Flowers, dark background

[jimd]

The intent for this shoot was to light the flowers but show a black background with a bit of reflection on the bottom (well the reflection one didnt work out - sorry @Claes, will try harder next time…)
Printed it out on a cheap and nasty small in one and blacks crushed to black as intended, however on 2nd monitor background was pretty well lit - suspect that ones set too bright.
Anyhoo, heres the raw and just for giggles the xmp (went a little nuts on the exposure masking)

_MG_7291.CR2 (19.2 MB)
_MG_7291.CR2.xmp (706.9 KB)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

[Thomas_Do (Thomas)]

It might have beeb easier with a black background
Here my try.

_MG_7291.CR2.xmp (19.3 KB)
Contains some artefacts though.

[Claes]

@Thomas_Do Superbly done, Thomas!

It is very instructive to compare Thomas’ darktable history
with jimd’s.

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

[Zbyma72age]

Here my try

[saknopper (Sander Knopper)]

Nice image, had some fun playing with it

_MG_7291.CR2.xmp (10.5 KB)

[dqpcoxeas]

My version…

_MG_7291_01.CR2.xmp (21.1 KB)

[Claes]

@dqpcoxeas @Zbyma72age
Just a note that the original quest
stated “flowers against a black background”
(just to complicate things )

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

[jimd]

hi
good effort
a black background would certainly be easier but then you wouldnt learn anything about flash, inverse square law, sensitivity of sensors to darks or the value of using a black background to make life easier…

[jimd]

Hi
yeah there’s a lot to play with there - controlling highlights on flower and jug was well done

[jimd]

Ahh but can you hide the dog hairs and wall?

[Claes]

Also: don’t overcook that luvvely Malva!

[sls141 (St.Stephen)]

_MG_7291.CR2.xmp (11.5 KB)

_MG_7291_02.CR2.xmp (12.0 KB)

[kofa (István Kovács)]

I tried to keep the colour details. I failed to produce a good mask to darken the background, so I omitted that from the processing.
_MG_7291.CR2.xmp (10.1 KB)

[Thomas_Do (Thomas)]

@jimd

but then you wouldnt learn anything about flash, inverse square law, sensitivity of sensors to darks …

I once tried something similar, also having a withered flower in the motif. I learned how difficult the lighting can be and that a black kitchen tray in the background can help .

[dqpcoxeas]

@Claes I thought I was in a place where you can play and have fun with photos…
Probably, my limitations prevented me from reaching results that you like…or not.
I thank all the developers of our software for all their time, wisdom and above all for sharing it.
Have fun!

[phobrain (Bill Ross)]

The Velvia is strong in this one :-), and I like yours best so far because of the darkness and nicely-balanced saturation across the major colors. I haven’t tried raw editing yet.

[Claes]

@dqpcoxeas
Of course! You are so right.
To clarify my comment: jimd and I are having
an off-forum-discussion regarding the difficulty
of obtaining “the perfect background”.

Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden

[david]

Thanks for the challenge and it was difficult!
My try in GIMP, using the G’MIC extract foreground. I ended up with many artifacts, so I think I need more practice!

[ggbutcher (Glenn Butcher)]

I have a similar image from a ways back, your image gave me pause to go look at what I did to get a such a rendition. Comparing the two, I came to a somewhat counter-intuitive observation…

In rawproc, here’s your image in its “linear” state, before any discretionary processing:

Really, what you’d expect if you were exposing to preserve highlights. There’s probably room to expose more, as the data that fills the histogram is really just that bit of glint in the vase. More on that in a minute…

Here’s my image at the same linear state:

No glinty regions to skew the histogram, but this exposure is definitely “higher”, putting more of the image in the mid-range. I think this is a key consideration to pulling off what needs to happen next…

Before one starts masking regions and yanking them around, IMHO it’s good to see if the tone curve will do the trick. Here’s what I did for mine:

All I did was to pull the bottom part of the curve to the bottom, to crush the background. The increase in slope in the upper part put contrast into the flower, getting it out of the high-key region for no extra effort. I think it’s the “over-exposure” that makes this all work, putting the majority of the data in the workable regions of the histogram.

To treat your image similarly, I had to first add a loggamma curve to lift the shadows out of the well. Then I applied a control-point curve to shape the tones:

The subject didn’t have appreciable light separation from the background, so I had to steepen the curve to pull it up. What you see is as high as I could go before the contrast became too “nasty”, for lack of a better description.

I think my flower had about a stop or so more light than the background, owing to the west-facing patio door that illuminated it more than the rest of the plant back behind the wall. But, I think having the whole image more to the high end of the tone range helped in manipulating the data to enhance that separation.

I know you asked for darktable feedback, but this particular subject and treatment struck a nerve, in a good way…

[Thomas_Do (Thomas)]

@ggbutcher

Really, what you’d expect if you were exposing to preserve highlights. There’s probably room to expose more,

I think Glenn is right, higher exposure helps to separate foreground and (darker) background. This image was taken outside in bright daylight with relativ high exposure (linear “raw”).

The flower separates well from the background, even without using an especially dark background. So it was easy to get the background nearly completely dark without using any masks.