Thanks, Boris, for yet another wonderful, instructive clip. You took some ordinary-looking images and brought out the beauty in them effortlessly. The Darktable community is blessed to have you building such a valuable, and well-explained resource.
I can already see I'm going to be reviewing this video more than a few times. 🙂 Your depth of understanding (of darktable and these modules) is remarkable. Well done.
Thank you for making these videos. They are excellent -- right to the point and a real education for your viewers. I still am struggling with Tone Equalizer and although I see you use it all the time I can't seem to get it to do what I want. I'll keep trying -- each time you show it I learn a little more. Maybe it's the masking step that throws me off -- I'm not sure what I'm masking.
Hi Cliff. Internal mask of the Tone Equalizer is used to separate different brightness ranges of the image which can then be influenced individually with the help of the curve (or sliders). In a way, this is a digital analogy to the so-called "Zone System" by Anselm Adams, known from the time of analog photography: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System With the sliders "mask exposure compensation" and "mask contrast compensation" you can influence this local separation into brightness areas that mask should make. When you turn on the "display exposure Mask" button, you can see how the mask has separated the brightness areas of the image. I recommend you to read the official documentation about it here: docs.darktable.org/usermanual/3.8/en/module-reference/processing-modules/tone-equalizer/
Another great video. You managed to make a boring photo, that most people would probably reject, into a beautiful one. I love watching you edit and bring out the colors and depth in the photos. Thanks for your time devoted to showing how you work. It is invaluable.
I have just been editing a similar woodland scene to 'road in the forest' and this part of the video has been very useful. I used the diffuse and sharpen with multiply blend mode. I also did not realise that I can reduce the opacity of a second (or third) drawn mask for a slightly different adjustment in exposure. that will be very useful also in other modules. Thank you. I very much appreciate it.
Excellent explanations and as always you have helped me understand more about how to approach editing and how to get to certain effects. It's worth watching a number of times. Thanks very much.
around 25:20 you use the Diffuse / Sharpen module to create soft contrast. I understand the use & the 'multiply' blend mode, & why this is preferable in scene-referred workflow to using Lowpass module. my concern however (& perhaps this exposes my ignorance, & hence the question) is that the Lowpass module can be desaturated prior to applying the blend, whereas in the Diffuse / Sharpen module, saturation remains, & hence colours are also affected. am i correct in saying this? & if so, is there envisaged to be either a scene-referred Lowpass module in the future, or some sort of technique for creating a desaturated blur for masking in the scene referred workflow? thank you once again for your excellent tutorials with many great insights.
Yes, you are right. In fact, it would be better if you could desaturate the colors in diffuse and sharp module when you apply multiplication blend mode. I talked to the developer about it and he said that it is technically possible but very complicated. This additional functionality would have made the module much more complex and also slower. On the other hand, with diffuse and sharpen module, unlike low pass module, you have much better control over the type of diffusion. One is not limited to only Gaussian or bilateral blur. This in turn, in combination with multiplication blend mode, can ensure much nicer results. As for desaturation, you can reduce the saturation of the three color channels in the color calibration module, which is hierarchically before the diffuse and sharp modules. This way you can make sure that the result is not oversaturated in the end.
@@s7habo Thanks for the advice. I guess despite the problems with 'display referred' editing, Lowpass is probably still worth trying by comparison ... as the colour shift might actually wind up being less than that using Diffuse / Sharpen. I will continue to explore both i guess, but thanks for helping me to confirm my understanding.
What is your rule for moving Exposure and Tone Equalizer instances up - is it to always keep them above (after) the White Balance and Color Calibration modules? If so - is this order consideration necessary with "scene-referred" set in Preferences?
Darktable has a fixed order of modules that can be changed according to your needs. When I make this change, it tends to be with other instances of the modules to achieve a specific result. This has no fixed logic other than to get a certain result on the given scene. Sometimes, for example, I want to use Color Calibration module to adjust the colors first, and then use Exposure module with parametric mask based on the specific hue to lighten a specific area of the image. Before I did the color correction, I could not mask the area correctly, etc. There are also other examples but that will lead too far here.
Very nice video! I will use this for a lot of inspiration going forward. :) One quick question (might have been in the video) but how do you click and drag modules? When I click a module it just opens and I have to click on the instance option menue and then choose move up or down for each step I want to move the module which gets tedious sometimes.
Lens correction module offers among others internal possibility to correct chromatic aberration also manually. It will be applied automatically with other corrections if the lens model is listed in the database (Lensfun database - github.com/lensfun/lensfun). Chromatic aberration module is an extra module that is used only for this correction. There the correction is done manually independent of the lens model.
Check ou this video by the module author...very thorough review of all the ways to deal with CA in DT and the suggested workflow using them... th-cam.com/video/iSAlfeNFNL0/w-d-xo.html
Unfortunately I don't offer my raw files but, if you want to practice, on this page offers the raw files: www.signatureedits.com/free-raw-photos/ There you also have photos with similar motifs.
Thanks, Boris, for yet another wonderful, instructive clip. You took some ordinary-looking images and brought out the beauty in them effortlessly. The Darktable community is blessed to have you building such a valuable, and well-explained resource.
I can already see I'm going to be reviewing this video more than a few times. 🙂 Your depth of understanding (of darktable and these modules) is remarkable. Well done.
