@Aliks: You asked for vivid colours, especially in the greens. I’m wondering how realistic that would be. This is a very old coffin (2000+ years at least I’m guessing) and those colours would have faded over time. I did add some pop to the colours, bit too much for my personal taste to be honest.
My try.
dt 3.4.1
Modern workflow. Slight tweaks in color calibration. Special attention to the reflection on the schowcase (tone eq). Color zones to tweak the green. Contrast via haze removal, local contrast, contrast equalizer and filmic contrast.
Jade - Actually the green pigment is mineral based - crushed minerals with copper salts giving the intense green. I don’t think it fades much with time.
So I like your first image best - but as you say its a matter of taste.
Yes those colours look good to me. The green is probably a malachite mineral colour, and the wood colours are nut brown.
The other distinctive feature of my sarcophagus image is that the colours have an attractive “sheen” as if there was a layer of varnish on top of the paint/pigment.
I’ve looked online for the exact image but drawn a blank. I didn’t make a note of the labelling so I cant give a definitive reference.
The particularity of metals (e.g. gold) is that the specular reflections take the tint of the metal (yellowish in the case of gold, reddish for copper, …), whereas for non-metals the reflections are not coloured. In the case of varnished metal, you can get a coloured reflection from the metal, layered with a non-coloured reflection from the varnish.
Those effects are well understood for generated images. In photography, it means you should not force reflections from (bare) metal to be neutral.
And application of varnish after the colours is still a common technique to get a consistent surface texture, and to protect the decorations. It’s one of the reasons the colours stay “fresh”, helped by the storage in dry, dark, conditions at fairly constant temperature for most of the last 2000-3000 years.
I thought it couldn’t possibly be the effect of a varnish as varnishes tend to darken and discolour over time. However, a little googling shows that the dynastic Egyptians commonly used beeswax based varnishes. . . . .
Fantastic, that is indeed the same sarcophagus - you can see the same damage marks.
The text in German is useful , but I can find no other references to the name Djedhoriufanch - presumably a relative of Djedhor. Is that a German form of the name maybe?
I have plans to go back to Cairo after lockdown, so I will definitely take some more pictures and do some better labelling.
Yes that is the Anglicized name - looks like National Geographic did an article in 2017 on Djedhorefankh (or Tchet-Heru-af-anch). The Cairo museum has so many articles in its basement, I am looking forward to seeing the new museum out in Giza (whenever it opens.
And your take on the image is pretty good too - balancing all the defects of the raw image to get a nice output.