t3mujinpack

Film emulation pack for Darktable

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t3mujinpack is a set of presets designed to emulate some of the most used photo films of all time, build specifically for open-source RAW developer software Darktable. It includes some of the most popular film emulations, like the vivid colors of Fuji Velvia, the muted tones of Kodachrome or the classic Ilford b&w films.

This pack started by João Almeida while doing regular photo processing and exploring some of Darktable modules, in an attempt to fix the lack of film simulation options, both in quantity and quality for that RAW developer. It was driven by the many options available for the most popular RAW development software applications, but mostly by G’MIC film emulation, which has been one of the main references in the development of these styles. The goal of these is to be as simple as possible by using few Darktable modules, it works solely by manipulating Lab Tone Curves for color manipulation, black & white films rely heavily on Channel Mixer.

Available film emulations

Black and White films

Color Negative films

Color Slide films

Tested Cameras

These presets aren’t optimized to any model and should work with any camera, it assumes some basic adjustments (exposure, white balance, etc.) have already been applied, but has been known to be used with the following cameras:

You have any issue with your camera model, or just want to add yours to that list? Just open an issue and send your feedback.

Download

The release packages come in three flavors, all have the same funcionality but appear in a different structure in the Lighttable and Darkroom modes. You should download the one that suits you the most, between having all styles at once or a tidier interface.

Flat hierarchy

Shows the full, big list without any hierarchy, the way the presets have been show in Darktable until know, ex:

One-level hierarchy

Groups presets into three different sections (Color Slide, Color Negative and Black & White), the presets will appear like this in Darktable styles interface:

Install

  1. Go to Styles box in Lighttable mode.
  2. Click Import and select all or only the ones you want to install.

Uninstall

  1. Close Darktable.
  2. Open a Terminal/Command window.
  3. Go to the folder where the styles were extracted.
  4. Run the uninstall script (remove_t3mujinpack.sh for Linux, remove_t3mujinpack.bat for Windows).
    1. This script will try to locate the Darktable database files at its default location. If, for some reason, those are at a different location you can pass that as a script parameter: remove_t3mujinpack.sh /some/folder/data.db
    2. A list of installed styles will be shown before deletion.

Styles can also be deleted from Darktable’s Styles box in Lighttable mode.

Upgrade

Sadly there is no direct way to upgrade the styles in Darktable, the only option is to remove all and install the updated styles.

  1. Run the Uninstall steps above, it won’t remove the edited images or even delete the keywords associated with the tags.
  2. Install the styles following the steps from above.

Usage

Just apply the selected preset, and you’re ready to go. The styles are separated into three groups, based on the nature of the original film:

The presets aren’t meant to be a single step solution, specially for RAW images, but a step in a workflow that slightly changes the color and exposure look and feel. The simplified version of that workflow would be something like this:

  1. Basic processing (exposure, white balance, etc.)
  2. Apply the preset
  3. Further processing, including additional adjustments in exposure or tone curves

It’s highly recommended having White Balance adjusted to a somehow neutral setting, minor tweaks in temperature and tint are ok. the same goes with exposure or shadows and highlights before applying the style, this is so that the base image is relatively plain and clean to be a good starting point to apply the style and have the expected result; if you use a enabled more extreme custom base curve that’s radically different from the default or have other modules in the pipeline adding contrast, then unexpected results could happen. These styles aren’t meant to be a final result and further adjustments after applying the styles are expected and highly recommended.

Contributors

Changelog

0.6.0

0.5.0

0.4.0

0.3.0

0.2.0

0.1.1

Future releases roadmap