Ferns in the backyard - a study in contrast

PD1 · March 30, 2024, 6:35am

To the eye, the ferns, with all the contrasting exposures/colours look beautiful, with every branch, whether in the bright or dark area nice and clear. But processing did not give the same effect. Here is my attempt. Can’t say it is satisfying What would you do to make it much more bright and natural?

P1010747 .RW2.xmp (15.1 KB)
P1010747 .RW2 (11.1 MB)

This file is licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.

rvietor · March 30, 2024, 7:29am

Something like this, perhaps:

The contrast in this scene is not a real problem for your eyes: they scan the scene, and adapt exposition to the spot looked at (grossly simplified). Your camera takes the whole image with one exposition.

So in post, we have to adapt the brightness “after the fact”: push white reference in filmic, use tone equaliser and filmic to lower the overall contrast, and then use DorS to increase the local contrast (the “local contrast” module would also work, but I don’t like the expansion of the global tonal range I see with that module).

You also have to deal with the small clipped area on the wall: highlight reconstruction and a bit of highlight desaturation in filmic

123sg · March 30, 2024, 7:38am

This would be my approach to this subject - to me, this is more representative of the lushness of the scene.

DT 4.7
P1010747 .RW2.xmp (8.0 KB)

Popanz · March 30, 2024, 9:09am

My thought: If you want to show ferns, concentrate on them…

P1010747 .RW2.xmp (16.5 KB)

age · March 30, 2024, 10:58am

P1010747 .RW2.arp (12.1 KB)

david · March 30, 2024, 11:21am

I agree with the previous comments that, if the ferns are the principal subject, the rest of the image can be much darker. However, if it is required to reduce the overall contrast, this is easily achieved in GIMP using contrast masks. This can increase the noise in the darkest parts, but is usually fairly easy to “disguise”.

Tim · March 30, 2024, 1:30pm

dt 4.6.2

P1010747 .RW2.xmp (8.5 KB)

PD1 · March 30, 2024, 5:11pm

In the rework, Filmic did a better job than Sigmoid of handling the contrast.

Terry · March 31, 2024, 2:19am

I made my first priority adjusting the exposure for the highlights in the sun. I then recovered shadow detail using both the shadow and highlights module which adds color to the shadows and then used the color balance RGB module to further brighten the shadows. I used sigmoid module and set the skew slider to the right to add contrast to the highlights and preserve the shadow details.

P1010747 .RW2.xmp (13.4 KB)