Media of 2022
Around this time of the year, I usually write a blog post about my favorite books of the last year. But this time, not enough of them really stood out. So instead, here's my favorite pieces of media I consumed in the last year:
Firepower

This is the story of how gunpowder changed the world. We get to see the familiar history of central Europe, but told unusually, from the bottom up: how seemingly small inventions change the course of peoples and nations. The book is in essence a history of warfare in the last few hundred years, but this time the movers and shakers are not Great Men, but chemistry and engineering. A fascinating perspective, to say the least.
Along the way, the book unraveled countless tangents and quirks I had previously stumbled upon, yet never understood. How castles went from tall walled structures to flat earthworks in the 18th century due to the disruptive invention of cannons. How wooden galleons of 1850 were obsoleted by turreted iron warships practically overnight. How rifling and shells bled dry the coffers of Central Europe and made conflict inevitable. This book contextualized many a story like this in the most riveting manner!
Steam Deck

Ever since we had our second child, I didn't really find the time for video games any more, much to my regret. So when the Steam Deck was announced, essentially a portable gaming computer, it didn't feel like a worthwhile investment.
But boy, was I wrong about that. The genius of the Steam Deck is how it's instantly-on, instantly-off like a video games console, allowing me to play in short bursts that would not otherwise be available to gaming. But in contrast to a console, the deck allows me to play games without blocking the living room, and away from the computer screen I'm working at all day anyway.
It has reignited my video gaming, and surprisingly not just for newer titles, but thanks to EmuDeck, emulated retro games as well. I had a blast playing Banjo-Kazooie with my daughter, and Chorus, Ace Combat, Guardians of the Galaxy and Death Stranding on my own. To me, this is a revolutionary device, and I haven't touched my gaming PC or any of my video game consoles since!
RAW Developer Comparison 2
It's that time of the year again when all image editing programs come out with new versions. This comes at an inopportune time, as I feel restless of late. So, naturally, I had to try them all. Or maybe I just wanted a justification for buying DxO PhotoLab, because people on the internet speak so well of it 🙄.
For the following comparison I downloaded trial versions of ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 (€155), Capture One 22 (€350 or €220/a), Darktable 4.0 (free), DxO Photolab 6 (€220 + €140 for FilmPack 6 + €99 for ViewPoint), Adobe Lightroom Classic 11.5 (€142/a), ON1 Photo Raw 2023 (€126), RawTherapee 5.8 (free), Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 11 (€155), Exposure X7 (€165), and Zoner Photo Studio X Fall 2022 (€60/a). I also installed Luminar Neo (€120 or €80/a) and Radiant Photo (€140) but I disliked them so immediately and viscerally that I didn't include them in the comparison below.
In order to put them through their paces, I took a random smattering of images from the last few years that I found difficult to work with for one reason or another, and checked how each of the programs dealt with them. Of course I am no expert in any of them except Darktable and Capture One, so my results are probably flawed. I tried to inject some objectivity by limiting my edits to the most obvious sliders wherever possible, especially in the programs I know better. Regardless, my comparison is probably less scientific than last time, because my brain sort of broke after staring at too many renderings of the same images for too long. Don't try this at home, folks!
Test Case One: Fire
Fire is notoriously difficult to deal with, because it covers a large dynamic range, and we have strong associations of certain colors with heat. Thus a more yellow rendering usually suits fire very well, whereas a more neutral rendering quickly looks unnatural. In particular, we seem to expect highlights to twist to yellow, and midtones to remain orange.
My editing goals for this picture are simple: raise shadows or blacks until the pan becomes faintly visible, and reign in highlights if necessary to prevent excessive clipping.

highlights turn strongly yellow

highlights turn yellow
shadows adjusts unusally far into midtones

highlights turn desaturate
weirdly salmon color
filmic v6, zero latitude, no color preservation
tone EQ very unusual re: shadows/blacks sliders

highlights turn yellow
filmic v5, zero latitude, no color preservation
tone EQ very unusual re: shadows/blacks sliders

highlights desaturate

highlights desaturate

highlights turn very yellow
pan immediately visible without adjustments

highlights desaturate

highlights turn yellow, but lose all definition
shadows slider not strong enough to show pan