Thank you for making these videos. They are excellent -- right to the point and a real education for your viewers. I still am struggling with Tone Equalizer and although I see you use it all the time I can't seem to get it to do what I want. I'll keep trying -- each time you show it I learn a little more. Maybe it's the masking step that throws me off -- I'm not sure what I'm masking.
Hi Cliff. Internal mask of the Tone Equalizer is used to separate different brightness ranges of the image which can then be influenced individually with the help of the curve (or sliders). In a way, this is a digital analogy to the so-called "Zone System" by Anselm Adams, known from the time of analog photography:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zone_System
With the sliders "mask exposure compensation" and "mask contrast compensation" you can influence this local separation into brightness areas that mask should make. When you turn on the "display exposure Mask" button, you can see how the mask has separated the brightness areas of the image. I recommend you to read the official documentation about it here:
docs.darktable.org/usermanual/3.8/en/module-reference/processing-modules/tone-equalizer/
@@s7habo Thank you for such a complete answer. I'll read that document and experiment some more. You provide inspiration!
Excellent explanation! Thanks a lot for these useful step by step guides
Another great video. You managed to make a boring photo, that most people would probably reject, into a beautiful one. I love watching you edit and bring out the colors and depth in the photos. Thanks for your time devoted to showing how you work. It is invaluable.
You make everything look so easy. I am amazed by your edits. Thank you!
I have just been editing a similar woodland scene to 'road in the forest' and this part of the video has been very useful. I used the diffuse and sharpen with multiply blend mode. I also did not realise that I can reduce the opacity of a second (or third) drawn mask for a slightly different adjustment in exposure. that will be very useful also in other modules. Thank you. I very much appreciate it.
Excellent explanations and as always you have helped me understand more about how to approach editing and how to get to certain effects. It's worth watching a number of times. Thanks very much.
Thank you again for your videos, Boris! I always learn something new!
Thank you. Your tutorials are really helping me to understand Darktable better.
around 25:20 you use the Diffuse / Sharpen module to create soft contrast. I understand the use & the 'multiply' blend mode, & why this is preferable in scene-referred workflow to using Lowpass module.
my concern however (& perhaps this exposes my ignorance, & hence the question) is that the Lowpass module can be desaturated prior to applying the blend, whereas in the Diffuse / Sharpen module, saturation remains, & hence colours are also affected.
am i correct in saying this? & if so, is there envisaged to be either a scene-referred Lowpass module in the future, or some sort of technique for creating a desaturated blur for masking in the scene referred workflow?
thank you once again for your excellent tutorials with many great insights.
Yes, you are right. In fact, it would be better if you could desaturate the colors in diffuse and sharp module when you apply multiplication blend mode. I talked to the developer about it and he said that it is technically possible but very complicated. This additional functionality would have made the module much more complex and also slower.
On the other hand, with diffuse and sharpen module, unlike low pass module, you have much better control over the type of diffusion. One is not limited to only Gaussian or bilateral blur. This in turn, in combination with multiplication blend mode, can ensure much nicer results. As for desaturation, you can reduce the saturation of the three color channels in the color calibration module, which is hierarchically before the diffuse and sharp modules. This way you can make sure that the result is not oversaturated in the end.
@@s7habo Thanks for the advice. I guess despite the problems with 'display referred' editing, Lowpass is probably still worth trying by comparison ... as the colour shift might actually wind up being less than that using Diffuse / Sharpen. I will continue to explore both i guess, but thanks for helping me to confirm my understanding.
Awesome Boris!
What is your rule for moving Exposure and Tone Equalizer instances up - is it to always keep them above (after) the White Balance and Color Calibration modules? If so - is this order consideration necessary with "scene-referred" set in Preferences?
Darktable has a fixed order of modules that can be changed according to your needs. When I make this change, it tends to be with other instances of the modules to achieve a specific result. This has no fixed logic other than to get a certain result on the given scene. Sometimes, for example, I want to use Color Calibration module to adjust the colors first, and then use Exposure module with parametric mask based on the specific hue to lighten a specific area of the image.
Before I did the color correction, I could not mask the area correctly, etc. There are also other examples but that will lead too far here.
@@s7habo I think I have got it. Thank you.
Very nice video! I will use this for a lot of inspiration going forward. :) One quick question (might have been in the video) but how do you click and drag modules? When I click a module it just opens and I have to click on the instance option menue and then choose move up or down for each step I want to move the module which gets tedious sometimes.
ctrl+shift+ drag with the left mouse button
@@s7habo Wonderful! Thank you! :)
What is the difference between raw chromatic aberration and chromatic aberration modules?
Lens correction module offers among others internal possibility to correct chromatic aberration also manually. It will be applied automatically with other corrections if the lens model is listed in the database (Lensfun database - github.com/lensfun/lensfun).
Chromatic aberration module is an extra module that is used only for this correction. There the correction is done manually independent of the lens model.
Check ou this video by the module author...very thorough review of all the ways to deal with CA in DT and the suggested workflow using them... th-cam.com/video/iSAlfeNFNL0/w-d-xo.html
can we have these image for practice?
Unfortunately I don't offer my raw files but, if you want to practice, on this page offers the raw files:
www.signatureedits.com/free-raw-photos/
There you also have photos with similar motifs.