RFC: rename white balance module

[ralfbrown]

The current flareup about "dual whitebalance confusion" on Pixls triggered a thought:

Why don't we just rename "white balance" to "channel scaling" and add a search alias of "white balance" if and only if workflow defaults is set to Legacy or None?

That would reflect the purely technical nature of the legacy white balance module in scene-referred modes, eliminate people complaning about not being allowed to do their white balancing with a module called "white balance", and yet still allow users to find the module if they've decided on a non-scene-referred workflow.

[TurboGit]

If we go this way it must be done for scene-referred workflow only. That's maybe what you meant...

if and only if workflow defaults is **NOT** set to Legacy or None?

[jenshannoschwalm]

I am not sure if this idea is really a good one as it might even enlarge confusion. "Initial white balance" maybe?

[wpferguson]

I think any change we make will just add more confusion.

[Donatzsky]

I think any change we make will just add more confusion.

Well, we would definitely get more like this: https://www.reddit.com/r/DarkTable/comments/1m01prg/what_is_up_with_darktables_terrible_ui_as_someone/

[mwamp]

Hello,

Just adding my two cents as a new user (and also relatively new to photography).

The first time I used wb I of course used the legacy module, being warned by the alert I did lookup the doc and understand the distinction between the two modules but but but:

• I ran into issues with color calibration:
  • First I couldn't find the familiar temperature / tint duo
  • then I found that all the options were a bit confusing, I get that you might want presets for some light types but the mix of "modes" flt a bit strange
  • last and more importantly
    * I ran into slider range issues.
    * I realized I could not get the balance I wanted and my colors were strange always.

To expand on those last two points:

slider range:

• First I don't get the range rationale, default range appeared to be 1667 - 25k, 1667 seems a bit arbitrary to me, but more than this ideal the slider should be in log scale, effectively we will use 3k-6k ish range and these are the values where we want precision, we don't need to be degree accurate in the 20-25k range.
• Then for some reason after fiddling the bottom range would sometimes set itself to 3k (sometimes even a few units around 3k say 2990-3k)

Colors:
First behavior between the two modules is different and this is confusing, for the same temperature I would have two different pictures if I use wb and color calibration. I think this is worth an explanation in the docs. My expectation for wb is that it should be "universal" in the sense that two photo editors should show me the same picture if I use the same wb.

So my colors would be weird, I would get frustrated that I couldn't go bellow 3k (and my colors being weird I needed to)

Ultimately I realized that if I just let go of color calibration and used white balance I could just get the balance I needed.

And very quickly I ran into these issues myself, (tldr, applying style / history behaves very weirdly with WB)

#18525
#19524

Expanding on those two issues, if I copy history stack to a new picture, the white balance (legacy wb used) will be off. If I go to the wb module and double click on the temperature value, the picture will update and have the right balance (value does not change). Same corrective behavior if I change the temperature value and then click the "set wb to as shot".

Ok, that was just a bit of insight on user journey to those things. Even now I don't trust color calibration, not sure if it is it's position in the pipeline but I feel like I can't get the results I want with it.

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[Donatzsky]

During the current drama over on Reddit, this of course was brought up several times. There was one good suggestion, though, which was to rename it "raw white balance". It won't completely get rid of the confusion of course, but it should make it clear that this is maybe not the white balance to look for.

On it's own it won't be enough, so also rewording the error messages to better explain the situation is something I would consider essential. I'll try to think of something.

[ralfbrown]

We do already have tooltips to expand on the brief trouble message. Depending on condition, it's either

the color calibration module is enabled and already provides
chromatic adaptation.
set the white balance here to camera raference (D65)
or disable chromatic adaptation in color calibration.

or

this module is not providing a valid reference illuminant
causing chromatic adaptation issues in color calibration.
enable this module and either set it to reference
or disable chromatic adaptation in color calibration.

How would you reword these?

[Donatzsky]

It's not the tooltips, but the in-module error messages that could be clearer. Of course, now that I went to check what they say exactly, I ran into this bug: #22098

[kofa73]

Please don't rename it. I have a PR to really make it the source of WB. I've just been busy filing issues, but I'll pick it up next week.