highlights turn unpleasant white
raising shadows turns background off-black

highlights desaturate
weird, clarity-like effect
Fujifilm X-Pro2 with XF35mmF1.4 R 1/1000s f/2.2 ISO400
📂 DSCF9359.RAF (23.0 MB)
There's a difficult tradeoff to be made here: Fire highlights physically don't change hue much compared to the fire body, but we visibly expect "hotter" fire to twist yellow. So a balance has to be struck between merely desaturating highlights, and twisting them yellow. You can see Darktable v6, DxO PhotoLab, RawTherapee, Exposure, and Zoner leaning towards desaturation, while the others render yellow color twists of some form or another. ACDSee and ON1 probably take the yellow a bit too far.
However, there's a flip side to this: Every program that renders yellow highlights in fire, does the same for overexposed skin, twists overexposed skies cyan, and red flowers magenta. It's a difficult tradeoff to get right. This is especially tricky since color shifts in highlights are often baked deeply into the programs' color science, and hard to get rid off where they're unwanted.
Anyway, to my eyes, the only fire-like renderings here come from Capture One, Darktable v5, PhotoLab, and Lightroom.
A Hazy Mountain
This lovely scene is a deep crop into an image taken at long distance on a hazy day. The challenge is therefore dehazing the mountains, chiseling out the contours with clarity and texture and contrast, and removing any extraneous noise.
This is a difficult task, as emphasizing local contrast tends to produce halos near the horizon, dehazing tends to introduce unpleasant color shifts, and the deep crop necessitates a subtle balance between denoising and detail retention.

strong halos from clarity/texture
very inefficient/smeary denoising

very little dehaze used, as higher settings break tonality
little definition in shadows

very little default saturation, easy to fix
outstandingly subtle rendering to my eye

dehaze ("ClearView") produces strong hue shift
clarity ("Microcontrast") is very slow
contrast not enough editing range, added tone curve to help
denoise ("DeepPrime") annoyingly only visible in mini viewer

dehaze works perfectly!
denoise not very effective and slightly wormy
tends to strong halos from clarity

dehaze produces strong hue shift
strong halos on the horizon
highlights tend to blow to pure white somehow

dehaze produces hue shift that is hard to fix
does not hide cropped-out image?

pleasant rendering, but not very detailed
there does not seem to be a clarity-like slider?

works very well in this image

weirdly ineffective dehaze
contrast introduces strong saturation
ineffective and wormy denoising
Fujifilm X-T2 with XF70-300 @ 231mm 1/400s f/5.7 ISO200
📂 DSF4442.RAF (23.0 MB)
Overall, most of these renderings turned out fine. But there are pretty substantial differences in denoising, haloing, and detail retention of the shadows specifically. Halos especially are a personal bug-bear of mine, where the sky above the horizon line brightens and (worse) the mountains below the horizon line darken. This is especially visible in ACDSee, ON1, and Zoner, and to a lesser extent in DxO, Lightroom, and RawTherapee.
There were also significant differences in noise removal. Especially ACDSee, Exposure, and Zoner had weirdly ineffective denoising, and were unusually difficult to balance against smearing and worms in Lightroom, ON1, and Silkypix. Colors were a bit difficult to control in ACDSee, ON1, and RawTherapee.
The most pleasant renderings to my eye are DxO, Exposure, and Darktable in this round, although many of the others are very usable as well.
High Key Rendering
Contrary to the popular style at moment, I sometimes like my highlights a little blown. I especially like a smooth, desaturated, film-like drop-off in my highlights, which seems strangely difficult to replicate in digital photography.
So instead of turning the following picture into an HDR hellscape, I want to compress the bright background into the highlights, while expanding the dark foreground to fill the midtones. The capture actually has all highlight information intact, so I don't want to blow anything out completely, just gracefully fade it into pastels.

