A study in blue

Cool to see what everyone makes of this, thanks!

@KristijanZic @rawfiner can you maybe upload the xmp files for your edits as well? Curious to see how you managed it, I especially like the last one.

ART

second trial using @ggbutcher profile

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@Egocentrix the xmp is included in the jpg (you can import the jpg file in darktable the same way as you would do with an xmp file) :slight_smile:
After some other tests with similar pictures, I think the most efficient way for me to handle those blues is to compress gamut and use a negative value of blue in colorfulness at the same time: using more the gamut compression if I want the pixels to be darker, or more the colorfulness if I want them to be brighter. Though, using colorfulness can give hue shifts, which may or may not be problematic depending on the image. I also usually lower the default middle-tone saturation in filmic for such images.

RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.NEF.xmp (12.0 KB)

Huh, didn’t know that. Neat. I’ll try some dt3.3/color calibration edits tonight.

Halos look much better with “clip negative RGB from gamut” = off.

For the human perception, it is an advantage that the same things always have the same color. Therefore, the human eye (or better brain) adapts to different lighting conditions trying to identify the “real” colors (that do not exit as such). When adapting the whitepoint, we try to imitate this behavior, to prevent objects from looking “strange”. But the human adaptation has limits, objects at sunset still look somewhat reddish and concerts with lots of blue led lights make the surroundings still appear bluish.
So, I think it is more than preserving “mood”, it’s about making a scene look right according to the human perception.

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Interesting discussion. I mostly like to work with captures in their original color context, as the best colorimetric effort of the camera. However, with some images I then like to “go wild” and see what some abstraction will render. Monochrome is a frequent departure, but I have a few early images where I just put them in GIMP and threw G’MIC operators at them until they looked Quite Different… :laughing:

Yes, I do the same :wink: . And I see no problem in artistic edits. Nevertheless, one should know, what would be “right” with respect to humun perception. Another example: Human vision can well adapt to different amounts of light. But a scene in moonshine always appears darker than a scene in sunshine. However, a shot taken in moonshine can easily be rendered to look like taken in sunshine. One can do that for artistic reasons, but it would not be correct with respect to human perception.

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Clinically correct has never been a goal, except perhaps if you digitize paintings for museums. However, when the first thing you notice is an alien look with artifacts you have never seen IRL, I would say it’s mission failed.

I read somewhere the advice to not try to capture your surroundings, but how those surroundings make you feel. There are of course other schools of thought, but I find it is a direction that works for me for keeping a photo interesting.

You are at the concert, the guitarist is giving his all, they turn the blinders up to eleven and it hits you straight in the face. That is the kind of intensity you feel at that moment, and I tried to represent that in my edit, I also really like @ggbutcher’s photo and @rawfiner’s second edit.

I should have done this PlayRaw a long time ago, it is awesome so see so many different takes on your own photo and there are so many different ideas for using the tools that we have. Thanks again to everyone who submitted here!

I looked through your xmps (and bits from @anon41087856’s recent video (get some sleep dude :stuck_out_tongue: )) and I managed to make a new edit that I really like. The blue artifacts were giving me headaches but I can sleep better now I think :stuck_out_tongue:

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Starting with @rawfiner’s second development, I tried to take it closer to the original Lightroom version at the top.

RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392_15.NEF.xmp (28.8 KB) dt3.3

Edit: Added lens correction to image.

@Egocentrix Will you post your xmp for your last development?

This one was a tough cookie! Loved it!


RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.NEF.xmp (13.0 KB)

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I hoped it was embedded in the jpeg file, because I have since then tweaked the edit again so I’m not sure what the settings were, sorry.
Your last edit is awesome, btw!

I have a buggy build, and although your first two opened okay, the last one didn’t, but maybe it was my build that was the problem.

You can also try the low light module…there are a few setting and ways to play with and desaturate the blues…with the light in your image of course there is so much artistic room and I am no artist just having a go trying this module in the mix…it help with the halo of the main light above the lead musician IMO…

RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.NEF.xmp (12.8 KB) Obviously you can tweak it to bring more of the blue back if that was the intent…

I’ve been looking at @anon41087856 's xmp to see how it was done.
There are 10 iterations of highlight reconstruction, and they do make a difference as compared to say 3.
I made just one change, in filmic preserve chrominance, taking Luminance Y instead of MaxRGB. I think this gives a nice alternative -

Then I did a couple of masked changes just on the band to get this -


StudyInBlue-RC2.xmp (35.0 KB)
Easy peasey if someone else does the hard stuff!

Thanks for your comment about my edit. That was a lot of trial and error. Lightroom has a lot of help from camera manufacturers that we don’t get.


RT 5.8
Well, very nice, although the challenging photo. It’s not enough to see the picture, you should also to hear it and to feel it.
I didn’t want to make it just a perfect smooth shot, noiseless, and self restricted one. I’ve tried to preserve light’s aggressivity and the overwhelming noise.
I’ve made light’s temperature here incredibly high ( 60 000 ). just by mistake - and this made almost all job. Well, nobody knows, what you can find inside the RT :slight_smile:

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RawTherapee 5.8

I noticed the annoying rings around the light on the right in some versions posted here, and they also showed up when I initially loaded the image. I found they reduced when turning off base table in the colour management/camera profile, but disappeared when turning off highlight reconstruction, and now I can switch the base table on again, and it’s fine.

Otherwise: adjusted white balance to get closer to normal skin tones (to 60000K, no less! green/purple and red/blue untouched), reduced saturation a little, brought up shadows, sharpening.

RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.jpg.out.pp3 (11.7 KB)

Second version:
both base table and look table deactivated in camera profile, white balance at 9000K, but purple/green tint at 1.54, shadows and lightness brought up a bit, and tone mapping on at default settings to make the rain more visible. Some more “ringy” lights in this one and I found turning on the full camera profile significantly worsened that. Something about that camera profile might not work as intended here.

RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392_v2-2.jpg.out.pp3 (11.3 KB)

Third:
I tried setting camera profile to “camera standard” and using an auto-matched tone curve (RT tries to match the embedded jpg preview), but found no way to achieve anything remotely close to skin tones using the white balance tool and really it’s just looking awful, so I stopped.

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