darktable preset inspired by FujifilmProvia 100F

What the style changes

The style adds three darktable modules. It aims at Provia 100F as Fujifilm and the reviews describe it: neutral and faithful color, slide-film contrast without Velvia’s blocked shadows, clean whites, natural skin and a slight coolness. The sources are detailed on the Fujifilm Provia 100F film page. All figures below come from renders made with darktable-cli 5.6.0 at 1000 px, measured in CIELab.

• Slide-film contrast, with a gradual shoulder. The tone curve raises contrast from 14.3 to 16.4, below the Velvia 50 style (19.6). Blacks get deeper without blocking up (L5 1.3, against 0.3 for Velvia 50 and 0.7 for Kodachrome 64), following the datasheet’s gradual shoulder. The brightest 5 % of the frame go from L 87.9 to 90.6.
• Vivid but faithful color. A color balance rgb instance named “film” adds chroma, rather than vibrance, so that pastels are not inflated. Sky and sea chroma rise by 19 % and 27 %, and their hues stay within 1°. The Velvia 50 style adds 57 % and 81 % and turns them toward indigo: the two styles stay clearly apart.
• Natural skin. Skin chroma barely moves (−1 %) and its hue shifts by 0.9°. The Kodachrome 64 style, by comparison, saturates skin by 37 %.
• A slight coolness. The “film” instance tints the midtones faintly blue. A warm gray T-shirt loses a little red and yellow (a* +7.2 → +6.3, b* +3.2 → +2.4), a white wall stays neutral and a warm, dark vault moves closer to neutral (b* +4.0 → +1.9). Without this tint, skin gained 5 % chroma.
• Rich greens, through color equalizer saturation, and a +4° correction on blue that cancels the drift toward cyan caused by the curve and the cool tint.
• No grain. With an RMS granularity of 8, grain is invisible at normal sizes.

For comparison, the t3mujinpack style for this film, rendered on the same files, lightens the image (sky L +5) without adding saturation. This style follows the datasheet and the reviews (“brilliant primaries”).

What it leaves alone

• Your base development. The style contains no exposure, no sigmoid or filmic, no white balance, no color calibration and no LUT: those stay as you set them.
• Your pipeline order. The style file carries no module order list, so it does not impose one on your image.
• Your own color balance rgb. The style’s instance is named “film”, so it is added next to yours without changing it (unless the photo already has an instance named “film”, for example from an earlier application of the style).

What it does not leave alone: applied from the lighttable or the darkroom, each module of the style replaces the instance of the same name on the photo, or is added if there is none. The style’s unnamed modules, color equalizer and tone curve, therefore overwrite any settings you had already made in those modules. Your earlier settings stay in the history stack. Exporting with a style, or rendering with darktable-cli as our measurements do, adds the style’s modules as separate instances instead. Details in Install and apply darktable styles.

Limits

• An interpretation, not a calibration. No film was scanned or measured to tune the style.
• Discreet by design. On a photo that is already contrasty and saturated, it changes little. That fits a neutral film, but the difference from the base rendering is small.
• Conflicting sources on saturation and on warm versus cool balance. Moderate saturation and a slight coolness are an interpretation.
• Greens are not verified: the test photos have few of them. The Fujifilm “green tint” mentioned by one source is not simulated.
• Shadows. The cast shadow on one test photo darkens clearly (L 8.9 → 5.0) and keeps the blue of skylight. The slight magenta the datasheet’s curves suggest beyond density 3 is not reproduced: blacks stay neutral, as The Darkroom describes them.
• Long exposures. The 2.5G color shift the datasheet gives at 4 minutes is not simulated.

Tips

• Compare with Velvia 50 and Astia 100F. The three Fujifilm slide styles share the same approach: Astia is the softest, Velvia the most saturated and contrasty.
• Everything stays editable. The style’s modules are ordinary modules in your history: you can adjust or switch off each of them afterwards.
• Installation: see Install and apply darktable styles.