nice highlight rendering
very blotchy noise reduction in the shadows

weirdly saturated trees
very noisy foreground

default rendering horrendous
setting color preservation to luminance helps
weirdly saturated trees
very noisy foreground

oversaturated by default (easy to fix)
good foreground brightness by default
strangly contrasty highlights

trees remain unrealistically dark
noisy foreground

trees remain unrealistically dark
unsightly HDR look

terribly oversaturated trees

shadows does not raise black point, remains dark
weird color areas in the sky

strange color fringes on trees
highlights hard to deal with

noisy foreground
Fujifilm X-Pro2 with XF16-80mm @ 16mm 1/400s f/9 ISO400
(no raw, for privacy reasons)
The different renderings of this image are more of a matter of preference than any of the previous ones. To my eyes, I like the versions drawn by ACDSee, Capture One, Zoner Photo, and DxO PhotoLab best, and I recon that many of the other versions could have been improved with a little more manual tuning. The only problematic versions of this image were the strange HDR-like ON1 render, and the Silkypix variant with its lost black point.
Summary
Overall, all of these programs seem reasonable tools for image editing. Most of their differences can probably be overcome if you learn them better. That said, this comparison has left me with a few clear favorites. To be clear, the above comparison only showed the most decisive images of a much larger set which informs my opinion. It should also be noted that my tastes in image editing do not focus on detail recovery, detailed masking, nontrivial retouching, or scene-changing edits such as wholesale sky swapping.
One area I am particularly interested in, however, is the inherent complexity of the editing tools: For example, I like my saturation slider to only change saturation and leave lightness alone. Similarly, contrast adjustments should not affect saturation. Another interesting part is the behavior of highlights adjustments. Ideally, I'd like highlights to be able to counteract exposure adjustments so I can balance them against one another. Better yet if the same can be done with the tone curve.
Name | Editing is | Export takes | Saturation changes | Contrast changes | Highlights rescues | Tonecurve rescues |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
lightness? | saturation? | overexposure? | overexposure? | |||
ACDSee Photo Studio | realtime | 25s | yes | yes | yes | no |
Capture On | realtime | 15s | a little | no | yes | no |
Darktable | delayed | 15s | no | no | yes | yes |
DxO PhotoLab | delayed | 45s | yes | a little | yes | a little |
Lightroom Classic | realtime | 15s | a little | a little | yes | a little |
ON1 Photo RAW | realtime | 30s | yes | a little | no | no |
RawTherapee | wait and see | 30s | a little | yes | no | no |
Silkypix Developer | lo-res wait/see | 80s | no | a little | no | no |
Exposure X7 | realtime | 30s | yes | strongly | yes | a little |
Zoner Photo Studio | lo-res realtime | 30s | yes | yes | yes | a little |
If saturation changes lightness and contrast changes saturation, editing can become rather more difficult, as the effect tends to be hard to counteract without complex luminosity masking. This is a reason for me to dislike my experience with ACDSee, ON1, Exposure, and Zoner particularly. The highlights slider issue also has a big influence on how you edit images. If highlights can be recovered after exposure adjustments, you can use exposure mostly for image brightness, and recover highlights later if needed. On the other hand, if highlights can't be recovered, then the exposure slider must instead be used to protect highlights, and image brightness has to be relegated to the tone curve or shadows/midtones sliders. This feels weirdly backwards to me, and is a reason for me to disregard ON1, RawTherapee, and Silkypix.
The gold standard here is of course Darktable, where saturation ("chroma") is completely decoupled from lightness. And, as a particular point of pride, any module whatsoever can edit highlights without any risk of them blowing irretrievably. In practice, this actually simplifies development noticeably. The former is a bit of a double-edged sword, though, as chroma of bright colors can only be pushed so far without going out of gamut; Darktable therefore provides a second saturation control that additionally lowers brightness to keep bright colors in gamut, much like other tools.
You may also have noticed that the three examples pictures above were taken with Fujifilm cameras. These cameras are highly acclaimed for their film simulations. Of the tested software, Lightroom Classic, Silkypix Developer, Capture One, and ON1 Photo RAW natively support these film simulations. DxO PhotoLab can add them for an additional €139 FilmPack. And ACDSee Photo Studio, RawTherapee, Darktable, and Exposure X7 at least support third-party LUTs which can retrofit film simulations. Funny how programs either charge money for native film simulations, or support generic LUTs. What a coincidence! (Only ON1 Photo RAW supports both film simulations and (ICC) LUTs, and only Zoner Photo Studio supports neither).
So, after spending a few evenings with these programs, what is my verdict?
ACDSee Photo Studio Ultimate 2023 ★★★☆☆
Overall a rather good package. Fantastic organizational features, too. Even sports an API for extending its functionality! And pixel editing, a mobile app, and just a ton more.
However, it does not suit my tastes. Something about the UI and some tools seems a bit unpolished. Particularly, clarity and dehaze produce too strong halos for me, and the denoising is unpleasantly ineffective and smeary. Panning sometimes breaks the image into a pixelated mess, and there's no Fuji film sim support. Still, when it works, it produced some of my favorite renders in this comparison!
As another weird point, it's Windows only, and behaves oddly windowsy, too. For example, the library view by default shows all files and folders, not just images, and you actually need to reinstall the entire software if you want to change its language.
Capture One 22 ★★★★★
A product I know well, and own a license for. This comparison has reinforced that choice. Capture One's image editing tools are somewhat basic, but they seem refined and flexible. There's a strong focus on workflow efficiency, too, with its speed edit shortcuts and style brushes.
