As to what I did, there are many ways to describe color; the most common being the RGB content, as you know. In the GIMP it is possible to decompose an image into 3 layers R,G and B in order to either just view them, or indeed to edit any of them and then re-compose. For example: only the red layer might be a bit soft - so one could sharpen it and re-compose.
Another decomposition option is into CIE L*(lightness), a* and b*. Some folks like to adjust the lightness layer only - so as not to affect the color (a*,b*) values
So it was that I decomposed your image into Hue, Saturation and Lightness layers and only edited the Saturation layer. When decomposed, the saturation is represented by grayscale … 0/255 is zero saturation and 255/255 is 100%, i.e. “max”. Easily max’d by selecting that layer and filling it with white. Then I recomposed which set every pixel to 100% saturation.
That’s all I did, no other adjustments were necessary IMO.
In this one, I reduced the over-the-top saturation of a sunset by turning down the brightness of the decomposed Saturation layer:
Interesting abstract photo to play with, and to try push the colors further than usual. Thanks @DanielLikesDT!
Using darktable for exposure compensation, wb, cropping, dehazing, denoising. DSCF7439.raf.xmp (10.8 KB)
Then the final heavy lifting done by a custom film sim using Fuji Pro 400h and some unrealistic values for saturation given by inhibition couplers.
That was fun!
I started with some of the color calibration stuff I’ve been playing with and then tried to use the color balance eq to bring it back to yellow and blue…that gave me some great looking green underlighting. Then I just played with exposure a bit, massive rotation, tone eq to highlight edges, and contrast eq and a graduated density filter to finish the look. Probably a few other minor tweaks as well, but those were the big ones.
Edited in dt 5.0 DSCF7439.raf.xmp (14.5 KB)
Thank you for the play.
Edit with ART, GIMP and G’MIC:
Insprired by @AdamFromCanada and @gigaturbo , I swapped the colors. I did the swap with G’MIC filters: Tune HSV colors, Custumize CLUT, and Transfer Colors [PCA]:
I don’t know if it is only me but looking at one of the images that I came up with ( https://d2x313g9lpht1q.cloudfront.net/original/3X/b/5/b5571bda110e50b7d51fedddda167ff8d16662b3.jpeg ) and many of the others here I see colors that I really really like and might look interesting in a photo or I might have color that I want to drive that way and I would never be able to just dial that in but now I can sample some of these really interesting colors and record them so that it might be easier to go back and make some use of these even to see what adjustments woudl push colors in certain directions so thanks everyone for the palette of blues, yellows oranges etc and thanks @DanielLikesDT for sharing your art…
Wow. I did not expect such a response. I thought some might say that the plane of focus is not perfect or similar problems. Anyway, thank you so much! I teaches me that you know so much more about image processing than I do - i wasnt even aware what one could do.
I cannot say which edit I like the best - there are so many good ones. But one that I thought was really awesome is this: Max my colors and make me happy in these dark dull times - #24 by arctic. Great!
Well as this seemed to actually bring happiness to this community I decided to give you guys a 2nd image from this series to play with - this one is much cleaner as you will see.
