Why Do My RAWS Look Different? Consistent Neutral Images in DarkTable, Raw Therapee & Lightroom.

Why Do My RAWS Look Different? Consistent Neutral Images in DarkTable, Raw Therapee & Lightroom.
Patreon Members Videos & Articles: bit.ly/2SwaSZ6
Why do my raw files look different in DarkTable, Raw Therapee & Lightroom?
It's all about obtaining a neutral starting point.
Raw Therapee can give you a neutral view of any raw file with the click of just one button.
A neutral view means that the software is NOT making any changes to the look of the image, so you can SEE what data you have to work with.
In both Lightroom and DarkTable, you have a bit more work to do in order to get there!
Chapters
00:00 Intro
01:54 The Different Import "Looks" of DarkTable, Raw Therapee & Lightroom
03:25 Why Folk get "Put Off" using A.N.Other Raw Processor - this upsets me😭
05:04 Picking up where we left DarkTable in the last video - module presets
05:25 Looking at the differences between the 3 processors
06:15 Getting to NEUTRAL in Lightroom
08:05 Neutral Lightroom vs Neutral Raw Therapee
08:43 Getting to a neutral view in DarkTable
11:25 NEUTRAL in DarkTable, Raw Therapee & Lightroom all look the same - yay! 😇
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[@gerhardbotha7336]

Thanks Andy. The same argument goes for the "colours" coming of a Snob brand sensor vs other Pleb brand cameras (who use the same Sony sensor by the way) . A lot has to do with the RAW processor and the profile you apply when first opening the file...I would say 90%. The other 10% is the lens and the sensor micro lens / processing variations between brands. And I am by no means a master, but I have learnt some and I just love what I can do with my good for nothing crop sensor R7 images and Darktable or RT now...Thank you for helping to eduficate meself.

[@jhmnieuwenhuis]

Very valuable information !! Thanks, Andy.

[@AndyAstbury]

Thank you Hans 🍻🍻

[@emrg777]

Here is what I do to get that set of defaults.... Go to preferences and set the pixel workflow to none.. This will give you legacy WB as shot on the image and nothing more. I prefer this for WB. I do use the CC module a lot for the channel mixer and the other tabs and for colorchart calibrations but thats neither here nor there. If I was dealing with a complex lighting that would benefit being able to mask wb then I would use it... Then you could set your other modules as auto presets but disabled for some. So you could do filmic or sigmoid and exposure and demosiaicing as auto presets. THe tone mappers and exposure presets are set with the module deactivated so it will be that way for all new images or if you compress the history stack. THen when you enable them they are applied with your settings. THis can be helpful with filmic as it has quite a few settings... You can also use this to apply both filmic and sigmoid. They will appear in the history stack but both will be inactive so you can use this as a way to toggle between them. You almost always need to tweak exposure after the fact and the white and black relative in filmic so the values of the preset don't matter too much... So when I open an image I see it quite neutral like you mention with only the WB set to as shot. I have exposure and both tone mappers applied as inactive. I usually then hit the exposure autopicker as I have the module at 50%... This is often a great starting point for scene referred. IF that is a miss I select an area that should be exposed for midtones and draw a box for the exposure picker there... So now I have basic exposure and WB and pause to see where that leaves me. Then I think if I want to use filmic or sigmoid or not . As I mentioned I can toggle them to see how they look. I often will skip that to avoid compression of the highlights unless the DNR is just too much and then its necessary... I find I can use a set of modules that includes local contrast, tone eq, color calibration, color balance, and diffuse and sharpen to edit most of my images... There is a DT user that has made a wonderful Lua script called InitialWorkFlow. It can run from LT or DR views and on single or multiple images... It has gone through a few iterations... But you can tweak several things in a selective way with drop downs including auto exposure and auto setting of the mask in the tone eq and color balance module as if you had run the pickers so that the tonal ranges are tweaked and your adjustments are nicely targeted... It will also auto set the filmic black and white relative... you can find it here. You just copy it to the lua\contrib folder in your config file along with the other lua scripts and then start it with the script manager lower left in LT view... its really clever ... my machine is pretty quick. It might seem a bit slow on an older machine but its really clever script essentially adding a new module to DT... github.com/UliGesing/Darktable-Initial-Workflow-Module

[@AndyAstbury]

Wow Todd, thanks for such a detailed reply 👍👍🍻

[@Being_Joe]

Agree the more tools you have access to the better. RT is my main go to but I also like to us RawPhotoProcessor (RPP64) and the software bundled with the camera (slow and ugly but the great results).