If there is a criticism to be leveled at Capture One, it's the high price and the somewhat slow pace of development. Many a competitors' feature is only included in Capture One years after they have become widespread. And many new features focus on the needs of working professional photographer instead of amateurs like me.
Regardless, Capture One will remain my one-of-two raw developer of choice. And it runs on my rather slow Surface tablet for emergency vacation edits!
Darktable 4.0 ★★★★☆
Darktable is the other raw developer I know intimately. In a sense, it is the polar opposite of Capture One: all the algorithms, parameters, and details are laid bare; nothing is hidden or automated. Its editing tools are also by far the most unusual of this bunch, which must no doubt be bewildering to newcomers. But if you're interested in deep control and alternative editing workflows, there's just nothing like it. Personally, I have scripted it and molded it extensively, which has made my Darktable similarly efficient and fast as Capture One. Such flexibility is actually rather rare in image editing software.
But I seriously hope they fix that horrendous highlights rendering of filmic v6 in the next revision. That's currently a constant pain point to work around.
Darktable will remain my one-of-two raw developer of choice. And it runs on Linux!
DxO PhotoLab 6 ★★★★☆
This program really is what prompted this entire ordeal. I heard so many good things about DxO PhotoLab, and was planning on replacing Capture One with it after this comparison.
There truly is a lot to like about DxO PhotoLab. Its tools seem robust, its default rendering is often very close to a finished image, and its denoising is rather remarkable. However, the program just felt clunky to use. Things are organized inefficiently, some operations take annoyingly long to process, and some effects are only visible in a tiny preview window or indeed the exported file. The local adjustments also seemed unnecessarily cumbersome to use, with that weird radial menu and those awkwardly imprecise "Control Points".
And what's with the weirdly branded sliders all over the program? Why is it "DxO Smart Lighting" instead of shadows, "DxO ClearView Plus" instead of dehaze, and "Microcontrast" instead of clarity, and "DxO DeepPrime XD" instead of denoising?
Truthfully, I might still have bought a license for this program as it is powerful and fun to use, despite my complaints. But €220 for the main program plus €140 for the FilmPack (for Fujifilm film simulations, but also basics such as a vignette tool) plus €100 for ViewPoint (for cool distortion stuff, but also the keystone tool) is just a bit too much, thank you very much.
Lightroom Classic 11.5 ★★★★☆
People like this program, and for good reason. Robust tools, a pleasant rendering, and just a staggering amount of tutorials and help online due to its popularity.
Nevertheless, Lightroom does not appeal to me. I don't like how Lightroom seems to takes undue possession of my images on import, I am repelled by the weird old-fashioned UI with its bonkers conventions (hold Alt to show masks, crop moves image instead of rectangle, etc.). I don't like its yearly-subscription-only pricing structure, either, although the price and terms are actually rather reasonable. And I don't like that Adobe Creative Cloud mothership that's necessary to install and maintain Lightroom.
But I do realize that this is actually good software. It's just not my favorite.
ON1 Photo RAW 2023 ★★☆☆☆
The new AI denoising and sharpening produced only artifacts, the new AI masking completely missed my subjects, there were algorithm artifacts everywhere, such as halos, hue shifts, and clipping. Perhaps something about my version was broken, being a very recent release. Additionally, one time I wanted to do a 1:2 crop, which you have to create a new crop preset for. However, the preset will not be saved with a ":" in the name. It took me a few tries to figure out that that's what prevented me from cropping. It doesn't help that the UI is surprisingly slow, often taking a second or so to redraw a tool change. And the installer is 2.7 GB, three times the size of any other tool in this list!
On the other hand, there are some cool tools in the effects panel, and some renders actually didn't look half bad. Perhaps it just needs a few bugfixes or more polish. But as it stands, I can not recommend this software.
RawTherapee 5.8 ★★★☆☆
I suppose RawTherapee should be regarded like Darktable, a killer program that requires deep study to wield well. I did not wield it well, but that probably says more about me than RawTherapee.
Still, I don't like the somewhat busy program layout, and how some operations take a long time to process. The export workflow is also strangely unusual, but I'm sure that that's something I could get used to. And I hear the next version will come with local adjustments.
Perhaps it is better-suited for a detail-oriented user than me. There's a lot to like here, but it's not what I'm looking for.
Silkypix Developer Studio Pro 11 ★☆☆☆☆
Something about this program is endearing to me. But in this comparison, it was just more cumbersome than useful. Many of its tools simply were not up to the task (can't raise shadows far enough, denoising produces only artifacts). And at some point, it slowed down to the point where it would take several seconds to see the effects of a single slider movement. This program did not work for me.
Exposure X7 ★★☆☆☆
Another strangely unpolished program on this list. Somehow, fonts everywhere are huge for no apparent reason, and sliders uncomfortably short. And I struggled preventing it from blowing highlights and clipping shadows. I don't see the appeal of this program.
Zoner Photo Studio X Fall 2022 ★★★★☆
As of the most recent version, Zoner Photo finally added native support for some Fujifilm cameras. Not all of my cameras are included yet, but to their credit, Zoner Photo can still open the missing files through ACR, albeit a bit more slowly.
Really, there is a lot to like about this program. Most tools work as advertised, with few issues (no local white balance, somewhat ineffective denoising), and a strong automatic mode. I also enjoy how it is unapologetically Windows-only, and uniquely feels native to Windows in a pleasant way.
It's a somewhat basic program compared to some of these others, but it's appropriately affordable, and fast. Not exactly what I'm looking for, but highly recommended for what it is!
Darktable for Fujifilm Cameras
You know what I like to see when I import photos from my Fujifilm camera into Darktable?

