Hello all,
I took a picture of this urban art in an industrial area. To be honest, I had no clear idea about the look that I wanted to achieve, so my editing was rather experimental… what would be your take?
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Wow, I like your edit much more than mine. I was not aware that there is so much potential in this picture!
Thankyou. I think part of it is how easy it is to isolate the sky with masks in this picture. Then I can avoid halos around the darker areas, and ‘enhance’ the sky with a little CB-RGB 4 ways tab 
A case of extreme recovery: Gamma, Hilights/Shadows, Inverse Vignette, Brightness, all pushed almost to the max… And a square crop.
I really don’t do colour and this is the first image I did after downloading Safelight earlier today. Lacks a bit of punch maybe, but focus was the face of who ever that is, making this a sort of industrial portrait.
Upload of Safelight json data file not allowed, sorry. Edit: Spektrafilm extension for Safelight (Ilford Ortho Plus), Tone curve and slight colour grading besides exposure/shadows/highlights.
I like this picture a lot! Both me and my wife are curious where this is taken and who is the man…
I made two versions. I immediately ‘saw’ a b&w partly version. I initially wanted to have both a blue sky plus the blue portrait. So started a ‘normal’ development meant to be my base for b&w. Here are my results.
P8140120.ORF.xmp (16.1 KB)
and
I prefer the partially b&w version.
I have checked your .xmp and need to admit that when looking at the two CB RGB steps, it would have been too much for me and I would have reverted the changes. But then you used the AgX and subsequently the contrast equalizer to bring it to a final result which I like.
→ I need to learn more about the CB RGB module and how changes in this module interact with the AgX afterwards.
Sorry, I compressed the history stack on this one. I got in the habit because I feel like they get cluttered.
I think I started with exposure, then colour calibration, then contrast equaliser, then the first CB-RGB, then activated AgX as the sky was brighter than the display. Then the second CB-RGB and finished by increasing AgX white point.
The picture was taken from a bus stop at the train station of Völklingen (Saar) in Germany. The mural depicts Kaya Urhan, a former worker of the decommissioned iron works. The iron works - Völklinger Hütte - is nowadays an UNESCO world heritage and in that function, it hosts the Urban Art Biennale. During the 2022 Urban Art Biennale, Hendrik Beikirch created this 20 x 20m mural. The depicted Kaya Urhan was a turkish Gastarbeiter (= immigrant as part of a large recruitment program for labour between 1955 and 1973) and he filmed the last days of the iron works with his private camera, which is a valuable piece of information for the museum itself.
To be honest, I am originally from that region (but moved away 20 years ago) and none of my family or friends knew who the person on the mural is. I had to google first after I took the picture 
Thanks for explaining and looking up the history!
That’s nice to learn about this history. I think it’s an interesting industrial / natural region to visit. And I would like to combine this with visit the north-east corner of France as well. I did not get further than Trier and then further south in France des Vosges. Come from the Netherlands so not that far at all.
During my stay at home, I visited Trier and Metz. I have not yet started to edit the raws, but there might be future Play Raw threads from these cities.
(In case your plans to visit get concrete, you can contact me for tips if you want; Urban Art Biennale 2026 is running till November… which I missed… but there should be another in 2028)
My DT 5.6 edit inspired by @gwbarn rendition. Shadow recovery included tone equalizer, color balance rgb, and a two instances of shadow and highlights module placed before AgX.
P8140120.ORF.xmp (19.9 KB)
Nice interesting urban shot… something I need to pratice .
Here’s my RT edit…
I’m really clueless on this shot. So please be gracious.
P8140120.ORF.xmp (20,0 KB)
These ugly transitions in the sky are not visible in darktable nor in Gwenview
Metz is a nice town… we yet have to visit Nancy.
Noticed that even Marie Curie is taking part in the Biennale
Thanks for the play-raw, info and nice contact!
