My version using darktable. And my interpretation of blue hour…
DSCF7604.RAF.xmp (18.1 KB)
That is a beautiful result, but I think you’ve lost the “blue hour” aspect of it. Maybe that is your intent.
The balances in this image seem kind of fragile, to me (meaning, very easy to knock way out of whack), so I tried to keep my edit simple and straightforward.
dt 4.4.2
DSCF7604.RAF.xmp (8.3 KB)
Yes, most information seems to be in the shadows, but still has very bright areas that are not over-exposed.
You are right, the blue aspect is lost. That was initially not my intent, but I just played around trying to make it look “good” and somewhat natural.
I brightened the moose using a local spot. And tried to resist producing daylight colours …
RT 5.9-457
DSCF7604_RT-2.jpg.out.pp3 (21.1 KB)
I think the problem is that the moose is partially surrounded by dark background. Brightening the whole image helps with that somewhat, but makes the skies very bright. Darkening the skies and the reflection in the water reduces the contrast between the dark moose and the surroundings – catch 22. Darkening only the sky creates and unrealistic-looking image (the reflection of the sky being brighter than the sky itself).
Many have done a much better job than I did, so probably it’s just me whining and looking for excuses.
Could not resist to create a second edit of this picture, hope you don’t mind - it’s usually a sign, that I really like it. The scene is so calm and the blues really add to the mood. I tried to balance things out, but often you get carried away, while fine tuning and pixel peeping.
Really appreciate you sharing this picture
DSCF7604_02.RAF.xmp (19.7 KB) (probably this xmp, I had several attempts)
ART 1.18 (hacked)
DSCF7604-61.jpg.out.arp (11.8 KB)
For the notion of “How blue is blue hour?” I used the camera white balance (~8500K) and set the output color temperature to that. ART doesn’t have that feature built in, but RawTherapee does in the Color Appearance module.
One way to get around the blue hour issue - remove all color
DSCF7604-1.jpg.out.pp3 (20.1 KB)
Nice pic. I eliminated all this hefty aberrations and tried to work on the details:
DSCF7604.RAF.xmp (23.5 KB)
or more blue hour fitting:
DSCF7604.RAF.xmp (24.8 KB)