However, that is not the default. Darktable, like most raw developers, is camera-agnostic.
agnostic
ăg-nŏs′tĭknoun [...]
- One who is doubtful or noncommittal about something.
Which means that Darktable does not know about any Fujifilm-specific raw file metadata, such as crop, dynamic range modes, or film simulations. Thus what you'd normally see in Darktable is more like this:

Notice how all the DR200/DR400 images are underexposed by one and two stops, how the first JPG is a square crop, but the RAF is 3:2, how the color of the grass and the train are subtly different in RAF and JPG.
But thankfully, Darktable has a scripting interface for automating things. And what I've done here is a little script that uses exiftool to read the missing metadata from the RAF file and apply appropriate styles to get Darktable's default rendering close to the JPG.
Here's the lua script in its entirety:
--[[ fujifilm_auto_settings-0.2 Apply Fujifilm film simulations, in-camera crop mode, and dynamic range. Copyright (C) 2022 Bastian Bechtold <bastibe.dev@mailbox.org> This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA. --]] --[[About this Plugin Automatically applies styles that load Fujifilm film simulation LUTs, copy crop ratios from the JPG, and correct exposure according to the chosen dynamic range setting in camera. Dependencies: - exiftool (https://www.sno.phy.queensu.ca/~phil/exiftool/) - Fuji LUTs (https://blog.sowerby.me/fuji-film-simulation-profiles/) Based on fujifim_dynamic_range by Dan Torop. Film Simulations ---------------- Fujifilm cameras are famous for their film simulations, such as Provia or Velvia or Classic Chrome. Indeed it is my experience that they rely on these film simulations for accurate colors. Darktable however does not know about or implement these film simulations. But they are available to download from Stuart Sowerby as 3DL LUTs. (PNG LUTs are also available, but they show a strange posterization artifact when loaded in Darktable, which the 3DLs do not). In order to use this plugin, you must prepare a number of styles: - provia - astia - velvia - classic_chrome - pro_neg_standard - pro_neg_high - eterna - acros_green - acros_red - acros_yellow - acros - mono_green - mono_red - mono_yellow - mono - sepia These styles should apply the according film simulation in a method of your choosing. This plugin checks the image's "Film Mode" exif parameter, and applies the appropriate style. If no matching style exists, no action is taken and no harm is done. Crop Factor ----------- Fujifilm cameras allow in-camera cropping to one of three aspect ratios: 2:3 (default), 16:9, and 1:1. This plugin checks the image's "Raw Image Aspect Ratio" exif parameter, and applies the appropriate style. To use, prepare another four styles: - square_crop_portrait - square_crop_landscape - sixteen_by_nine_crop_portrait - sixteen_by_nine_crop_landscape These styles should apply a square crop and a 16:9 crop to portrait/landscape images. If no matching style exists, no action is taken and no harm is done. Dynamic Range ------------- Fujifilm cameras have a built-in dynamic range compensation, which (optionally automatically) reduce exposure by one or two stops, and compensate by raising the tone curve by one or two stops. These modes are called DR200 and DR400, respectively. The plugin reads the raw file's "Auto Dynamic Range" or "Development Dynamic Range" parameter, and applies one of two styles: - DR200 - DR400 These styles should raise exposure by one and two stops, respectively, and expand highlight latitude to make room for additional highlights. I like to implement them with the tone equalizer in eigf mode, raising exposure by one/two stops over the lower half of the sliders, then ramping to zero at 0 EV. If no matching styles exist, no action is taken and no harm is done. These tags have been checked on a Fujifilm X-T3 and X-Pro2. Other cameras may behave in other ways. --]] local dt = require "darktable" local du = require "lib/dtutils" local df = require "lib/dtutils.file" du.check_min_api_version("7.0.0", "fujifilm_auto_settings") -- return data structure for script_manager local script_data = {} script_data.destroy = nil -- function to destory the script script_data.destroy_method = nil -- set to hide for libs since we can't destroy them completely yet, otherwise leave as nil script_data.restart = nil -- how to restart the (lib) script after it's been hidden - i.e. make it visible again local function exiftool_get(exiftool_command, RAF_filename, flag) local command = exiftool_command .. " " .. flag .. " -t " .. RAF_filename dt.print_log(command) local output = io.popen(command) local exiftool_result = output:read("*all") output:close() if #exiftool_result == 0 then dt.print_error("[fujifilm_auto_settings] no output returned by exiftool") return end local exiftool_result = string.match(exiftool_result, "\t(.