Fairly dramatic clouds at sunset behind tower

I often think it would be a great feature if one could select between full and partial straightening, in order to let the results still look natural.

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I agree. Full straightening usually looks overcorrected, it doesn’t fool the human eye. I believe the eye needs a bit of the original perspective retained for the image to still make intuitive sense. So the “correct amount of perspective correction” for any given image is always a compromise somewhere in between perfect full correction and the original perspective.

Edit: Just re-reading my comment, I’d like to clarify that I don’t mean to say that I put every image through perspective correction. The last sentence may come across as saying that I always straighten structures or such. To the contrary: on this image, like on many others, I’m torn on whether to even activate lens distortion and vignetting correction. Some images look far more powerful with the natural (i.e. actual, real) optical lens distortion in place, and I find that a heavy optical vignette can look fantastic in case the full uncropped image is used. I just don’t want to fall into automatic habits, especially with the basic steps of processing, because that would take away a lot of creative options.

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I played with manual straightening with little success on the image. @123sg did a reasonable job.

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You can also start with an automatic perspective correction and then ease back on just the vertical shift value to taste.

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dt 4.4


DSC_2515.NEF.xmp (10,9 KB)

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Hop!


DSC_2515.NEF.xmp (34.0 KB Ansel)

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Attempt at simple perspective correction.

Original edit:

Tilted the image 20 degrees around the x-axis and cropped in:

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Really interesting cloud pattern!
Thanks for sharing this view!

First I applied automatic perspective correction, then reduced horizontal and vertical values to 1/4 of the auto values. For more drama two local correction areas with haze removal were used. WB is RGB grey


DSC_2515_RT-2.jpg.out.pp3 (18.7 KB)

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Well done edit! I have to say though, with all of the perspective-corrected edits here (including my own), I always end up missing the cropped-out portions of the sky. Imho the tall building functions almost as the negative space of this particular image, whereas the sky is the primary object of interest.

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Don’t know if it is a glitch in the perspective tool. When Auto-fill is turned off I’d expect all of the original image being rendered, with black areas where necessary.

Edit: Usig vertical shift in perspective tool, some of the cropped area can be retained :+1:

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There is a big halo around the building …you might be able to tweak it away… Can say why as you don’t share your processing and I couldn’t pull it from your jpg export either…

This is a rebuild of my previous effort … the comments on my first try were correct in that there was a nasty halo around the building.
So again …


I am disappointed to see most of the results lack in foreground detail. Why would the street level remain totally/or close to black? dt really can exploit the far larger dynamic range that this file contains.

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Much better… but I am still left wondering did you use the tone eq… I still see a halo of sorts…detail is blurred around the edge of the building in the sky as it comes close to the building… tweaking the smoothing radius or one of the other tone eq sliders would likely make that go away… I’ll check again but it doesn’t seem like you save your xmp inside your jpgs… so I can’t see what the source of that is…

When you mentioned the halo in David’s edit, I think I’ve discovered a similar halo around the building in my edit above as well:


In the case of my edit, I’d say it’s an artifact from the local contrast module in RT.

The above edit was made in GIMP using several variants made in RT (output as PNG and used as layers in GIMP). I’m posting the most dominant layer below, including the PP3 file. I believe this layer most prominently includes the halo seen in my edit above (where personally, I actually like it), so maybe it enables you to isolate the issue:


DSC_2515.Ebene1.png.out.pp3 (15.0 KB)

Yes, I should do that … ?? Where to I find the switch??


Edited in darktable 4.41. Probably overcomplicated it.

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You made some bold choices, but it all comes together quite nicely imho. It’s really only missing the Batman sign in the sky now… Bruce… :smile:

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I guess it is because the foreground is not really important in this image.

Another try of mine with even less foreground :innocent: (and a little bit more halo)


DSC_2515_RT-6.jpg.out.pp3 (18.7 KB)

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I think I do like a lot of the dark Gotham city edits… very stunning… this is more like twilight but lighting to support that would need more
work…


DSC_2515_01.NEF.xmp (15.5 KB)

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I find it fascinating how the discussion now includes such different aspects as color grading as well as perspective correction.

Here’s one more variant of the same RT treatment I posted further above, just with lens distortion correction disabled.

I wanted to try this since I don’t regard the shape of the building as the most relevant feature of this shot. The tower is a rather simple rectangular shape, whereas disabling distortion correction allows for more sky to be included (i.e. all of the sky that was recorded on the sensor), and also the area at the bottom is far less distorted this way. So why not buy that at the cost of slightly curved lines?

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