Bernard <bdebr...@teaser.fr> writes: > I use Darktable 1.6 on Ubuntu 14.04, and a Canon EOS 600D. I import > downloaded CR2s into Darktable, then I treat them one by one in the > 'darkroom'. As the images display, they have already undergone a process > that is part of the Darktable presets ; I could modify those, but I > found easier not to bother with this. Instead, in the "history" panel, I > highlight : > > '0 - original'
This seems like a strange idea to me. You're removing the "sharpen" tool, which does a good job at sharpening the image. It's not the same as local contrast even though they are similar: sharpen acts at a very small scale (just a few pixels, almost invisible on zoomed-out view) while local contrast reinforces the contrasts at a larger scale in space. You're also removing the "orientation" tool so you'll have to re-rotate your pictures if they are vertical. For the color profile, you can indeed use a preset to apply it for you. For example, I prefer the standard color matrix to the "enhanced" one (which at least for my camera tends to produce oversaturated colors), so I have a preset with "standard color matrix", "auto apply this preset to matching images", "raw" and I don't have to worry about it anymore). I never understood this "don't use basecurve" thing. Perhaps because I haven't tried enough, but I don't see the point in using similar tools like tone curve which comes much later in the pipeline. The default basecurve tends to burn the highlights, but that's easily worked around by moving the high end of the curve down. I have a preset "nikon-like-preserve-highlight" which I apply on images where I want to keep contrast in the highlights, but most of the time the default basecurve just works. In case you worry about the order in which things are applied: darktable applies them in a predefined order, independant from the history stack. > In watching the "used modules", I can see that 'Highlight > reconstruction' is ON with a clipping threshold of 1,000 (maybe it does > nothing...). It probably is a default value, I did not attempt to change it. highlight reconstruction is useful when you have overexposed parts of your image. For example, when all channels clip (reache their maximum), they will all have equal values (i.e. it's white) and then the "white balance" module will multiply some channels and you'll get wrong colors in the highlights (even if it's just a few pixels, you don't want false colors). The default is to turn these false colors into white, which is a sensible thing to do. The other modes allow you to try to guess more information about colors and contrast in the clipped areas. In short: you should keep this module on all the time, and unless you have large overexposed parts, keeping the default is good. Among the modules that you probably want to consider in the starting point (in 90% of cases, just activating them with default parameters does a good job, and you still have parameters to play with if needed) : * shadows and highlights. * denoise (profiled) -- Matthieu Moy http://www-verimag.imag.fr/~moy/ ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ _______________________________________________ Darktable-users mailing list Darktable-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/darktable-users
