I'm back on a better pc and it is time to
dig into this again.
I have installed the demo of Lightroom 5.3 on my Windows partition to see
what I could get there, and I still find that the highlight recovery in DT
is not good. If I reduce the exposure, blown out highlights are recovered,
although a bit washed out in the detail compared to LR, and bright pink. If
I then use "Clip highlights" in the Highlight Reconstruction module, the
highlights are of course clipped, which is not what one would want. If I
use "Reconstruct in LCh" with the default slider value of 1 the highlights
are still recovered, but the pink is only reduced, not gone.
To get rid of the pink I have to adjust the slider to about 0,890, which
removes all color from the pink areas. That would have been tolerable if it
wasn't for the fact that there is a sharp transition between the colored
and the desaturated area, and also that the highlights have much less
contrast than in Lightroom.
In Lightroom on the other hand, all I have to do is to reduce the exposure
and the blown out highlights are perfectly recovered. There seem to be some
desaturation applied in the brightest areas, but the transition is nice and
soft, barely visible.
I have prepared some examples below. A RAW file and jpegs from different
combinations of settings. The files are:
*LR_53_exp-2.jpg*: From Lightroom 5.3. Exposure reduced by two stops to
recover all highlights. Everything else as default.
*DT_exp-2.jpg*: From Darktable 1.4. Exposure reduced by two stops to
recover all highlights. Everything else as default. Highlight
Reconstruction module off.
*DT_exp-2_LCh1.jpg*: Same as above, but Highlight Reconstruction module on.
Reconstruct in LCh, slider at 1.000.
*DT_exp-2_LCh890.jpg*: Same as above, but slider at 0.890.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0BzpnpCT3vxbdVlNSZDROTDFESEE&usp=sharing
My camera: Canon EOS 550D
My OS: Linux Mint 15
My Darktable: 1.4 (there is no 1.4.1 for Mint 15/Ubuntu Raring)
Now is there something I have completely missed? If not, do others have the
same problems? And is there a way to solve this? Maybe one needs Adobe's
vast resources in order to get it working.
I even tried to play around with the white point value in the cameras.xml
file, as I was advised to do a year ago, but that didn't seem to make it
better.
I have a couple of other issues as well, unrelated to this, but I'll save
them for another post.
Best regards,
Hans Petter Birkeland
http://hpbirkeland.com
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