darktable preset inspired by KodakEktar 100

What the style changes

The style contains five darktable modules. It aims at the Ektar 100 described on the Kodak Ektar 100 film page: high saturation, vivid blues, greens and reds, strong contrast near the shadows, skin that turns red and almost invisible grain. All figures below come from renders made with darktable-cli 5.6.0 at 1000 px, measured in CIELab.

• Contrast in the shadows. The tone curve deepens the shadows more than it brightens the highlights, and eases off at the top, as the datasheet curve does from about 3 stops above middle gray. Contrast rises by about 2.5 (Lsd 14.3 → 16.7 and 30.7 → 33.4), and the darkest 5 % of the frame drop from L 2.6 to 1.5 without blocking up. Mean lightness hardly moves (53.2 → 53.6), where t3mujinpack lightens the image clearly (L +8.6).
• High saturation, strongest near the shadows. The “film” color balance rgb raises chroma by 10 % and shadow saturation by 8 %. Sky chroma rises by 31 %, sea by 42 % and the pink T-shirt by 39 %; over the whole of photo 0775, chroma goes from 21.4 to 28.2. The Velvia 50 style goes further (sky +57 %, sea +81 %) and blocks the blacks.
• Blue skies, not indigo. rgb primaries makes blues and reds purer and turns blues slightly toward cyan. Sky and sea move 1° and 2° toward cyan, the same direction as t3mujinpack; the Velvia 50 style moves them toward indigo.
• Skin that reddens. The color equalizer turns orange 9° toward red, and the red-orange highlight tint does the rest: skin hue moves from 44° to 39°, and its chroma rises by 36 %. The Gold 200 style turns skin the other way, toward yellow (57°); t3mujinpack keeps its hue (43°).
• Neutral highlights with a hint of warmth. A sunny white wall on photo 1014 moves only from C 0.8 to 1.5.
• Very fine grain, sized from Kodak’s Print Grain Index, which stays under the visibility threshold of 25 for a 4×6 print from 35 mm.

The settings took three rounds. A first version (highlights at 35°, orange −6°) barely turned skin (h −1°). A second (0° and −9°) turned skin toward red (−5°) but sent the sky toward violet (+3°). The final settings (20° and blue −0.03 rad) keep skin toward red and the sky neutral.

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, so those settings stay as you set them.
• Your color balance rgb. The style’s instance is named “film”, so it is added next to the color balance rgb you tuned on the photo instead of replacing it.
• Your pipeline order. The style file carries no module order list, so it does not impose one on your image.
• But not your settings in its other modules. When you apply the style from the lighttable or the darkroom, darktable 5.6 replaces an existing instance of the same module: if you had already adjusted rgb primaries, color equalizer, tone curve or grain, the style’s settings take their place. Your earlier settings stay in the history stack. Applying the style at export, or with darktable-cli as in our measurements, adds every module as a separate instance instead. See Install and apply darktable styles for the details.

Limits

• An interpretation, not a calibration. The style is built from Kodak’s datasheet and published reviews. No film was scanned or measured to tune it.
• The red shift is not limited to skin. It affects every warm, low-saturation tone: the sunlit beige ground of photo 1014 moves from 73° to 50°, toward salmon. Analog.cafe does write that Ektar’s cast “covers a wide range of colours”, but the effect can bother on sand or stone.
• All skin is treated alike. Reviews say the reddening shows mostly on fair skin; the style applies the same shift to everyone.
• Exposure-dependent casts (blue shadows when underexposed, red highlights when overexposed) are reduced to two fixed, light tints.
• Contrast and latitude. Sources disagree. The style takes a middle position: contrast close to the Gold 200 and Kodachrome 64 styles, blacks between the two (L5 1.5, against 3.1 for Gold 200 and 0.7 for Kodachrome 64).
• Not reproduced: the “yellow-green” cast one review describes, which the other sources contradict.
• The grain shows only at 100 % on a large export; at 1000 px it is invisible.

Tips

• For portraits, lower the red shift: set the orange hue of the style’s color equalizer instance closer to 0°, or switch the instance off.
• On sand or stone, the same adjustment keeps warm neutrals from turning salmon.
• Everything stays editable. Each module the style adds is an ordinary instance: you can adjust it or switch it off afterwards.
• Installation: see Install and apply darktable styles.