Hi! I’m struggling a lot with this picture, maybe the community can help me. This pic is from a drone and fireworks show. You can see that the pegasus formed by drones is way darker than the fireworks itself. I tried my best with darktable for balancing the color and bright differences.
On the “Pegasus_edited_raw.jpg” file, you see how the picture looks like after editing it in darktable. Then, on the “Pegasus_generated.jpg” file, you see the results after exporting it. You can see there is a huge difference, and I don’t know what am I doing wrong. Is it an edition problem? Or maybe the export settings?
I also attached the original raw, the .xmp file with my edition and a screenshot of my export settings. Thanks a lot for the help!
Thanks! After so many years of using Darktable I even hadn’t noticed this feature. Now I can see how exactly the generated jpg will look like, so I can do the adjustments more properly. I will play around with it
Since you asked for sharing, here is my version. I masked the Pegasus and did a second instance of exposure. I had to adjust the black level to get the black sky to match the unmasked section. I like how I have extracted the color in the Pegasus. Great fireworks shot by the way. Pegasus_original_raw.ARW.xmp (15.0 KB)
Your edit brings me back to a long standing issue with chromium based browsers when hardware acceleration is switched on. Your edit looks like that on my screen, when I look on it with a chromium based browser:
Wow…I didn’t see that when I edited on my laptop screen while travelling. But the problem could be adjusted with appropriate black level adjustment. Thanks Uli for pointing this out.
I have just reviewed the image in DT and yes I can see the masked area edges. It is just my crappy eyes and small laptop screen that hid the problem. On my large 43 inch screen at home I probably would not have made this mistake. Human error to blame here.
It’s not only your crappy eyes. It’s as well crappy colour handling of chromium based browsers when hardware acceleration is switched on. When hardware acceleration is switched off (or if you use Firefox) it looks less brutal:
Here is another attempt using color zones instead of exposure. I increase both brightness and chroma. I used a drawn mask combined with a parameter mask to avoid the darkest pixels. On my laptop I don’t see any masking edges. Pegasus_original_raw.ARW.xmp (30.5 KB)
I had a couple of very busy weeks with work and family and didn’t have time for my pictures. But it’s nice to see that many responses. I will check all your edits and try my own (which I will share). But you already helped me a lot!
