darktable preset inspired by FujifilmSuperia X-TRA 400

What the style changes

The style adds five darktable modules. It aims at the cool Superia X-TRA 400 of the reviews: medium contrast, cyan-leaning blues, vivid greens, a touch of magenta and fine grain that shows in the shadows. The sources are detailed on the Fujifilm Superia X-TRA 400 film page. All figures below come from renders made with darktable-cli 5.6.0 at 1000 px, measured in CIELab.

• Medium contrast, no shoulder. The tone curve is slightly steeper than the one in the Portra 400 style, with a short toe and open whites. Contrast rises by 1.6 on both test photos (Lsd 14.3 → 15.9 and 30.7 → 32.3), blacks barely move (L5 2.6 → 2.9) and the brightest 5 % of the frame go from L 87.9 to 90.3. That sits between the Portra 400 style (+0.4 to +0.6) and the Gold 200 style (+2 to +2.5).
• Cool, cyan-leaning blues. rgb primaries turns blue toward cyan. The sky moves from 273.6° to 268.1° and the sea from 270.1° to 264.4°, and both gain about 8 % chroma. The Portra 400 style pushes the same sky the other way, toward violet.
• Green-cyan shadows, a hint of magenta. A color balance rgb instance named “film” tints the shadows green-cyan, the midtones faintly magenta and the highlights blue. On a synthetic chart, a mid gray takes b* −1.1 and an off-white b* −1.9.
• Vivid greens and magentas. color equalizer raises the saturation of greens, magentas and yellows. On the same chart, a pure green gains 23 % chroma and a foliage green 13 %; yellow stays put. The pink T-shirt gains 12 % chroma and turns a little more magenta.
• Pinker skin. Skin hue moves from 44.2° to 37.8° and its chroma drops by 10 %, following Casual Photophile’s remark that lighter skin can turn pinkish.
• Fine grain, sized from the RMS granularity of 4, with a low midtones bias so that it stays visible in the shadows, as reviews describe.

For comparison, the t3mujinpack style for this film, rendered on the same files, lightens the image strongly (L 60.7 against 53.2), desaturates the sky and sea by 20 to 25 % and turns skin toward yellow (54.8°). On skin, it goes against the reviews we read; this style follows them.

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, rgb primaries, color equalizer, tone curve and grain, 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. Real Superia also changes a lot with the scanner.
• Shadow color. Sources describe green, magenta or teal shadows. The style keeps a light green-cyan tint; it is multiplicative, so it barely shows in deep blacks.
• The magenta cast reported by reviews depends on the scan. The style only adds touches of it, in the midtones, skin and magentas.
• Greens were checked on a synthetic chart only. The four test photos have almost no vegetation.
• Exposure effects are not simulated: neither the green shadows and coarse grain of underexposure nor the warm cast of overexposure.
• An old datasheet. It describes the 2003 version, with its fourth layer; later versions reportedly dropped that layer, and nothing guarantees the datasheet describes the last one.

Tips

• For a stronger magenta cast, as some reviewers describe, raise the chroma of the midtones (hue 300°) in the “film” color balance rgb instance.
• Everything stays editable. The style’s modules are ordinary modules in your history: you can adjust or switch off each of them afterwards, for example the grain strength.
• Installation: see Install and apply darktable styles.