I searched for Mackinaw Island images. If you copy the links, you can see the original web address. One came from Wikimedia and the other from Amazon CloudFront.
The first one, with the longer shadows was taken, I think, early in the day; hence, no horse manure residue on the street. The second one I think was from the afternoon, and the street is mostly brown. I think they wash the streets at night.
Looking at the images again, the first was taken in harsh, clear sky sunlight, the second under a cloudy sky with softer sunlight.
My artistic take on it. Although I think the brown color is probably correct, I decided to keep what gray I could for the street using a mask. I also chose to use color balance rgb for correcting the rest instead of color calibration, for no better reason than just because.
I like the color of Jacques’ (@Jade_NL) best, followed by @yteaot, but I like the sharpness of that edit best. When I compare mine to those, I see it is too blue.
BTW: Doesn’t seem to have changed all that much since I was there roughly 40 years ago. That big grand(?) hotel still there with the nice view of the bridge?
EDIT: Just had a look on OpenStreetMap: Yep, still there. Its even called Grand Hotel…
Probably the only thing that has changed on the island is the people working there. We had a package trip and stayed at the Grand for the first time. They treated you royally.
I think the top one looks realistic and if I was worried about the lighting on the pavement I would WB on the white line on the road along the bikes. Its in the same light as the pavement…then warm it a bit to taste…
Using the sidewalk behind the man and boy front right or using the white lane boundary
I ran into a message like that back when end it turned out that the permissions (and/or owner ) of the file were not correct. So: Check the owner and/or permissions of the file…
It’s recommended to expose to the right, when using the modern workflow. This image is obviously underexposed by at least 1.5 stops. The whitebalance is a little heavy on the blue side and maybe a tat too much magenta also. Adding a bit of yellow would surely warm up the image. Are you using filmic rgb? In case you do, it is important to get the WB and exposure straight beforehand.
Good luck and nice summertime-shot!
The key to accurate colour is to examine the greys and neutral areas - blacks and whites - as they hold the key. A grey has a known colour balance of equal amounts of red, green and blue (RGB). So if you look at a known grey and it looks wrong use a colour picker to show the RGB values and neutralise the colour back to grey. The other important thing is the image must be ‘correctly’ exposed before you look at its colour balance - so attend to this first.
Maybe it is not suitable in this environment, but nevertheless: I watch most of your videos on youtube, especially the editing moments with darktable, and I thank you for and admire your artistic work, period.
Best wishes from Germany
Daniel Spenner
I agree…for sure there is a technical WB and then some artistic interpretation. I was sitting on a rock face this week looking into a sunset over a lake…If you were to WB on the grey rocks the lighting would not we what it was on scene and the look would be way too cool. I think the main concern was the road and I think the white road lines are in the same light so not a bad choice to get a neutral reference and then alter to taste. I also agree about the underexposure. It is tough to raise as there was a lot of noise in there and not too much detail to bring it up a lot…