*)") if not exiftool_result then dt.print_error("[fujifilm_auto_settings] could not parse exiftool output") return end exiftool_result = exiftool_result:match("^%s*(.-)%s*$") -- strip whitespace return exiftool_result end local function apply_style(image, style_name) for _, s in ipairs(dt.styles) do if s.name == style_name then dt.styles.apply(s, image) return end end dt.print_error("[fujifilm_auto_settings] could not find style " .. style_name) end local function apply_tag(image, tag_name) local tagnum = dt.tags.find(tag_name) if tagnum == nil then -- create tag if it doesn't exist tagnum = dt.tags.create(tag_name) dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] creating tag " .. tag_name) end dt.tags.attach(tagnum, image) end local function detect_auto_settings(event, image) if image.exif_maker ~= "FUJIFILM" then dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] ignoring non-Fujifilm image") return end -- it would be nice to check image.is_raw but this appears to not yet be set if not string.match(image.filename, "%.RAF$") then dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] ignoring non-raw image") return end local exiftool_command = df.check_if_bin_exists("exiftool") if not exiftool_command then dt.print_error("[fujifilm_auto_settings] exiftool not found") return end local RAF_filename = df.sanitize_filename(tostring(image)) -- dynamic range mode -- if in DR Auto, the value is saved to Auto Dynamic Range, with a % suffix: local auto_dynamic_range = exiftool_get(exiftool_command, RAF_filename, "-AutoDynamicRange") -- if manually chosen DR, the value is saved to Development Dynamic Range: if auto_dynamic_range == nil then auto_dynamic_range = exiftool_get(exiftool_command, RAF_filename, "-DevelopmentDynamicRange") .. '%' end if auto_dynamic_range == "100%" then apply_tag(image, "DR100") -- default; no need to change style elseif auto_dynamic_range == "200%" then apply_style(image, "DR200") apply_tag(image, "DR200") dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] DR200") elseif auto_dynamic_range == "400%" then apply_style(image, "DR400") apply_tag(image, "DR400") dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] DR400") end -- cropmode local raw_aspect_ratio = exiftool_get(exiftool_command, RAF_filename, "-RawImageAspectRatio") if raw_aspect_ratio == "3:2" then apply_tag(image, "3:2") -- default; no need to apply style elseif raw_aspect_ratio == "1:1" then if image.width > image.height then apply_style(image, "square_crop_landscape") else apply_style(image, "square_crop_portrait") end apply_tag(image, "1:1") dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] square crop") elseif raw_aspect_ratio == "16:9" then if image.width > image.height then apply_style(image, "sixteen_by_nine_crop_landscape") else apply_style(image, "sixteen_by_nine_crop_portrait") end apply_tag(image, "16:9") dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] 16:9 crop") end -- filmmode local raw_filmmode = exiftool_get(exiftool_command, RAF_filename, "-FilmMode") local style_map = { ["Provia"] = "provia", ["Astia"] = "astia", ["Classic Chrome"] = "classic_chrome", ["Eterna"] = "eterna", ["Acros+G"] = "acros_green", ["Acros+R"] = "acros_red", ["Acros+Ye"] = "acros_yellow", ["Acros"] = "acros", ["Mono+G"] = "mono_green", ["Mono+R"] = "mono_red", ["Mono+Ye"] = "mono_yellow", ["Mono"] = "mono", ["Pro Neg Hi"] = "pro_neg_high", ["Pro Neg Std"] = "pro_neg_standard", ["Sepia"] = "sepia", ["Velvia"] = "velvia", } for key, value in pairs(style_map) do if string.find(raw_filmmode, key) then apply_style(image, value) apply_tag(image, key) dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] film simulation " .. key) end end end local function detect_auto_settings_multi(event, shortcut) local images = dt.gui.selection() if #images == 0 then dt.print(_("Please select an image")) else