Yes, I do the same 
. 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.
2 Likes
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 
)) 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
5 Likes
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?
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
1 Like
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.
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.
2 Likes
Good one. The question is whether the light by the guitar player is actually orange or green or…?
I was not really happy with my first try. So, I revisited this thread and tried again.
All of old.
Nothing else ever.
Ever tried.
Ever failed.
No matter.
Try again.
Fail again.
Fail better.
(Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho)
RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.NEF.xmp (11.1 KB)
1 Like
nice shot … blue everywhere blue … 
in my opinion, the RGB curve is your friend and the desaturation of the lights 
1 Like
RT Dev, using Full Images only of Local Adjustments to target different light levels. Focused on dark environment, high contrast, and haze to bring out the atmosphere.
RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392-2.jpg.out.pp3 (27.2 KB)
I tried using DT 3.4.1 and I really like what the colour calibration module can do in conjunction with filmic and tone equaliser.
RPN_Kick-In_20180830_3392.NEF.xmp (13.7 KB)
I asked a friend to try it in capture one and this is what he got :
I like the gradations of colour in DT more, C1 gives cyan and even yellow hues in the highlights but I must admit that the reconstruction of the halos around the highlights look much better to me In the C1 version. They can be made smaller without a hard border around.
1 Like