B&W Today's Sunrise ... suggestions?

This morning’s sunrise shot from bedroom porch. My objective was to bring out the rising sun’s rays (in the highlights) without sacrificing any more of the shadow tones seen in the mountains than necessary. Kept the sky just shy of blowing out, and the nearby oak trees just at the edge of pure black … taken together, to push the full dynamic range in a B&W treatment.

My hope is that the shadows/crags in the mountains can be brought out to achieve greater contrast.

ANY AND ALL SUGGESTIONS FROM ART-USERS MUCH APPRECIATED!

[Picture taken through vintage (collapsible) Leica Summicron f=5cm (50mm) mounted on my Canon M6 Mark ii (APS-C / 1.6x crop factor) for equivalent 80mm focal length.]

This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.

2022-09-11-003.CR3 (18.2 MB)
2022-09-11-003.CR3.arp (25.3 KB)

Being my first submission here, hopefully these uploads function properly. If not, please advise and I’ll try to repair the situation.

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You have done a remarkable job with your image.

I was determined not to cheat to see how you did this before I had a go. Now that I’ve seen how you have done this I’m very impressed, my effort doesn’t even come close hence I’m not posting it.

Your use of some of the modules is well ahead of my experience with Art.

I’m going to look at how you have done this in more detail later in the week.

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My try in darktable, I hope you don’t mind.


2022-09-11-003.CR3.xmp (9.5 KB)

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2022-09-11-003.CR3.xmp (12.4 KB)

2022-09-11-003_02.CR3.xmp (10.6 KB)

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Hi,

I started from your arp and focused on the above. Hope this helps – the parameters are embedded in the jpg:

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@Phil_Smith You’re too kind. Many thanks for the encouragement. I still feel like quite the noob.

If you can think of ways (either more straightforward or more convoluted) to get to a better result, please do share.

Don’t mind at all. I’ve used DT at times, too. There’s a lot there to be leveraged. Frankly, it looks like you’ve achieved virtually the same result - which is encouraging for both tools.

Your rendition appears to “suffer” from the same shortcoming I see in mine through ART, though … i.e., thus far we haven’t pulled much of that lighter granite in the mountains up in brightness.

I have some ideas on how to achieve this and will keep working on it and share any useful results.

Definitely an improvement (to my eye, in terms of what I was trying to achieve). I will devote time to exploring your attachment to see what I can learn. Many thanks!

My next thought would be to use the “Color similarity mask” in the in the Local Contrast tab - to see if I can isolate the exposed granite rock - and only the rock, as opposed to any sky with similar tone - as a mask. And then to pull the luminosity of those masked portions higher without causing unpleasant artifacts. Perhaps that will do? :thinking:

@agriggio Hmmm, perhaps I’m doing something wrong in loading your jpg…

… I saved it, and loaded in ART 16.2.1 but cannot discern any changed settings you’ve applied. Perhaps there’s a setting within ART I need to activate to allow your embedded jpg edits to become active in the various controls panel? Any variables that are active are pegged at their default mid-points.

Hi,
You need to load the jpg as a sidecar while having the raw open. Sorry if that was unclear… Just go to the editor, load the profile from file using the file load icon on the top right, and select the jpg.

HTH

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Excellent instruction … very neat. Never had reason to try that before with a jpg import as processing profile - and now I know!

Will devote time to exploring your enhancements. Thanks again!

Spent time exploring what @agriggio did via Local edits/masks and, having tried to further tweak a few things, I did not achieve anything considerably better than what’s reflected in his post above. The front foothills are darker while containing lighter contrasts …and the other layers of hills nicely cascade in degrees of contrast into the rising sun.

So at this point, I’m leaving well enough alone.

Many thanks again for the eye-opening adjustments. This exercise has convinced me that I need to spend more time working with adding & subtracting mask areas within ART to more fully leverage its capabilities.

Thanks again. :+1:

Thanks for giving us a chance to play with this great image.
My plays. I used my equal luminosity mask plug-in in GIMP to make adjustments to brightness and contrast in the various zones before desaturating.
The second play I decided to add a slight blue cast to the image.

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My version…

2022-09-11-003_02.CR3.xmp (11.3 KB)

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2022-09-11-003.CR3.arp (11.9 KB)

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My take using RawTherapee Dev.
2022-09-11-003-1.jpg.out.pp3 (21.8 KB)

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