Darktable Styles mimicing Fujifilm's Film Simulations
37 points by Zash
37 points by Zash
I've been having a lot of luck using this repository of LUTs which are PNG images that map RGB input/output values. I use them with the LUT3D plug-in in darktable and it works quite well. That said, it has access to less data than the technique in this article. I'll try it this weekend and see how the two compare.
https://github.com/cedeber/hald-clut
The approach taken in this article is way more badass and interesting.
It's not obvious how to install these styles and the darktable manual doesn't do much to help so here's a quick guide:
fujifilm-v1.0.tar.gz from https://jssfr.de/dtsolve/#fujifilm
Then to apply them:
Note that darktable styles work by appending history entries to the current image. They don't remove old entries. It's not like it "sets an account balance" and tweaks a value, instead it's more like a ledger and it builds upon existing values. So if you try one style, and don't like it, you'll need to Ctrl+Z the operation to unapply the style then choose another. For example, if you choose a monochrome style, then a color style without undoing it, you'll still have a monochrome image.
I believe the author's primary goal is to eventually parse the chosen film style metadata which is present in the RAW file then apply it automatically upon opening the RAW file (e.g. darktable automatically other similar presets like sharpening). That's where the darktable style approach is going to really shine. Applying the style in the middle or the end of an editing session can feel a little "heavy handed" since it can sort of undo a lot of changes that were already made.
So in the end these styles nicely mimic the film effect that a Fujifilm camera applies and is nice to apply when you first edit an image. And it makes a lot of sense to apply automatically based on the preset the user chose when snapping the photo, which the author can hopefully achieve if darktable adds the necessary APIs. For me personally I'll keep the styles installed and sometimes use them as a starting point but otherwise my existing LUT 3D workflow serves me pretty well where I make all my edits first and then set a LUT as the final step.
Thanks for writing the manual and for the feedback (I didn't have "badass" on my bingo card, but I appreciate it!). It occurred to me only later last night that how to import styles isn't obvious to most people. I'm going to write some instructions onto the dtsolve page. EDIT: Done, also included a guide for applying via the lighttable view (which I find more convenient when bulk-editing.)
So if you try one style, and don't like it, you'll need to Ctrl+Z the operation to unapply the style then choose another. For example, if you choose a monochrome style, then a color style without undoing it, you'll still have a monochrome image.
Yes, and even worse and more subtle, if you apply Classic Neg. and then any other style, that other style will be subtly wrong because darktable will keep the secondary and tertiary color balance rgb instances used to achieve the tint of Classic Neg.. That actually happened to me when I was initially drafting the blog post and I kept wondering why the colours of most styles looked more off than I thought they should.
I could try to force-disable the secondary and tertiary instance of color balance rgb as well as the monochrome module in the other styles to make it easier to switch between them.
EDIT to add: The safest way is actually to "discard history" between applying styles, but that is obviously quite destructive if you have already done some edits to the image.
So in the end these styles nicely mimic the film effect that a Fujifilm camera applies and is nice to apply when you first edit an image. And it makes a lot of sense to apply automatically based on the preset the user chose when snapping the photo, which the author can hopefully achieve if darktable adds the necessary APIs.
I already filed a PR with a first step to extend the API as necessary, but it didn't make it into the 5.4 release. I hope I can get it into 5.6.
How would these styles work when applied on the RAWs from non-Fujifilm cameras?
Hi, article author here :-).
I tested the styles against my old Canon's RAWs and they worked as expected.
From my perspective, there is no reason they shouldn't work because they were built against "neutral" RAWs: white balance and camera profiles were applied and only the parts which come after that are included in the style.
(There's some discussion in the pixls.us thread about applying a specific DCP before dtsolve, but I think I'm already doing that via the input color profile module.)
As both a darktable user and an X-T4 owner I applaud the effort! The section about LUTs really explains how this is different (and better) than previous efforts.
I probably won't use it myself, however, as I find it easier to build the look of a photo from a relatively minimal, neutral starting point, rather than by tweaking a pre-applied opinionated style. Not caring about the OOC JPEG look of my RAWs actually changed my photography technique: I mostly don't care how "juicy" or "finished" a photo looks on my camera's viewfinder, I just care about capturing all the pixels I need and not blowing highlights (which Fuji cameras love to do).
That's the exact opposite of my workflow and that's fine :). I aim for a picture which looks mostly good in the viewfinder.
(BTW, against the blown-out highlights, there's the DR modes. They basically shoot at a lower ISO and bump exposure in software/firmware, preserving highlights.)
BTW, against the blown-out highlights, there's the DR modes. They basically shoot at a lower ISO and bump exposure in software/firmware, preserving highlights.
I know :-) That's exactly one more setting I don't want to fiddle with while shooting! And I'd rather recover shadows on my computer, where I have more control, a bigger display and importantly, more time.
I'm on Panasonic hardware (DC-G90) and I love auto-applied styles in darktable 5. They're definitely not perfect but save a lot of time. They also help filter bad pictures (and I have many of these :) ).
However, the variations between profiles is really surprising. AFAIU, DC-G90, G91, G95, G90D (is that last one the correct name?), are the same imaging hardware and software. Yet, the provided profiles give pretty different results. I'm not complaining: I have what I want, the software is improving quickly, it's getting more convenient, but contents can be quite surprising, yes.
The styles which are currently being shipped with darktable have been eyeballed in a manual process from samples on raw.pixls.us: https://github.com/darktable-org/darktable/pull/17073#issuecomment-2272259176
That was a huge effort and kudos to the person who did it. I fear that there might be some variance depending on the specific sample pictures used for that, which might explain what you're seeing.
I had no idea this had been done by hand. That's impressive.
As you say, the variance is probably due to the specific samples used. The resulting styles are clearly related: they're merely different. More choice could actually be useful for people who would favor something slightly different for their camera.