darktable ep 140 - A noobies guide to processing RAW files in darktable 

Yes, I keep forgetting to include that, even when that is what I do most of the time! :)

Bwahahaha! None of that was intentional, but I love that you found it amusing! :)

Glad to be of service!

Thanks you so much for the kind words.

Many thanks!!

Yep, forgot to mention that! 😃

Yep, CC is great for mixed light sources!

Many thanks for the kind words!

Glad you found something useful in there! :)

Thank you kindly! Glad you found it helpful.

Yeah, that's a big ask, simply because (as I think I mentioned in the video) every camera manufacturer has their own secret sauce baked into every camera-generated jpeg, and the best darktable can do is to try and reverse-engineer that look. And for that, your best approach is to use 'scene-referred (filmic)' from 'preferences/processing/auto-apply pixel workflow defaults'. FilmicRGB does a reasonable job of mimicing the in-camera jpeg, but you DO still need to massage it to get it closer. And in Aurélien's defence, that's as much as you can hope for because every camera brand has a different look.

​@@audio2u fair point. Makes me wonder how commercial products like Adobe Camera RAW does it. My guess would be it has camera specific "profiles" / code that reads the metadata and adjust colour mapping and other setting based on that. Or they buy the secret sauce from the camera manufacture and include it in the product.

I would wager that the second idea is the most likely... Adobe would have bought a "profile curve" from each camera manufacturer so that they can have a really-close starting point.

No problem!

Thanks for the kind words. I'm not sure about dt's comparability with the iPad Pro. I know it runs on MacOS, but not sure about iOS.

I know I did a video on a milky way shoot a couple of years ago, but it might have been a patron-only episode. Not sure about that.

Not yet, but it'll happen.

Thank you!

I do videos like that for my tier 3 and 4 patrons.

Library management is a WHOLE other kettle-of-fish! I am fairly certain I've covered most of that in previous videos, but I should probably revisit that.

@@audio2u First time i was confused by Darktable xml Data files. And i did not really like that 🫣😉 - An other problem ist Data Back Up with Darktable

The xml files are your friend! I've addressed that in previous videos as well. Backing up your .db files (library.db and data.db) should be fairly straight forward.

I hope it ticks some boxes for you!

Same 😮

I guess it comes down to what you would expect from a "more advanced stuff" kind of video? How to edit an image? I do those videos for my tier 3 and 4 patrons, or you could check out some of Boris' videos. He does a pretty good job of the processing side of things.

Local Contrast is good for sharpening mid-tone values only. Where the Sharpening module looks to increase contrast along edges across ALL tones in the image. That's my understanding, anyway.

Yeah, I'd agree that it IS a little less intimidating than FilmicRGB, but I also find that I use FilmicRGB about 95% of the time, and Sigmoid the other 5%. FilmicRGB gives you more control, but requires you to wrap your head around the colour science a bit more in order to make the most of it. Sigmoid dumbs things down so you don't need the colour science as much, but limits what you can do with it (which also prevents you from breaking things too badly).

Yep, don't know why I keep forgetting to mention that! Because that is generally the method I use all the time, too.

Make sure the white balance module is set to D65.

@@audio2u In my white balance module there is no "D65". I get Panasonic DMC-G8 with values "daylight, cloudy, shade, incandescent, flash, 5000k, 5500k" that's all. The only way to get the real colors is to switch off/disable the color calibration. So color calibration is of no use to me.

@@MICHAJO27 In White Balance, check the toolbar at the top of the module with the icons. You'll want the filled light bulb icon, that's what sets the White Balance module to "D65" and allows the Color Calibration module to take over.

@@mr.matt.eastwood Thanks. That's what i've done. And now i saw the comment while hovering ("set white balance to camera reference point in most cases it should be D65"). But when i activate color calibration it makes the whole picture blueish. It looks fine when i disable the color calibration.

So now that you have the wb module set to D65, in the colour calibration module, click the eye dropper on the right side and it will correctly read the white balance from the image.

Oh man! Now, that's an idea!

Have you tried it? I'm still a noob. I did not try with any instructions, just descriptive text. Manual raster masks As described in the previous sections, the final output of a module’s mask (the combined effect of any drawn and parameteric masks) is a grayscale raster image representing the extent to which the module’s effect should be applied to each pixel. This raster image is stored internally for active modules and can be subsequently reused by other modules in the pixelpipe. As with any mask, if the opacity value for a pixel in a raster mask is zero the module’s input passed through the module unchanged. If the opacity is 1.0 the module has its full effect. For each value between 0 and 1.0 the module’s effect is applied proportionally at that location. You can choose a raster mask from the combobox. Raster masks can be identified by the name of the module against which they were originally generated. ChatGPT A raster mask is basically a black-and-white picture that shows how much a special effect should be applied to each part of an image. It's like a guide for the computer to know where to add the effect. If a pixel in the mask is black, it means the effect won't be applied there. If it's white, the effect will be fully applied. And if it's a shade of gray in between, the effect will be applied partially. You can pick different masks from a list, and each mask is linked to a specific special effect. Thanks and God bless. 🙏📸

OK, so here are some simple instructions. Let me know, because I am still unsure as a nob, if this makes sense and if it works. Manual double-click (reset) Double-click on a slider or its label to reset back to the default value. Ctrl+double-click to reset its value back to any auto-applied preset (if one applies for the current image). If controls are grouped together within a tabbed interface, you can double-click on the tab’s header label to reset all settings in that tab. In addition, the speed of mouse-wheel, arrow-key and click+drag adjustments can be altered: hold down the Shift key while adjusting to increase the step size by a factor of 10. hold down the Ctrl key while adjusting to decrease the step size by a factor of 10. Both of these multipliers can be amended in preferences > shortcuts by altering the speed of the fallbacks/value actions. ChatGPT To reset a slider to its default value, just double-click on it. If you want to reset it to a preset value, hold Ctrl and double-click. If you have a bunch of settings grouped together, you can reset them all by double-clicking on the tab's name. You can also change how fast you adjust settings: Hold down Shift while adjusting to make bigger changes. Hold down Ctrl while adjusting to make smaller changes. You can tweak these speed settings in the preferences menu. Thanks and God bless. 🙏📸

Hot damn! ChatGPT is doing a pretty good job of rewriting that in plain English. There's a side project for someone who wants to take it on! :)

@@audio2u Bruce. The one issue I believe with this will be, only one person would/should do this. What I mean is, just like Google, the results from a ChatGPT query will be biased. They will be based on the history of previous queries by the individual. I would like to see if my hypothesis is true. If someone wouldn't mind taking the two above texts from the manual and asking ChatGPT "rewrite is simpler terms"