Lovely scene. Nice challenge. I let tone eq do most of the heavy lifting.
backlit-snapshot-2020-06-01_16-43-35_DSC_0252.NEF.xmp (31.9 KB)
dt 3.4.1
2 Likes
Skin spots is a fact of life but I think the shadow over the face makes them more apparent. So, after exposure recovery, I advise you all to reduce the blemishes somewhat.
OK, I didn’t want to be defeated so had another go, and tried to achieve something that didn’t hurt your eyes so much.
Here, I used ART to lighten the foreground to lighten the figures, but used a parametric mask to exclude the green colour of the field. I think this shot is tricky because if you use a tone equaliser to lighten the figures it also lightens the grass making it look lurid and unrealistic.
then used a feathered area mask in the top half to darken the mountains and the sky.
Then just a little local contrast and a slight vignette and crop, that was it.
Backlit snapshot.NEF.arp (29.1 KB)
4 Likes
@spidermonkey I like your positive attitude! And your new image!
Everything is quite pleasant except for the right edge, where there is a black border and it seems to be cropped a little too much.
1 Like
Thanks @afre! Yes the black border is the result of taking a careless screenshot. Will have to live with that for now as there is stuff to do in the garden…
One more versions from me. Filmic is used with a ‘linear-looking’ setup (it’s a log - gamma chart, so it’s not linear, despite the straight line) + @sacredbirdman’s Astia profile on top of that.
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Looks better than your first attempts. Maybe de-saturate the background a bit to provide more separation from the fam.
Sorry about the commercial / non-free tools; I only included them to show what else is out there, especially in terms of convenience.
So I had a thought. What if @kofa had a nice big flash to light his family? Where would the light fall? So I set about creating a “flash”…
First I used ellipses for each member of the family
Then I feathered them and increased the contrast
Then raised the brightness using a rgb curve targeting their values
and finally a second instance of exposure to raise their exposure a little and I fiddled with the black level to maintain contrast
This isn’t a finished edit, but now we have an image that we can start editing with
2020-06-01_16-43-35_DSC_0252_03.NEF.xmp (14.0 KB)
4 Likes
My try with RT5.8. I also like the portrait crop.
2020-06-01_16-43-35_DSC_0252.jpg.out.pp3 (14.8 KB)
3 Likes
That is a nice crop.
Here’s my quick go using mostly dodging with exposure instances. A more satisfying effect could definitely be obtained by massaging the dodging for longer. I usually use LUTs for tone-mapping rather than filmic, but you can swap that out pretty easily.
2020-06-01_16-43-35_DSC_0252.NEF.xmp (127.6 KB)
2 Likes