for _, image in ipairs(images) do detect_auto_settings(event, image) end end end local function destroy() dt.destroy_event("fujifilm_auto_settings", "post-import-image") dt.destroy_event("fujifilm_auto_settings", "shortcut") end if not df.check_if_bin_exists("exiftool") then dt.print_log("Please install exiftool to use fujifilm_auto_settings") error "[fujifilm_auto_settings] exiftool not found" end dt.register_event("fujifilm_auto_settings", "post-import-image", detect_auto_settings) dt.register_event("fujifilm_auto_settings", "shortcut", detect_auto_settings_multi, "fujifilm_auto_settings") dt.print_log("[fujifilm_auto_settings] loaded") script_data.destroy = destroy return script_data
However, there's a catch: Scripts in Darktable can not modify darkroom state directly. But they can load styles. So to make the script work, we need to define a number of styles that do the heavy lifting here:
- Two styles
DR200
andDR400
for the dynamic range modes that brighten the image by one and two stops, respectively (I like to use the Tone Equalizer like this). - Four styles
square ̲crop_landscape
andsquare ̲crop_portrait
andsixteen ̲by ̲nine ̲crop_landscape
andsixteen ̲by ̲nine ̲crop_portrait
that crop landscape/portrait images to 1:1 and 16:9 ratio. - One style for each film simulation you use:
provia
,astia
,velvia
,classic ̲chrome
,pro ̲neg ̲standard
,pro ̲neg ̲high
,eterna
,acros
,acros ̲green
,acros ̲red
,acros ̲yellow
,mono
,mono ̲green
,mono ̲red
,mono ̲yellow
,sepia
. The linked styles use Stuart Sowerby's Film Simulation LUTs as film simulations, which must be installed in$LUTs/Fujifilm XTrans III/$lut.3dl
.
Download a zip file with all the above styles here, and appropriately-renamed LUTs here. (This section will be revised once I finish building my own set of LUTs).
Then copy the lua script to ~/.config/darktable/lua/contrib/
, activate it in the script manager (bottom left in the lighttable), and it should automatically run whenever you import new Fujifilm raf files! (Start Darktable with darktable -d opencl
to see debug messages, and bind a keyboard shortcut to lua scripts/fujifilm_auto_settings
to trigger the script manually.)
Converting Capture one Presets to LUTs
A while ago, I bought an RNI film pack for Capture One. That's a set of presets that makes your digital photos look similar to analog film scans. However, since then my other image editor, Darktable just released a new version, I'm now back to using Darktable instead of Capture One, thus without access to those presets.
Here's how to export Capture One presets to LUTs, to make them accessable to other programs.
The fun thing is, LUTs are just PNG files that contain a table of colors. You know, a "Look Up Table", of sorts. So, in order convert a preset to a LUT, all we need to do is apply the preset to a pristine "identity" LUT, and export it as a new PNG.
- Get yourself an identity LUT.
For example, the one included in Stuart Sowerby's Fuji Film Simulation Profiles. Choose the sRGB PNG LUTs, for RawTherapee and Affinity Photo. - Open the LUT PNG in Capture One.
- Apply the preset you want.
Optionally lower saturation by -15, see below. - Export as PNG.
Make sure the color space is sRGB, just like the original file.
As easy as that.
A few more adjustments: many Capture One presets expect to be working on raw data, which is less saturated than Darktable's default. So I export with -15 saturation. Also, many presets include spacial adjustments such as Highlights or Shadows that are bound to not play well with the LUT PNG. To disable them, delete the offending lines from the *.costyle files1, or compensate the values with opposite slider movements.
When applying the LUTs in Darktable's lut 3D module, there are a few more things you can do to fit them into your workflow. For example, you can lower the opacity of the lut 3D module to vary their effect. Or you can choose chromaticity as blend more to only apply their color transformation, but keep Darktable's tonal rendering. In normal blend mode, some LUTs prefer a flat rendering as their input, so lower contrast in filmic rgb to zero and use the auto-pickers to set the image black and white point.
Footnotes:
don't do this for RNI LUTs, it's forbidden by the User License Agreement that is hidden quite well in dark-grey-on-black at the very bottom of their website
Books of 2021
Hologrammatica

