December 6, 2025
What is it about?
Digital cameras have limits. If an area in the image is too bright (e.g., the sun, bright clouds, or reflections), the pixels “fill up”. The sensor can no longer store data, the area becomes pure white and loses all texture. This is called “clipping”.
This module tries to restore information in these destroyed areas. It is often the last resort before a sky simply looks like a white hole.
The Methods (Important!):
This module offers various mathematical ways to save the data. The choice of method decides between success or failure:
- Clip highlights: The standard. Everything that is broken is made neutral gray/white. This prevents ugly color casts (e.g., pink clouds) but brings back no details.
- Guided Laplacians: The modern pro mode. It is extremely powerful. It uses the color channels that are not yet blown out to guess the structure in the broken channels. This often allows you to recover cloud structures that seemed lost.
- Inpaint Opposed: A good alternative if the Laplacian filters don’t work.
How to apply it:
- Activate the module (is usually on by default).
- Look at the brightest spots in the image. Are they just flat white? Or do they have a strange color cast (magenta/cyan)?
- Switch the mode to “Guided Laplacians”.
- Often this mode magically brings back details immediately. You can play with the “Threshold” slider to determine when the module should intervene.
Reality Check:
What is physically no longer there, even Darktable cannot conjure up. If all three color channels (Red, Green, Blue) are 100% blown out, the spot remains white. This module helps where there is still a little bit of information left in at least one color channel.