Having a whale of a time

Hi everyone …

I went to the Gold Coast here in sunny Queensland, Australia 9 days ago and was lucky enough to see several whales (humpbacks I think) playing in the water only a km or so off shore. Annoyingly, I did not have my best glass with me, and so the clarity and resolution is less than I would have liked.

This file is licensed [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA)


2022-09-20_10-44-40.59_DSC9639_01.NEF.xmp (8.8 KB)
darktable 4.1.0+424~gf8bd65453-dirty

I used the blunt instrument of “haze removal” as well as fiddling with filmic settings to try to gain as much definition as possible. Maybe some of the experts here can come up with a better way to go.
Even the matter of how should this be cropped is something I am dithering on - keeping the horizon in the crop, or not?
2022-09-20_10-44-40.59_DSC9639.NEF (22.4 MB)

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I was about to try, but it seems you forgot the .NEF :wink:

Sorry Hans

I thought I had uploaded the NEF at the time I created the post.
I have since tried 3 times, and each time I get the error:

“Sorry there was an error uploading that file. Please try again”

Could it be that the current hosting software has a problem?

JUst tried uploading in a reply rather than editing the post: same problem.

@patdavid are you aware of an issue? The NEF is 22.4MB in size.

I have had this happen before when my internet connect was slow. Try again and should eventually get through. The size is not an issue.

Terry, I have now tried 8 times today, both using the upload button in the message editor and dragging and dropping. Each time the phenomenon is the same: a steady increase in percentage loaded up to 100%, then a long time pending at 100% then the same failure message. My upload speed is currently 15.6Mbps - not lightning fast, but as much as I would normally have on my connection. I do not believe this to be a sporadic glitch.

@martin.scharnke I have just had a similar experience uploading a screenshot to show my editing of a deer. Maybe it is a problem at the servers end. It took about five attempts to succeed. Four times I got to 100% and then the error message you mentioned appeared. Hmmm.

Finally, on the 11th attempt today, I was able to upload the NEF!

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I’ll look into it in a bit and see.

Hi
dont think you’d gain much keeping the horizon - too much water between - unless you go portrait?
A deep dive into difuse or sharpen might help definition but wouldnt expect miracles…
Have a look at how @s7habo deals with colour contrasts
at least worth trying to improve if you cant go back

Hi there, took a while but finally got round to it


2022-09-20_10-44-40.59_DSC9639_playraw_whale.NEF.xmp (21.8 KB)

Straightened horizon, cropped to portrait, brush mask on whale watercolour preset with subtract blend mode*, duplicate module with fast sharpen and normal blend on raster mask, duplicate again with local contrast normal blend on raster mask, new instance col cal brightness tab reduced blue increased red & green to keep overall luminosity.
Nice image, thanks for letting me play with it.

*for reference see @s7habo Ep 51 42 mins in - Darktable Episode 51: diffuse and sharpen module in practice - YouTube

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Hey, jimd, thanks a bunch for posting, and especially for the reference to the video and timestamp!