Rogue! When spellchecker cannot help you… 
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My take. I tried to lead the viewer through the image using the path and the water, plus lightening the valley to draw attention.
_MG_0653.CR2.xmp (29.2 KB)
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Yes, that’s the way you could see it. The play of light on the left slope of the mountains combined with the swiveling path of the stream that draws its course from the shining mountain behind is what makes the scene special. The dramatic clouds enhance that even more:
Here is a softer…
_MG_0653_04.CR2.xmp (25,9 KB)
…and a much more dramatic version:
_MG_0653_05.CR2.xmp (31,3 KB)
Too bad the clouds are overexposed. For this you lose most of the time in editing.
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@Mister_Teatime I have another suggestion. Watch @s7habo’s Editing Moments video series. Don’t watch to just see how he transforms an image, but watch to see how he uses the tools and what he uses them for. There are a lot of videos that are about this is what the tool does and this is how it works. Editing Moments is about how to use those tools to effect a part of an image and how to stack those tools and edits together to achieve a finished edit.
I really like your clouds, so I’m going to peek at the xmp. I’m betting it has something to do with channel mixer (color calibration) and an overlay blending mode 
, plus a few other tweaks
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Filmic really is quite amazing, the new undocumented “add pug” feature works really great.
_MG_0653.CR2.xmp (74.6 KB)
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Yes, adding the fun back to Play Raw! Reminds me of [Play Raw] Sacre Coeur → Backlight challenge - #15 by afre.
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what? I’m pretty sure I did not compress the history stack…
Also: Feel free to edit it, but the point of this was only partially about the result but mostly about how to get there quicker, how to know where to go in the first place, and how that could be accelerated. Which is why I felt that it wasn’t quite a play RAW kind of post.
That is one big reason I made this video in the first place: What kind of magic does everybody use to get the exposure setting right the first time, before even having filmic set up, accurately enough that they never need to touch it again?
I keep being told that that is “how you do it”. I conclude that there must be a way, too, but I’ve no idea how. I think it means that either you have edited so many photos with a very consistent look that you can just eyeball it and be always right, or you are using other tools to change the brightness of the photo with other tools, independent of the exposure module. Which, by the way, is a feature I’d love to see in filmic but keep being told that the exposure module and only the exposure module must be able to change affect middle grey …
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Yes, I agree on that. I did not express that too clearly in the video. The question was not really “what is my subject?” but “which criterion should I use to set exposure, and how would I know if I’ve set it right?”. Which I find hard to answer, particularly if changing exposure means that filmic needs to be readjusted.
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So, this is what I came too rather quickly, 30 seconds tops:
I didn’t touch the exposure, I just left it where it was. In my mind, this is a pretty decent starting point for a filmic based edit.
My base set of modules so far, for getting an image that is ready for some artistic edits is:
white balance, exposure, filmic, local contrast.
I think the problem with this image is that your subject matter is the mountains, and they fall in the shadow area, and you’ve clipped the sky pretty badly.
I first set the mid-tone where I want them, on in lieu of mid-tones, I use exposure to set some tone where I expect them to fall in the brightness range of the image. I think part of the problem in this photo is that the mountains are in shadow and you want them to be brighter, but you’ve clipped your highlights so trying to make the mountains brighter throws the clouds way out of range.
I try to "tame the histogram,’ that usually amounts to just getting the dynamic range of the images to fit the dynamic range of the output (Adobe RGB or sRGB).
I always try to have a subject, yes. And if its going to be a great photo, that subject should be the brightest thing in the frame (not middle gray). Being the brightest thing in the frame will draw the eye straight to it.
If I put a dropper on the brightest part of the mountains, it’s something around L 35-40 in LAB. You’re just approaching mid-tones in that case.
I’m usually happy with my mid-tones after adjusting exposure. So I don’t generally alter the mid-tones of the whole photo. I do often do some local edits with a mask and tone equalizer or another instance of the exposure module, if the photo calls for it.
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That is pretty much what I was trying to do. I don’t usually care much about middle grey, but about the things which I want to be discernible being discernible.
And after looking at the videos you linked to, it would seem that you don’t actually use filmic to tweak the image at all. In most cases, you seem to just leave it on (your) default, and exposure is also just used for a rough pre-adjustment step. The range of other modules is then used to get everything lit up as you like it.
So, do you simply use filmic like a fixed base curve, then?
Is the answer to my question about tweaking filmic settings “don’t tweak them, compensate with other tools”?
Would have loved to see it with a little more eye liner, too 
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Ha, thanks!
My focus was in fact on the knobs and dials in filmic but yes, a hand-drawn curve can do a lot more, of course. I used to use those a lot back in the days when I mostly used the software which Canon ships with its cameras.
Base curve was intended to give you a reasonable starting point from which you could edit. Filmic serves the same purpose, it gives you a starting point.
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Yes, that’s the direction what I was trying to end up with, too. I find the green a little too strong.
The photo itself probably does not lend itself to this kind of edit but very roughly that’s the look I was trying to move towards.
Really need to sit down one of these days and do the rest of it…
I really like the good advice I’m getting here, and it’s pretty useful.
And it’s actually quite informative to see how most of you use filmic – by turning it on but mostly not really interacting with it much. Most people seem to some decent setting that is not changed much, and then shape the data that goes into filmic, or the data that comes out of it, to produce the outcome they want.
My frustration comes mostly from trying to make it a much more active part of my process. But if rather than tweaking filmic you tweak what goes into or comes out of it, you’re evading all of those issues.
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I think most people’s frustration with filmic seems to stem from the belief that it is more than it is. If your image is reasonably well exposed, then you really don’t need to mess with it. When I’m shooting portraits, where I control the lighting, the only filmic setting I touch might be midtone saturation.
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After looking at your version some more (dude, I should be in bed…): You’ve got two extra exposure instances, in the display-referred section, and the first of them is not masked.
I’m guessing you did that to avoid changing the original scene-referred exposure because that would have required you to update all the settings for the whole rest of the pipeline?
Is this not a conceptual problem though?
If I have adjusted the overall exposure to my liking, what is all the exposed parameter glory of filmic there for when the user gets told “don’t iteratively tweak with filmic”, like in this case for tackling the highlights? What is the module there for when a set of LUTs could do the job?
Possibly.
But that’s trivial. If my scene has a dynamic range that fits onto my display, theres no need for the module at all. I could use display-referred base curve then. So that’s not the use case, is it? If I paint in the exposures I want locally, why not do this under a LUT? Or asked differently: what’s the raison d’être for the module if not selective reigning in highlights (and shadows) which are outside of display-space?
That makes a lot of sense to me, especially after reading the other replies here.
The weird thing is that I still believe it could be more. It may well be that my tendency to tweak everything is getting the better of me here, but I also think that this way could actually work. Maybe it wouldn’t work quite as I imagined, but adjusting exposure after the fact and changing the curve around a bit should be possible. Right now, everyone seems to avoid that, and I don’t think they should have to.
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