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Comment by jacooper | Hacker News Reader

Let's see if this changed anything.

But my previous experience with editing Sony RAWs on Rawtherappe and Darktable wasn't good.

The color science is missed up in Darktable and in Raw therappe, I just couldn't get something decent out.

I would be editing for an hour and end up with a weird looking image, while in lightroom I would be done in 10 minutes.

People might say that I'm just used to lightroom but I'm not, I was using Capture one, then didn't shoot anything for multiple years, then just went pack to Lightroom and could edit photos without major frustrations and get decent results quickly.

Creative apps in general are a very weak point of the Linux desktop, and when they exist, that have many weird requests and problems that just using them on windows is easier(Davinci resolve requiring the crappy closed source AMD drivers)

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I shoot Sony and use Darktable exclusively.

I think your problem might be the base curve module and its default "Sony" preset, which looks like garbage. Try setting it to "neutral", it should look a lot better (presets are under the little arrow next to the "base curve" header).

The base curve presets, if I understand correctly, aim to make the photo look similar to the out of camera JPEGs. In my opinion, they look like garbage.

But these days I use Filmic for everything. My process is basically switch off base curve, switch on Filmic, adjust exposure so that mid exposure looks reasonable, adjust white and black exposure in Filmic to taste and done.

The important thing to me is that this works for every photo, not just the easy ones. ETTR photos of high dynamic range scenes work just the same.

I'll occasionally run the photo through DXO and export a DNG with DXO's noise reduction for further work in Darktable too. Makes the shadows noise-free no matter how hard you push them.

What do you mean by Filmic? Their website (filmicpro.com?) seems very focused on mobile phone cinematography stuff, not photos.

Likely the "filmic rgb" module in darktable. One of the most popular modules, it's pretty easy to get good results with the workflow they described. I also use it on most of my RAW pictures.

https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/en/module-referenc...

I’m pretty sure that “filmic” refers to the filmic RGB module[1] that is a part of Darktable.

[1]: https://docs.darktable.org/usermanual/4.0/en/module-referenc...

What the other comments said: the "Filmic RGB" module in Darktable.

DxO is good shit, the only raw editor that ticked all the intuitive UI/UX boxes for me. Must have been through 10+ trials. The open source options in particular could do with some UI love

Out of curiosity what stops you from using dxo for everything?

But it doesn't support Linux, which is the main reason people use RT and DT

> The color science is missed up in Darktable […], I just couldn't get something decent out.

If you want help you need to explain what you did or tried. Did you work in display referred or scene referred? I can recommend submitting one of your raw files to a Play Raw[0]. People will edit your raw file and send back an .xmp file with the edit metadata so that you can see what they did.

  [0] https://discuss.pixls.us/c/processing/playraw/30

Took a quick look at some posts there and this stood out: https://discuss.pixls.us/t/extreme-highlight-recovery-in-dar...

In my opinion, the Lightroom edit in the OP is the best. Many of the replies with Darktable edits look extremely bad. Some have extreme color artifacts.

Highlight reconstruction was a major and well-known shortcoming in versions they were using. Better highlight reconstruction for large blown-out areas was finally added in darktable 4.0.

First time I'm hearing this. I think Sony owners make up a sizable portion of the user base.

I never had an issue with the RAWs from an a6300 and another entry level Sony mirrorless. Though I never used anything other than dt, so maybe I don't know what I'm missing.

I've had a similar experience, especially with skin tones. The out of camera jpegs can be a little aggressive in making skin and grass colors "pop", but they still beat Darktable (even with significant tinkering).

I totally agree, after hours of editing, i still wouldn't match the JPEGs by the camera, while in light room you start with thr same look as the JPEG even if it s a RAW file, And I would reach my desired looks in few minutes.

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