Glad it was helpful!

Each to their own. A lot of togs who produce many images from different scenarios would be lost without a catalogue, because it's a database that is searchable. When you do 8 hours of wildlife photography you can quite easily go home with 7 to 9 thousand shots. Try doing that twice week and managing it all without a database.

Glad it was helpful!

I don't think it makes much difference really, provided you are sensible about it, and don't bring out any noise in the lower midtones of the darker exposures David.

You're very welcome!

Beautifully in comparison to WHAT exactly?

@@AndyAstbury indeed, a bit more context. When the image blur comes from a "diffuse" related process, say a filter, coating layers in the lens, etc, the 'deblur' preset attempts to revert the physical process that created the blur. So by beautifully I meant to say it does an amazing job at sharpening the image just by undoing that kind of blur. As I understand from the darktable websitel, that is one of the main purposes of the diffuse and sharpen module, as it tries to mathematically model the most common diffusing processes of light as related to photography. Hence the "diffuse" in the module's name. I find it creates a more natural sharpening without the filtering artifacts from other methods. Would be interesting to compare it by introducing artificial blurring against a baseline image without that.

Randall, you are still saying that it's better than other methods - what are the other methods? As I asked originally, better in comparison to what?

@@AndyAstbury better than other models that are not that physically based for the purposes of restoring "actual" optical sharpness. So, before you ask yet again, the diffuse or sharpen module appears to me to have better detail reconstruction than unsharp mask based modules or even the contrast equalizer. Pretty much all the methods you reviewed here. I'm not talking about perceptual changes, which are valid of course. I'm talking about getting back sharpness, or optical resolution (not mega pixels) that was taken away by Low Pass and AA filters, lens coatings and demosaicing, all of which have a diffuse aspect to them. The diffuse or sharpen is based on this paper: "Simultaneous inpainting for image structure and texture using anisotropic heat transfer model" which you can find in research gate. Hope this makes sense, otherwise I don't know what you are trying to get to.

I understand now, better than other methods WITHIN Darktable. As someone who produced a very extensive course on sharpening - wildlifeinpixels.net/shopfront/downloads/professional-grade-image-sharpening/- I can honestly say that 'sharpening in general' is a weak point of Darktable IN MY OPINION (and everyone's entitled to their own opinion). For my own imaging, if I have to process in Darktable, I do so with minimal sharpening or none, then move the image to Photoshop where I can do whatever I think is needed. Image sharpening is PER CASE; in other words, an image being sent as a jpeg to the web requires a totally different sharpening approach than if it were being sharpened for a 6 foot print; and different again for all output cases in between.

Any questions David, just ask!

Of course it doesn't.....as it says in the title and pinned comment, INTEL only, Big Sur, Monterey and possible Ventura OS. It does not therefore apply to M-chips or Sonoma. Certain M1/Ventura combos would work, but only when running Photoshop with Rosetta activated.

@@AndyAstbury I have an Intel i9 2019 16" Mac, Sonoma. Not a single chance to make it work? Thanks.

You are most welcome, and thank you for the contribution, it is much appreciated 👍

You are correct - I didn't bother because the basic colours targeted only occur in the flower.

Cheers Hans

Out of curiosity, what did you delete it in favour of ?

@@AndyAstbury well I never really used it, used rawtherapy a little bit more and watched more of your videos on it. So I guess it seemed more intuitive. I opened up darktable and the interface/panels just looked flat.

Rawtherapee is very good, but in all honesty, the multiple module instance and module masking capabilities of Darktable, make DT the vastly more flexible application. As a Rawtherapee fan for about 5 years, no one was more sceptical of DT than me. But it only took me a few days to realise that DT offered me A LOT of answers to the many shortcomings of RT. I still bemoan Darktables absence of a capture sharpening module a la the one in RT - which to me is the best in the business. I also dislike DT's lack of ability to use dcp profiles. But I learned to use DT to get around these problems, one way or another, and if I had to dump one of my FOSS editors it would be RT if I'm honest.

@@AndyAstbury I'm thinking I should new start watching your 101 videos on DT. I know you can plug RT and DT into gimp, I'm wondering if you could almost do the same with plugging them into each other. But I would highly doubt it. I guess with your videos the DT Devs might get the hint.

Thanks Todd, much appreciated, as I always seem to forget about the details slider. I really have problems visualizing the CZ masking if that's what you are meaning.

What is fake about exposure blending, when it just reproduces, what the eye could see on location?

I said DOUBLE EXPOSURE - that's not exposure blending. But I'm not actually sure the module is working as intended on my mac installation; so hopefully the module documentation will clear the question up - once it arrives.

I can see a couple uses for this, but GIMP actually does this better - though if the module is improved it may be easier to use this than going over to GIMP.

The problem with file names doesn't depend on the software, on the operating system.

It's the placement of the adjustment spot itself that defines the colour range that will be selected. The transition and shape detection controls take care of the edges, and the graduation controls define the gradient area. When you consider that other software approaches graduated filters in a much simpler manner, the RT method is complicated and far less obvious - this is what happens when 'coders' go mad and there is no oversight of their work by people who live in the real world!!!

Have you actually POWERED UP/TURNED ON the Colour Toning module itself?