While developing the image I noticed that with exposure set by auto and filmic applied, an orange tone appeared. The most noticeable area is roughly at about the 7:30 position and two inches from center, but it is also seen all around the leaves in the center and center-right portion of the image.
After zooming in and looking closely, it appears to me that there is a structure of some kind, perhaps a walkway, back there. The color that appeared comes from it, so it is real.
I come late to this
Besides my Nikons I also have an Oly (EM5 II) and I am shocked, how much the noise has been improved. For me, I need to denoise already beginning with 200ISO and here I literally see nothing at 640.
This is my take with darktable 3.3.0+1707~g696fc5c4a
With two month’s more experience with dt 3.2.1, I think I have improved since my earlier post. I have learned to deal with the highlights reconstruction since then, and I am more comfortable with the exposure. I think I have a better balanced interpretation, now.
Yes you did, noticeably. I like how you consistently edit to keep it as real as possible and I do not think that that is a lack of knowledge. Many, including myself, tend to over saturate or emphasize certain parts at times. This is also true for sharpening, although I do have to say that the above image seems to lack some in that respect
Yes, I do not really have any grasp on sharpening in dt, as of yet. I get completely lost trying to read the current/recent thread on sharpening. I guess I should start it again, from the top.
PS - When I used to do a lot of editing with the GIMP, a few years ago, I was even to the point of building my own overlay masks for contrast and sharpening. But, I have forgotten 85% of all that.
honestly you can usually get great results just by opening up the contrast equalizer and making a little kick like this with a large “brush” size:
sometimes its worth using the parametric mask to keep the effect out of the highlights and shadows a bit, but this alone gets you 95% of the way there most of the time.