Filmic: tips, tricks & best practices

[paolo-santucci]

Hi, I started using Darktable "after the fork" and never get to learn Filmic. Could you point me to some valid resources explaining how to use it?

Also, why all those color sciences? There are cases when an older version is a better choice than the last on?

[Annabel2]

Have you tried this - https://ansel.photos/en/doc/views/darkroom/modules/filmic/

Why the color sciences - Filmic has evolved over time and so there are a number of versions. Some people use not-the-latest for specific reasons.

[pedrorrodriguez]

Hi, I started using Darktable "after the fork" and never get to learn Filmic. Could you point me to some valid resources explaining how to use it?

Also, why all those color sciences? There are cases when an older version is a better choice than the last on?

The older versions are there for compatibility reasons, so it doesn't break older edits. V7 works great , even though I wish it would desaturate more evenly towards white if you so chose. Actually, you are able to desaturate towards white quite smoothly and gently via the reconstruct tab: raise the transition slider, move the balance sliders to the left (particularly the grey/colorful details one; structure-texture and bloom-reconstruct to taste), then slowly lower the threshold until you achieve the desired result.

The gist of filmic:

• Your camera captures a larger dynamic range than your monitor is able to display, or you're able to print.
• Your image's DR has to be "compressed" to fit the target medium's DR (screen, print...). This is called tone mapping, and filmic takes care of that, among other things.
• The workflow is to set the general level of exposure in the exposure module without worrying about clipped highlights.
• Then move onto filmic, use the white and black eyedroppers in the main tab to tell filmic where "white" and "black" levels are. This will unclip your highlights.
• Then you can tweak the contrast curve in the look tab to taste. I generally increase contrast a bit, lower highlights latitude completely and increase shadows latitude to taste (as to have a gentle highlights rolloff, and deep shadows).
• You can also fade whites and blacks if you like in the display tab. I generally do 0.2% for black and 90% for white.

[olliwa-ifi]

in addition to "filmic:reconstruct tab", we can also use the module "highlight reconstruction"

[pedrorrodriguez]

Probably not the place to do creative adjustments that early in the pipeline, though

[sahlirc]

I have the tendency to go back and forth between the two modules, but frequently, in a camera-specific manner, I try to avoid using "clip highlights" in the highlight reconstruction module. This is great to have all those options to fine-tune images.