[@davidjustice9036]

Thanks Andy, Raw Therapee is my main go to but I'm interested in Darktable as it offers more masks. Keep the videos coming, great work. For bird photos from my Canon r6 I use DXO Pure Raw which exports to Raw Therapee cutting down wavelet time.

[@AndyAstbury]

Awesome, thank you David 🍻

[@sherab2078]

Andy, you've been explaining to us the different tools available in Raw Therapee and now the Darktable too, which are virtually the different ways to skin the same cat. And that's great! Would be great, however, if you would do some generalized video on choosing specific tools for a specific cat if you take my meaning. I often struggle to find the right way to process my images (aside from that I usually come out overexposed, underexposed, with too much contrast or too less, and rarely at the spot). Best wishes!

[@AndyAstbury]

99% of all processing actions are some form of dodge or burn. We can do that with brightness/lightness, contrast, or colour - even a graduated filter is lightness 'burning' . So you just look at the image as imported, and ask yourself what needs doing to what and where. The basics can be seen here petapixel.com/2013/09/12/marked-photographs-show-iconic-prints-edited-darkroom/ where we consider the 'markup' of an infamous shot of James Dene walking in Times Square, and an equally famous shot of Mohamed Ali by Thomas Hoepker. Have a peruse of that article before we go any further.

[@sherab2078]

@@AndyAstbury, thank you. I think I see your point... I hope I do, anyway. I'm aware that judgment of how much dodging/burning is needed and where comes with experience. I do not seek any 'shortcut' in that respect. Still, I'm simply overwhelmed by the different possibilities we have in the Raw Therapee. I struggle with the judgment of what tool is the best to achieve a given goal when working on a specific raw file. Granted, this judgment may also develop with experience. But I was just thinking that video featuring a couple 'different' photos, that you would process using different tools in Raw Therapee while at the same time explaining why you chose this one over another could be enlighting. Just a thought. If you do not consider this a good idea, that's fine, of course. I'm really thankful for the loads of knowledge you decided to give 'simply like that' already. Just to give my background, I'm only an amateur photographer, mostly of wildlife and sometimes landscapes, and I use my good old Nikon D90... So... I don't expect miracles ;) (well, I actually think about an upgrade to full frame, D750 perhaps, but too many hobbies and not enough money). Still, I want my photos to be as good as possible. Anyway, thanks again for sharing your knowledge with us, and best wishes!

[@AndyAstbury]

Leave it with me Sherab.

[@dirkpitt3241]

Andy, love the videos!...really, they are very helpful. I am new to Raw Therapee and you have been a great help to me. Thank you. As such, I have a challenge question for you. I recently photographed (Canon 90D, 18-200mm) my daughters swim meet, saving the files as both Raw and large JPEG. My camera is baking in changes to the JPEG based on the camera settings and environmental readings (iso, shutter speed, etc). This you know. My "Question of the day" is......in the post-processing editing of photos using Raw Therapee, can I extract the settings from a JPEG into Raw Therapee, to then be able to apply said settings to a batch of similar Raw files, in lieu of trying to match the Raw profile to a JPEG manually? Regardless of your answer, thanks for taking the time to read this. Best wishes.

[@AndyAstbury]

Dirk, I've read all your adventures, courtesy of the late great Clive! With regard to your question Dirk, yes you can. Open the shot in the develope module, then top right under Processing Profiles, you will see Bundled Profiles>Auto-Matched - choose whichever of the 3 ISO variants you think suits the file. Does that help?

[@ifell3]

Awesome, wow lightroom looks well over-contrasty and overexposed.

[@AndyAstbury]

It really is - especially on Nikon and Canon raw files. But it's simple to get it right - just make the preset and auto-apply it on import. My own personal catalogues are set up that way, but my demo catalogues are not, for illustrative purposes.

[@JeffreyJohnsonC]

I think you can set a style rather than preset.

[@SKTechnologySolution]

Hi Andy I came across your KZbin channel whilst researching alternatives to Lightroom/Photoshop and have appreciated your knowledge and explanations. I assume you're using Lightroom as your digital asset manager and you're using different raw processors (Raw Therapee, darktable and Lightroom) so as each is non destructive and each produces its own side car file, how do you keep track of which raw file has been edited in which raw processor? Thanks

[@AndyAstbury]

Good question! Lightroom XMP files are held in the catalogue structure, and not written to the parent folder (unless you specifically want it to be). Darktable writes xmp data files to the parent folder directly, but if you try and force Lightroom to use that xmp, well, it can't be done, and vice versa. Raw Therapee writes pp3 files instead of xmp. So it's impossible to get any 'crossed wires' so to speak. Hope that answers your question.