Hi,
I have trouble getting this image to look nice.
Thought everything was fine until I exported it and saw the banding around the sun.
Would love any tips or ideas on how to avoid that.
JPG was created with quality at 100% but only half size.
I’ve tried different method of the highlight recounstruction module but they all seem to give the same result.
DSCF2243.RAF (26.5 MB)
DSCF2243.RAF.xmp (19.0 KB)
This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike .
Yeah, shooting straight into the sun, which seems to be behind some thin clouds. Banding galore. This is what I could manage.
Thank you for the suggestions. I’ve certainly learned a few things already.
@priort you seem to be blending the sun mostly through the skew parameter of sigmoid as well as some clever use of the tone equalizer module. Seems like I have to read up on mask blend modes? Unfortunately I dont like that this also changes the colours so drastically. Not even because I dont like the colours but I’d rather have a method that changes only the banding and leave colour alone.
@Popanz Very clever! Just smoothing the transition area. I actually love this approach. It’s very pragmatic and also doesn’t influence any other parts of the image.
With DT 4.7-972
With “sigmoidal” module and the original warm shot you get a very nice light yellow halo diffused around the sun: 
Greetings!
Tough one for sure… best I could come up with was to brighten the highlights a bit so as to push that section further into sigmoid’s desaturation. Still not quite right.
DSCF2243.RAF.xmp (13.5 KB)
Filmic HLR and setting the threshold and transition right you can use the bloom slider to help with the banding…
This image has such a range of possibilities from a totally dark silhouetted foreground to something lightened but the filmic HLR should be able to get the banding under control with some fiddling…
Yeah, I had that at one point, but I decided it didn’t do justice to the scene.
Why not? It’s sunset. It’s not unusual to have such a light.
I do like the smooth transition, but I dont quite understand - what is the “sigmoidal module”?
I do know (and love) “sigmoid” but havent heard of “sigmoidal”…
It was actually a bit warmer. But tbh it gets harder to remember the actual scene since I’ve seen and edited this so many times already. And the original is from 2021. But anyways I do remember it warmer. More in the direction of @Popanz second edit.
Thanks for the idea - I mostly switched to Sigmoid for its simplicity over filmic but the reconstruction in filmic is a lot more powerful and works pretty well for this image.
I do actually remember it as a really pretty warm sunset.
I’d probably dial it back a touch but it is pretty close to what I remember.
I am not a native English speaker…
sigmoidal = sigmoid
