Birches on Christmas morning

Went on a walk to a nearby forest on Christmas morning and waited for the sun to start rising. It was partially occluded by clouds but still shined quite nicely through the birches.

This one is edited with darktable 3.8. I wanted to convey some of the magic of sunrise (hence the bloom effect) and created a painterly, impactful look while avoiding going over the top with the highlight chroma. It was already quite light so I also wanted to bring up the snow in the foreground. It’s surprisingly hard to balance… However I’m quite satisfied. This one could potentially be a nice playground for some of the novel highlight reconstruction algorithms in development for darktable. :wink:

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

PC250107.ORF (19.4 MB)

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PC250107-1.jpg.out.pp3 (14.7 KB)

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birches.morning.pp3 (29.8 KB) RawTherapee 5.8 Development


Edit: Wasn’t happy with how the brightest light shone through, gave that part a bit more attention.

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Birches on Christmas morning_PC250107.ORF.xmp (14.1 KB)

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is this in in Finland? just curious where :wink: love the contrast of the sun and the snow

Nice, thanks!


PC250107.ORF.xmp (12.1 KB)

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Thank you for a beautiful photograph which I have no doubt spoilt!
I tried two different approaches, neither of which achieved what I had in mind.
Done in GIMP. The first I tried to emphasise the colours while keeping the snow from becoming too blue.
The second, a black and white version, but re-introducing the merest hint of colour.

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Great Scene! Thanks for sharing.

birches-on-christmas-morning-PC250107.ORF.xmp (14.8 KB)
dt 3.8

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birches.morning.orf.xmp (21.6 KB) darktable 3.9

I really love the variety of edits this Play Raw produces!

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ART

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My version of GIMP 2.10.30 LAB

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Indeed, I really enjoy it too! There are so many different ways to view this scene.

The lighter ones are the closest to my memory of the scene.Tthe darker ones by @Jade_NL and @heckflosse certainly convey a very different but powerful story.

Finland indeed, somewhere quite near Tampere :slight_smile: And thanks!

I got somewhat inspired by some Vallila designs while taking and editing the picture… :smiley:

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They do. My first edit was all about bright warm yellows vs darker cold blues. The sun is a bit of a challenge to get right, though.

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PC250107.pfi (46.7 KB)

A simple edit with sigmoid tonemapping and @ilia3101 saturation method adapted to work with the rgb ratios
https://discuss.pixls.us/t/3-4-scene-referred-workflow-bad-bokeh-highlights-reconstruction/22135/60

pixel =(rgb-y)*sat_fac+new_Y

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I hadn’t seen any renditions similar to how I envisioned it, so this is my take with Filmulator:

  • Auto CA Correct 1
  • Highlight Recovery 2
  • Exposure Compensation -5/6
  • Temperature 5125 (to warm it up to roughly daylight WB)
  • NR on
  • Chroma NR 22 (both for noise and to help tame color fringing)
  • Shadow Rolloff Point 0.0407 (to crisp up the shadows)
  • Drama 59
  • White Clipping Point 0.526
  • Shadow Brightness 567 (to help lift the midtones in opposition to the shadow rolloff tool)
  • Highlight Brightness 1000 to boost the sky

Overall I feel this captures the warmth and brightness of the sun in contrast to the shadowy blue snow.

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PC250107.ORF.xmp (10.4 KB)

I feel like if you’ve overblown the highlights, then show it in grand style. :slight_smile:

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That’s a very good rendition of the highlights indeed! @CarVac’s result is also pretty impressive.

Here’s another try of mine. Tried to emphasize the blue patches of the sky a bit more while also rolling off the chroma of the red areas for a more natural look. Added a final “diffuse or sharpen” instance to recover a bit of the local contrast that was lost when I aimed for a quite light look.

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Very nice image. Is this method producing good results for you?

It’s just a variation on taking the gradient of the curve, so it’s not that special. But I like getting mentioned :slightly_smiling_face:

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Amazing image, thank you! I went for a dreamy and creamy edit. :slight_smile:

RT5.8 dev


PC250107.jpg.out.pp3 (29.9 KB)

Happy New Year, everyone!

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