About 2 yrs/ago I tried using this module (watched a posting by someone else) and because I did not understand it as well , I completely stayed away from retouching in Darktable and instead used Gimp. But I noticed Gimp add/subtracts a bit of discoloration. I am so glad I found your video today! The more I can do in Darktable the better. Thank You and glad you explained it so well 2.5 yrs ago!
Ah, so its like using high pass/low pass filters to separate out the layer texture details from the layer colours. I've used these in Gimp to remove wrinkles, spots etc in photos. I was wondering if Darktable had a way of doing this. The strength is that you don't have to completely remove the texture but can focus on one level - for example the crows feet at the corner of the eyes - if you left the finer detail levels and just worked on the top course detail level you could retain them, but reduce their thickness and depth so that it still looked natural. For the red splotch I wouldn't have worked on the whole image layer. I would have went to the "blur" low pass layer which holds the colour information for the image and used retouch on that level cloning or healing from another part of the forehead. That way the texture of the skin is preserved in the various detail layers but you can remove the colour of the blemish and have normal looking skin. If you went to the colour layer in the second photo you could have edited out that little colouration of the mole from there. I think that the fill tool is most useful on the blurred lowpass colour layer rather than the detail layers - you could have painted camo stripes over your face but still retain the pores, lines and texture of your skin
What a great video! This is really an amazing module. The blurry layer contains all the low frequencies remaining from extracting the other layers. It can be very useful, for example to correct discoloration of the skin, red patches on the cheeks, dark patches under the eyes and stuff like that. You just need to copy in those problematic areas from other areas with the right colour using that layer, and the results are absolutely seamless! All the texture, in all levels of detail, is preserved and only the colour is changed. Thank you for all these great videos explaining this fantastic software :)
Thanks for your detailed explanation of the retouch iop. Here is a couple of more tips for it: 1. You can use similar source for all shapes by Ctrl+Shift+clicking (just like the Shift+click you already mentioned) 2. Pressing and holding "A" key when you draw shapes will temporarily disable the drawing. I find it very handy when I want to zoom in/out or scroll the picture in the middle of drawing shapes. This also works the same when drawing shapes for drawn masks 3. The fill and blur tools are more useful when you work on wavelet scales
Thank you Bruce for a detailed demonstration of the module... Just wanted to tell you an interesting anecdote with the FILL TOOL for which you can't think of a situation.... I took my son's photo with a bright RED wall background, but with a bright sky on the right side.... I wanted to fill the entire sky portion with the colour of the wall.... I spent hours trying to get around to it until I came on to the FILL tool of the RETOUCH module... and voila, entire sky got changed to bright RED wall colour :-)
Try the color and blur tools on the right most blured layer. Texture fixes should be done on the scale layers but color variations and color retouching should happen on that blured layer so textures are not affected.
Excellent tutorial on an exciting module. I'm currently restoring a very damaged old black & white photo so I'm itching to try it out on this. Many thanks, I very much appreciate how much work you put into these tutorials.
Bruce, that ugly guy you introduced at 16:54 did a phenomenal job of introducing the Retouch module. Say hi and thanks from me the next time you see him. :-)
Thanks again Bruce for another excellent video. I had tried the Spot Remove module and thought, "Ho hum..." I then looked at your video of the Retouch module in combination with an image I'm currently working on (without much success with Spot Removal), and boy, what a difference! I keep being amazed at what Darktable can do. It's so much better than Lightroom.
As others have said - that last white box is not a blur layer - that is what is left over when details removed - we call it residual layer - that is where most of the colors are left too. So there you can remove just the red color of acne for example, while not messing up the structure at all. You should definitely clone on that layer as well when the color is not right - e.g. dark moles, red acne. And that is why sometimes you'd wanna see through all the layers - to see where the colors are.
As usual, very nice explanation, Bruce! One additional note: Applying corrections in the residual scale (right-most) is great for handling things like overall skin color smoothing. This is where the blur tool, and possibly the fill tool, come in handy, used in conjunction with path shapes to cover larger regions.
This is very very very good content! There is no way I'd be able figure out how that tool works without this video. It really shows how easy and superior the tool actually is when you know how it works.
The auto levels are slightly different for each scale. So it may be good to set them at some halfway scale, so that they have a bigger chance of working for all of them; and if you don't see anything, as in some of your finer scale images, it may be useful to reset it for that scale specifically. I know... 4 years have gone, maybe it is only a feature in some newer version, and anyway most likely you already noticed it, but it may still be useful for someone. Great videos! I've been watching them on and off, sometimes I don't watch any for months, sometimes I see one every other day... You made Darktable to be much easier and to make sense! Thank you!
Hi Bruce Williams, you saved my day with this video. I have an image with a weird aberration and I didn't know (and remember - I don't use it that much) how to work properly with "retouch". Now, thanks to you, I can participate in a exposition and today is the last day to send the file.
This is awesome. Been struggling with dust removal and using scales is the way to go. Well explained. Will need to watch again to take down some notes.
