Deer at dusk on a cloudy day

[akgt94]

Using DT 3.8.

Challenging conditions gave as-shot low contrast, low saturation, high ISO noise and blurriness. But I liked how the deer was coming out of the woods. Trying to find a way to save it.

I think this was near dusk on a cloudy day. The lens is wide-open at f/6.3. I have my Auto ISO limit set as 12800. The camera raised the shutter speed to 1/500. I was using a 1.7x magnifying glass in front of the lens (telecide converter), so the effective focal length was 305 mm. And the extra glass adds softness. There isn’t a raw because I had the camera set to store JPEG-only.

This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution-NonCommercial, Share-Alike (Creative Commons — Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0).

source.zip (9.6 MB)

[lightlover]

DSC03683.JPG.xmp (11.7 KB)

[akgt94]

@lightlover, thanks for sharing.

I’m new to DT. I think your technique boils down to these:

• color balance rgb and rgb levels to change the white balance
• rgb levels, filmic rgb and local contrast to set exposure and contrast
• color contrast and color zones to selectively add saturation

Were you eye-balling the white balance or do you have a specific technique?

BTW, my first edit had the same crop as yours. I haven’t decided which crop I like better.

[lightlover]

I’m new to Darktable too.
Being a .jpg file, I started with a classic workflow, correcting the general color with an RGB curve in color mode, checking the asphalt with the color picker. Increased the contrast with another RGB curve in luminosity mode.
As you rightly noted, color contrast and color zones to globally boost colors and selectively change some hues (mostly fur) and add saturation.
I corrected the TCA then I experimented with some modules, perhaps exaggerating with further edits.
Some fine tunings and stop.
Maybe some vignetting would have helped with the main subject.

[heckflosse (Ingo Weyrich)]

A Play Raw with a .jpg?

[sallyanne (Susan)]

Edited in RT and Gimp