How to get a pleasing result in a quick way? (Comparison to Lightroom)

RT 5.9; local adjustment where the fence line and ground fog are to try and capture that zone. Re-unsharpening of the tree. Sky drama, and a strong grad filter at horizon.
DSC_9310-5-.jpg.out.pp3 (23.3 KB)

DSC_9310-5-

1 Like

When just looking at the results, they often don’t exactly match my LR export. Not that I say that it’s perfect and it certainly isn’t everyones taste. But some of them here come really close which was what I requested.

I’m not through all of it but I went along and downloaded the XMPs to see what you all did there and it’s so interesting that results can be quite similar with one XMP where theres multiple instances of several modules and masking or on the other hand just using some basic modules. So yeah, I’m actually very happy with that as I already learned so much.

The support and creativity is overwhelming and I really appreciate all your takes even if the result is totally different or you used another software like RawTherapee/ART/vkdt.

So thanks again to all of you at this point!

2 Likes

Thank you, Todd! I actually love this one with the more subtle colors. Would you mind sharing the XMP?

You can usually get the history from the exported JPG, it gets embedded by default. Just load the JPG as a sidecar.

2 Likes

I like it. Probably my favourite, actually. The purple might not be super realistic, but it really sets the mood.

1 Like

Yeah, I used one stroke with the repair brush to remove the contrail (but thats irrelevant for the request, i don’t care about that) and darkened the sky very slightly with a mask. Few slider movements was an exaggeration, just to make a point of how quick it was. I basically went from top to bottom in LR. See the other adjustments in the attached screenshots, please. I have no intention to hide something.

I made an observation while comparing the two software tools and don’t see this as pitting them against each other. Especially since I made perfectly clear that I use and love DT and do not prefer LRs output in general.

And what you say is exactly what I heard and saw from everybody else: Use the tone equalizer! Not that I didn’t use it but I certainly learned some new things with it.



tonecurve
hsl
calibration

It somehow didn’t reply to your post.

So, as there is already lots of good advice, how to reach similarity to LR, here is my personal edit.

Sky not to bright, no over sharpening/contrast, no rat-piss-yellow, no salmon, some details in the house and the fore ground, not too over saturated (i think :thinking:)… probably still over-cooked (as it is too easy with this kind of picture).

Obviously a great picture as the interest in this thread shows :+1:

edit: two things i spotted while editing: tone equalizer with guided filter preserves the details in the shadow best, the details in the branches may profit from the LMMSE demosaicing.

3 Likes

As Kofa said just load the jpg as a sidecar… you will have to change the dialogue to show all files… I usually append it I will next time I am on my editing PC…

1 Like

Agreed. I just like the way it looked so I stopped I think I used 3 modules in addition to base settings and no masks. I was just playing a bit with two elements ie the foreground a bit where I actually took out some contrast whereas many edits were adding a lot. And all the yellow for me was too much too saturated and some wild hues in many of the edits… so I was trying to knock it down or tame it and landed where I did after 2 or 3 min of fiddling… I appreciate many of the yellow monsters were attempts to mimic the LR version as requested by the poster and not personal choices…

1 Like

@kofa But you didn’t offend me, and I’m sorry if my words conveyed to you that I may have been. It was my omission from my first post that it was a quick rather than a complete edit, that prompted your very valid, and neutral comment. I appreciated your insight about the TE masks.

1 Like

Color wise, yes! Only the grass in the foreground is a bit mushy and lacks contrast.

I actually uploaded the wrong version: this is with denoise disabled. much better.


DSC_9310.NEF.xmp (24,0 KB)

2 Likes

Absolutely! The other looks more painting like :smile:

Yeah … I was toying around and forgot to disable it before the final export :smile:

Thanks for that tip! I loaded the jpeg as a sidecar and I am amazed about how few steps it has. Sure it doesn’t look like mine but it’s great on it’s own. Nice job!

Sometimes, I also get tired of the ‘I saw a Lightroom video; which modules do the same in darktable’ questions, but this question was not like it. Also, sometimes people ask ‘how do I get this effect’, ‘how do I achieve that look’, based on some finished photos, without having access to a raw file. In such cases, there is even less to go on, but those are valid questions, too.

I don’t think the question was asked provocatively, and Viktor never said he preferred Lightroom’s output over anything that could be achieved using darktable. There was, as far as I can see, no intention to harm or belittle anything or anyone. Comparing free tools with each other, or with commercial alternatives, is good, as long as the reason for such comparisons is objective evaluation or learning. Often, when free software was found to be abysmal, the developers took up the challenge, and improved it (just like how commercial products are improved). That is how progress is made. At other times, new users simply had to be show how to use the tools. The fact that so many have achieved similar results using a varying set of tools shows we can all learn from each other.

Another way to look at it is like learning a language: ‘I already know how to say Good evening in English, now I want to learn it in French’. There is a big difference between asking ‘Can you tell me how to say Good evening in French?’ on a forum for French learners, and between entering the same forum with a post like ‘French just sucks, even a simple sentence like Good evening sounds weird’.

7 Likes

Thanks. Well I think it speaks to what you can do with a raw…its just one possible version of many. With the jpg you just don’t have that range and a lot is baked into it. And if you become fixated with reproducing somehow the jpg but just a better version again you might miss out the opportunity to discover a really nice version strait from your own vision and creative juices…

2 Likes

I’m not quite sure if I fully understand… but I don’t see what’s stopping anyone from masking, healing etc with darktable or anything else? No criticism intended :slightly_smiling_face:

I wanted to do a more personalized version too… it looks a bit flat compared with my last one, but in isolation looks very natural I think.


DSC_9310_01.NEF.xmp (20.1 KB)

5 Likes