Black Dragon Viewer Guide: #6 Tone Mapping & Color Correction

What is it?

Tone Mapping and Color Correction are commonly used to enhance the picture with additional color or in case of Tone Mapping aiding in compressing the image color ranges to allow non-HDR to have a higher range of colors available in their limited color range, this is to give an enhanced sense of contrast or colors in the final picture. Black Dragon uses Tone Mapping and Color Correction slightly different, instead of compressing the color range it is used to enhance the overall colorfulness and contrast of the image. Some would say it 'blows out' colors a bit but this is essentially what makes Black Dragon's pictures so 'crispy'.

How does it look?

As shown in the pictures Tone Mapping and Color Correction create a more neutral color scheme, while at the same time making the details on some parts of objects 'pop' more. Vibrant colors profit most from this and these features can vastly change how a picture looks depending on the scene they are used in. It's main goal was to get rid of SL's global greyish look that you would see most noticably when not using 'Full Range' colors.

How can i use it ?

You can enable Tone Mapping and Color Correction by opening 'Preferences' and selecting the 'Display' tab, here you'll find the 'Tone Mapping' section where you'll find the 'Color Correction' options as well as all options to configure Tone Mapping itself.

What can i change?

Quite a lot actually, Tone Mapping and Color Correction probably offer the most feature-unique finetuning options out of all rendering features. You can totally customize every aspect of how Tone Mapping interacts and how and which color to correct via Color Correction. From certain presets for Tone Mapping to each and every single calculation ramp can be configured and Color Correction also offers configuring the exposure, gamma and offset of each of the three color channels. (red, green and blue)

Caveats

Despite offering the most options out of all features it is incredibly hard to control and even harder to get just right, it takes a lot of patience to get these features configured to give your picture that extra bit of 'oomph'. It is even harder to create a default preset for everyone to use.