In the last years, I have almost exclusively read books in English. Science fiction, in particular, seems to happen exclusively in English (and perhaps Chinese). So much so, that I have come to associate German only with bad translations and personal communications, whereas English was the language of science, engineering, and fiction. In 2021 however, to my surprise, I stumbled upon Tom Hillenbrand's Hologrammatica, an science fiction thriller in German. It was a peculiar experience, reading the familiar tropes of the genre in a different language. Somehow it made the story feel more immediate and approachable to me. Strange, what effect language can have.
In the book, humanity has decided to hide reality behind holograms. Clothes and hairstyles can be altered on the fly, street lighting is replaced with projected advertisements. The twist is that in this semi-dystopian world, everyone knows that the holograms hide the truth, which is a collapsed society and dilapidated infrastructure. It is a smart, very current backdrop for a detective story with mind uploads, space elevators, and all the modern trappings of science fiction. A thoroughly enjoyable read!
Sci-Fi honorable mentions: Andy Weir's pop sci-fi Project Hail Mary and Martha Well's first novel-length murderbot entry Fugitive Telemetry.
Not Much of an Engineer

I have always been fascinated with aviation, and the technology of warfare. But most of the non-fiction I have read about these topics focuses on the stories of pilots and companies and soldiers, not engineers. In these stories some of the most important plot points came from advances in technology, yet they didn't describe how those changes came about. In 2021, I finally found a good history of aviation technology: Sir Stanley Hooker's Not Much of an Engineer describes the work of the author as the principal engineer at Bristol and Rolls-Royce from the Merlin-era second world war engines to modern turbofans. I guess you need to be a bit of an aviation/engineering geek to enjoy this, but to me this book was an important missing link that I had always looked for.
Non-fiction honorable mentions: David Goodsell's The Machinery of Life wonderfully illustrates the inner workings of cells.
Crafting Interpreters

How do computers work? This question is surprisingly hard to answer. For me, the answer came in three books: Charles Petzold's Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software explained to me how processors work. The Arpaci-Dusseau's Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces describes the infrastructure of operating systems that make processors and storage and network available to programs. And now, finally, Robert Nystrom's Crafting Interpreters filled in the last step, how a programming language is built.
The book describes two implementations of a simple programming language. The first one is a high-level introductory scripting language implemented in Java, the second a high-performance reimplementation in C. Fascinatingly, the entire source code for these implementations is included in the book's text, such that you can entirely follow along (or program along) and have a working programming language at all times. A truly eye-opening glimpse into the innards of the tools we are using every day. The book requires familiarity with Java and C to enjoy.

bastibe.de by Bastian Bechtold is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.