Perhaps I’ve gone a bit too far with the shadows, but I like to preserve my natural perception of detail in the shade. It’s a struggle with every midday summer landscape.
Thank you for sharing!
DSC05578.ARW.xmp (14.2 KB)
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Thank you all for the edits, I analysed them one by one and Indeed I found inspiration, especially in the way some of you used Color Balance to compress dynamic range.
Also, personally I don’t like the result when local adjustment modules are used too heavily, and this includes the tone equalizer. I find the result too obviously digital if the adjustments are more than +/- 1EV approx.
I figured out a possible workflow that would work in these cases:
- In exposure: adjust for the midtones (area of interest)
- In filmic, adjust white and black levels. I found easier to do that by setting contrast = 1.0 and possibly contrast in shadows/highlights = soft
This will set the dynamic range at the expense of local contrast. Then I have to recover local contrast - turn on Local Contrast
- In Color Balance, further compress the dynamic range by using the factor sliders and tradeoff the gained room for more contrast in the midtones, can be done in CB itself or in filmic
- If necessary, use (midly) the tone equalizer with a sine shaped curve, to help compressing the DR. Again, use the room created to get more contrast in midtones
I got this edit with the above procedure, which I like more than my initial one.
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@MarcoNex Thanks for this thread. I’ve been having the same issue with filmic and high dynamic range myself. Posted a similarly difficult image in much earlier stages of filmic. I’m going to try your method.
What has surprised me a bit with filmic is that I understood is as a tone mapping tool but it’s quite difficult to map tones with it 
At least if those tones are towards black.
I share your views on local tools as well. It’s so very easy to make the image look ‘wrong’. If possible I avoid local edits. Filmic feels a bit like first you break your image then you build it back up when it’s weak and has no ability to defend itself.
Well, it’s a play raw, isn’t it? Everything allowed 
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If OP asks for something specific, we should keep it in mind, but I also see no problems here. If OP isn’t interested in a different software they can simply ignore it. 
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Thanks very much. I watched that video and I’m sure I learned from it. I’ll try to use what I learned on this image…
Later - This is what I got using only tone equalizer and filmic rgb. @Bruce_Williams 's video gave me the info to make all the difference. Thank you, again, and thank you, Bruce. I intend to watch many more of your video presentations.
DSC05578_02.ARW.xmp (5.3 KB)
Forgot to sat that if you increase contrast in Color Balance this will also increase saturation, unlike filmic, so it will produce a more vibrant look. It’s matter of taste
I’m a little late to the party, but here’s my take on this wonderful image. I processed the image in DT 3.2.1 using my usual modules which took me under 5 minutes start to end.
In filmic I adjusted the white and black relative exposures until they looked right
I used the local contrast tool with a multiply blend mode and opacity set to 25%
In tone equalizer, I boosted the shadows a bit, but not too much as that - to me - didn’t look right.
In color balance, I used the hue eyedropper to adjust mid-tones. I tried playing with the saturation and contrast sliders, but decided to leave them where they were - I’m fighting a tendency to ‘over-cook’ my images with too high contrast and over-saturated colors but I think I did all right in this image.
I also increased the exposure a bit
I also used demosaic (AMaZE), perspective correction, lens correction, and the contrast equalizer (deblur: large blur, strength 3) to round things out.
DSC05578.ARW.xmp (8.5 KB)
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Edited at night, so I guaranty nothing:
Same with a hint of tone EQ:
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Really like this photo, thank you very much for posting it. Here is my RawTherapee 5.8 edit:
DSC05578.ARW.pp3 (12.1 KB)
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