You can also go the ‘more easy way’ using Sequator (if you do not use Windows it will run without problems under wine). I say ‘more easy’ as Sequator will do most of the FOSS way automagically, but will not give you very much control over the process. It will also do the blending between the sky and foreground automatically.
I suggest to try at least this time both ways and decide for yourself what is better for you
Yes, using the defaults of the filmic module lead to that effect. But by changing the “black relative exposure” and the “dynamic range scaling” to extrem values (-16EV & +50% respectivley) I got better results for the low region. In fact similar results as by using the basecurve with two exposure fusions.
I installed siril 0.9.12 and gave it a quick glance. That’s defenitely worth a deeper look. But I guess I would need some more cold winter nights to dig into it. Thanks !
Many thanks very much for all the edits!
Especially the milky way “contrast equalizer” triple and the use of the “color zone module” in order to tame the red tent I found very helpful
I used toneequalizer to make the sky brighter, color balance to give a small “blue” color grading on the shadows, 2 instances of local contrast in local laplacian mode to give local contrast to the sky, and a crop & rotate.