Hey Everyone,
Back with another play raw. This time there will be no Lightroom comparisons either unless someone wants that as I have done a comparison with this image. I have personally been on the hunt for a strict open source workflow. In the past I have mainly only used a raw processor but I have been desiring more creativity so I have moved to a multi step workflow including image processing on top of the raw processing. So in this play raw I combined the power of RawTherapee and Gimp combined to create a dreamy landscape shot.
I did find this process a bit more straightforward with LR + PS due to smart objects and ACR, however, I did ultimately find that RT and Gimp gave nearly identical results and I am very very happy with those results despite this being the first time I have ever used RawTherapee. With more knowledge I am sure I can get even better results.
The biggest hurdle I found with doing this with RT + Gimp was the lack of a Local Copy mechanism. I ended up having to duplicate the raw file, then copy my edits to that raw file then raise the exposure so that I could have 2 16 bit tif files to export. One which was exposed properly and another overexposed image so I can do the blending in Gimp. If anyone knows a more efficient way to do this please share.
License: CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0
Raw File: 20190919-084717-IMG_0003.CR2 (30.7 MB)
Final Image:
RT 5.6 pp3 files for both copies (using 5.6 instead of 5.7 due to MacOS crash issues)
20190919-084717-IMG_0003.CR2.pp3 (11.4 KB)
20190919-084717-IMG_0003 copy.CR2.pp3 (11.4 KB)
Enjoy having some fun with this image it is slightly challenging due to the specularity in the rocks but they are actually not blown out. The Glow effect in my result does make it seem that way they were rather wet and reflective. Plus my RT skills are not that great and still learning how to best handle stuff with the highlights and shadows.
