darktable preset inspired by KodakEktachrome E100G

What the style changes

The style adds three darktable modules. It follows Kodak’s description of the film: neutral color balance, moderately enhanced saturation, a lower-contrast tone scale and whiter whites. The sources are on the Kodak Ektachrome E100G film page. All figures below come from renders made with darktable-cli 5.6.0 at 1000 px, measured in CIELab.

• Softer contrast than a typical slide film. A per-channel tone curve opens the toe and lengthens the shoulder. Contrast (Lsd) rises from 30.7 to 32.2 on one frame and from 14.3 to 15.5 on another, below the 33.0 and 16.1 of the Grain Archive Ektachrome E100 style. The darkest 5 % fall from L 2.6 to 1.7 and the L95 highlights rise from 87.9 to 89.5.
• Moderate saturation. A color balance rgb instance named “film” raises saturation, chroma and vibrance slightly. Sky chroma goes from 27.5 to 30.8 (+12 %) and sea chroma from 22.2 to 25.9 (+17 %), against +24 % and +32 % for the E100 style.
• A hint of magenta, no warm cast. The midtones and highlights carry a faint 345° tint, following one review that finds the film leaning toward magenta. Skin hue barely moves (44.2° to 43.6°): the style does not add the warmth of the E100GX.
• Restrained yellows, clean reds and greens. The color equalizer pulls yellow down by 5 % and lifts greens, reds and magentas by 3 to 4 %.
• No grain. With an RMS granularity of 8, grain is not visible at normal sizes, so the style adds none.

For comparison, the t3mujinpack style for this film, rendered on the same files, is less saturated (sky chroma 23.2, mean chroma 18.1 against 24.3) and pulls skin toward orange (60.5°) while lightening it strongly. This style does not follow it, because no source supports that shift.

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. Only three sources could be read: the datasheet and the Emulsive and Film Photography Project reviews.
• The reviews disagree. Emulsive finds the colors cooler, the Film Photography Project finds them leaning toward magenta. The faint magenta background is a compromise based on one review.
• Blues drift toward violet. Sky and sea hues move by about 3° to 5° toward violet, an effect of the per-channel curve and the magenta background. It was not intended and it runs against the “cooler blues” one reviewer describes. It is small and was not corrected.
• D-max values quoted on the film page are read from a graph.
• No grain added. The clean look comes from your source file.

Tips

• For a slightly cooler rendering, lower or remove the magenta tint of the “film” color balance rgb instance.
• For more color, raise its saturation: the Grain Archive Ektachrome E100 style is the more saturated of the two.
• Installation: see Install and apply darktable styles.