Great tutorial (as always). One thing that tripped me up, and worth mentioning maybe, is the Mas Opacity setting, not sure how mine ended up quite low down (I'm working on converted negatives), but none of this seemed to be working then I shifted that up, and et voila!
One way I have been using the blur tool with wavelets has been to smooth wrinkles on a face. Doing it on the coarse layer, but leaving them untouched on the fine layer, you leave the touch of the years on the face, but make the model happy.
Great job, I think the retouch module is one of the most complicated/cryptic I've ever met in darktable. Learn how to use it just by trying it without knowing how it works doesn't exploit its real potential, which, I have to say, is amazing!
Not only Lightroom has a tool like this but also in Photoshop you don't. In order to acheave it you need to create few layers and use what is called 'frequency separation' method. This wavelet domain is truly amazing.
Yeah, it really is. Although, to be honest,I don't think I've used that feature since I made this video! I can usually achieve what I need to with just healing on the full image. But I'm sure there will be times when it is useful.
Hi Bruce, I am just revisiting the retouch module, because I needed to brush up on the wavelets idea. I think it has been worthwhile because I do "get it" now. In your closing comments you talked about the bucket tool, I suspect that it may be useful in fixing signage blemishes, where solid colours and no textures are used. e.g. the model is hitchhiking past a billboard for a local knock shop and you like the idea but dont want the phone number in your image. And you also said that you felt that the spot removal tool had been overtaken by the retouch module. I prefer to use the spot removal tool when removing the legs of a light stand. I have no room on the right hand side of my studio and sometimes I need to position a kicker on that side. For me, it does a better job quicker, But for skin the retouch tool is amazing. Thanks for your fantastic work, Andrew
Thanks so much for the videos, Bruce. They are beyond awesome. Fill mode might be really useful with a parametric and/or drawn masks (and perhaps multiple instances of the retouch module). Similar thoughts about masks + instances with preserve chrominance in the filmic module. Powerful tools for fine grained expression, but easy to chop off a finger. Again thanks, it is incredibly helpful to have you share your thoughts on Darktable. It's saved me many months of trial and error.
Thanks Ben! Glad you're finding the videos helpful. The more time I spend with darktable, the more I feel it is one of the better FOSS offerings around.
Thanks for a very detailed overview. Lots of detail that I completely missed when looking at this a few weeks ago. That scale visualization could also be useful for the equalizer. I'm loving the additions throughout the 2.x series. Super useful filters that go beyond what other tools can do by magnitudes. They'll have other ways of doing the same things but typically not with the same level of convenience.
I'm just starting with photo editing and gosh it can be frustrating! plus, there are so many RU-vidrs whose videos are not so encouraging and clear, so it makes me wanna quit. Luckily when I am about to give up I always find inspiration in your videos! Thank you! :)
Thanks again for the efford of making this video. This tool really is better than the old spot removal, but that scales stuff is quite complicated and time intensive and the results were much worse than simply using just one scale in my tests so far. Maybe I'm doing something wrong. But it slows down the computer massivly. Combine it with strong noise reduction and your computer has to do quite some work.
This video is a little better then your other videos because, you're showing some scenarios on when and how to use the module, rather than what all the buttons and sliders are doing.
Regarding the demosaic algorithm, AMZE, PPG, and VNG algorithms are developed exclusively for Bayer sensors (X-trans sensors have completely different structure). I also saw your question on the mailing list in this regard. Let me share my thought about it here: As far as I understand, the recommendation of using AMAZE demosaic for filmic is solely because the auto tune levels and auto black level features of filmic are very sensitive to noise. Therefore if you are not going to rely on these auto tune options (they are not so reliable anyway), you can use any demosaic algorithm as you wish. This also applies to the recommendation to correct white balance before filmic.
To add to your point, the author also recommends denoising before using the auto tune levels. I wonder if it is feasible to filter noise inside the module so you don't have to do that.
That would require a denoise algorithm be built inside the Filmic module, though, wouldn't it? Which it does not have. Personally, I'd rather modules did ONE job, than start trying to do multiple jobs. But maybe that's just me. :)
Great vid, Bruce! Is there a numerical limit on the number of paths one can apply in this module? The module won’t allow me to add any more paths over 300- I was removing small hairs on a persons face and it froze. Is there a more efficient way to do this in DT?
I wasn't aware of there being a limit, but if you got to 300 and it stopped adding more, maybe that's the limit! Not sure of a better method.... other than exporting a 16 bit tiff and doing the cloning/healing in Gimp or Photoshop.
Bruce Williams Photography I deleted a path or two and was able to add them back - up to 300, that is. So confirmed on some sort of limit. I was using 2.6. I’ll try DT 3.0...or find models that have less than 300 hairs on their face! (not brave enough to ask the GF to shave before a shoot!)
Nup. You're going to need a destructive editing environment like PS, Gimp, Affinity Photo, etc for something like that. The Retouch module does allow cloning, but not for inversion of the cloned samples.
