I tried to recontruct the highlights to my taste, keeping the sun disc visible, plus a tighter crop.
DT 4.1
_DSF3698.RAF.xmp (13.2 KB)
_DSF3698.RAF.xmp (13.2 KB)
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Fun to see such good results with the sigmoid module @spidermonkey !
And then the Lightroom and ON1 results to compare with 
My observation and not from this is: how would I do a edit with a visible sun disc with the sigmoid module as my display transform? That will require some dynamic range editing to bring the neighborhood around the sun down in exposure while not making the foreground black. Is this possible with the tone equalizer currently?
For example with “rgb levels”
Sigmoid ON and rgb levels: OFF:
.
Sigmoid ON and rgb levels: ON: The solar disk does not change
Rgb levels won’t work here, especially in from of sigmoid as that module expects bounded display referred data. We need to work with methods that change the exposure locally. Tone equalizer, masked exposure, graduated filter, contrast in color balance rgb, etc.
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@jandren I have had a go at making the sun disc more visible using tone equaliser here:
I reduced the edges refinement to very low to avoid banding
and adjusted the smoothing diameter to get a balance between ugly banding or the sun disc being smoothed too much.
Adjust highlights_01.RAF.xmp (12.8 KB)
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I think darktable uses the wrong raw white level for this file:
(Only a bare minimum of modules enabled, so colours are wrong.)
A tiny reduction changes clipping detection considerably:
Two silhouette approaches, one with filmic, one with sigmoid. For both, I found the reds overwhelming, and pushed them back using the simple channel mixer preset of color calibration. I used a separate instance because I found it gave nicer colours; if memory serves me well, and I understood correctly, on the primary (chromatic adaptation) instance, the R, G and B channels are not really R, G and B (see Color calibration - colorfulness - #17 by anon41087856).
_DSF3698.RAF.xmp (13.5 KB)
_DSF3698_03.RAF.xmp (9.4 KB)
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I do find it interesting that you can get the black point in this file but not the white point data that I could see… I wonder why?? I thought about your silhouette approach. If I go as dark you did I like a bit more dramatic sky in the background. Looking at my two earlier attempts I made a crazy saturated one but I liked the whimsy of it and the second one I tried to get some sort of sun flare… I went back again and went for a combo of some foreground silhouette with a more desaturated washed look and keeping the accent of the red flag that disappears if you go too dark… Lots of ways to go with this photo…
_DSF3698_02.RAF.xmp (7.7 KB)
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Indeed, in “filmic rgb” module v5 (2021) of “color science” with following settings generates very realistic look:
“preserve chrominance” should be set to “no”.
Here is the XMP file…
_DSF3698_01.RAF.xmp (25.0 KB)
Just to note: I use DT v4.0.1 as released on the DT website.
Amazing work for such a difficult picture!
Very good results and a good point!
In DT I can’t find the the guided Laplacians in the highlight reconstruction module with this image. Does it not work with this raw file type? I do have good results with ART with this image.
Doesn’t work with X-trans I believe…
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