When I first came over to Linux and found darktable, I was happy to be able continue working the way I had in Lightroom. Didn't take long to realise that darktable absolutely leaves Lightroom in its rearview mirror! 😃
There is a major BUG in this module! I am using v2.6.2 on an iMac running Mohave 1. In both the brushes circle and oval when adjusting feather using shift and mouse scroll the feather always increases in both the directions. 2. There is no way to reset the brush so every time when you select either of this brush the last brush persists even after resetting the module, closing the program. Only way is to erase every file from .config directory. Even after this next time again the same behaviour! I am a new user can you please send this bug report? Also is there a setting in the .config file to reset it till this bug is rectified? As deleting all the files means you loose all your styles and settings. Thanks for all you videos it drastically reduces the learning curve.
Raj, sorry I can't help on this one. I'm not a Mac user, and don't really know anything about where files are stored on a Mac, or anything like that. You best bet would be to log the bug at redmine.darktable.org/
Bruce Williams Photography This bug is not limited to this module but in any module where a mask is used. It’s a major bug and I have searched the internet but nowhere I have found a reference!
Hey Bruce, I am loving this treatment of the retouch module, thank you. I have a major problem I need to fix - my gorgeous model has a face the skin of which is a war-zone, almost no source available to use. I put the soft-box as close to her as I could, but, although that has helped, it has only moved the problem from disastrous to extremely difficult. What would you recommend?
Hi Bruce, yes I am, but I am embarrassed by a mistake I made this arvo. Somehow I have copied my whole Google Drive into itself, and now I need to be careful how I unravel it. I have just set up RAID 1 on 2x Sata drives, and kept my SSD system and /home/andrew for more responsive processing. I tried to up load the RAW file but there were 33,769 ahead of it in the queue. Maybe tomorrow on a cooler day I will work this out. Thanks for your offer, I accept, the RAW file is over 20MB. Thanks Andrew
Really great tutorial. A very confusing module but so powerful! That's the great thing with Darktable. You have so many powerful features. The more I use darktable it doesn't feel like a free version of lightroom. It's more something between photoshop and lightroom. You don't need to use all the features, but it's great to have them there if needed. Btw, who is that guy you are fixing? I know I have seen him, but not sure from where! 🤔
I still don't see the application of wavelet layers/scales, I can achieve the same result by simply using the retouch tool without activating scales. What am I missing?
I'll be honest, since I recorded that video, I don't think I have ever used wavelets either. I'm sure there are times when it might be helpful, but I haven't discovered one yet.
Can someone confirm if this video is still current? I mean, has this module changed so much that it doesn't quite work the same way, or has some other better module replaced it?
Sadly, on a mobile device, RU-vid doesn't tell me which video you're referring to, but I THINK (from the thumbnail) that this is the retouch module, yeah? If so, no, the retouch module is still the current module for doing blemish repair. And no, I'm not aware of it having changed since I recorded this video.
Hey Bruce Great video. I noticed that this module still has masking at the bottom. I was trying to wrap my head around using the scales with masking and so I actually tried it just see how it interacted and then it said masking was disabled when using this option or at least the ability to display any mask....It might be worth a look and also if someone can think of an example incorporating masking into the frequency edits I would interested in any comments
Why so complicated? I've kept my original Google Picasa from 10 years ago, maybe longer, which I use on my local PC. It does an equally great job without the complication. I find that DarkTable needs to be more user friendly.
@@audio2u I am still sticking to learning it as Picasa doesn't process RAW photos, only lets me view them. I liked it over Corel Draw. I couldn't download On1 because of their Vulkan driver requirement. So, I do the absolute minimum on Darktable and save as jpg in order to further refine in PS to which I am looking for an alternative. I'll go to GIMP if all else fails. BTW, good luck on the new job and house hunting.
I should have seen this video earlier. I should DEFINETLY should have seen this video earlier. I've fixed a couple of photos using the "spot rmoval" for an "almost good enough" finish.....and that was NOT good enough.
I’ve achieved this in photoshop, but not without quite a bit ( a lot) of time. I wish photoshop had an easy way to use a gradual type of levels like darktable. However I currently use darktable, prior to being a avid photoshop editor for almost 20 years. Convinced that photoshop is in the past now
I'll explain what I did. Whether this works for you, I will leave for you to try. Google "Pascal De Brujn ppa darktable". The top result (avoid any sponsored links, should there be any) week be what you're looking for. And either follow his guide on that page, or copy the address for his ppa and paste it into your list of software repo's (sorry, I can't advise on open suse, I haven't used it), and then download that way. Good luck!
@@fotografiehofman I'm not at my darktable pc right now, but I think the key is that the triangle ABOVE the Scales rectangles needs to be on the left most black rectangle.
Mate, don't stress! :) If it was the ellipse and path tools, I think I said I wasn't going to cover those because anyone who's been following the series should already understand how to use those shapes. But maybe it was something else I missed? I'm not sure.
Meh, gimp (resynthesizer, g'mic) and digikam for me, hate Darktable menu and controls, sliders, buttons are small difficult to work with and confusing for me.
