Not sure if a little self-promotion is allowed here - please delete if not. I’ve been using Darktable for a while and noticed that while there are numerous great general Darktable channels on Youtube they tend to focus more on the tools in general. As primarily a landscape photographer, I thought a more landscape-centric channel might be something others might like to see, so, I started it last week:
I’ve binge watched all of the videos already. Like a lot and already feel like I’ve learnt even some basic things that I should’ve known already. Randomly adding a suggestion here for something on how to deal with RAWs when the light is very flat or dull. You’ve obviously chosen shots with nice lighting because why wouldn’t you but sometimes here in Scotland, the skies are grey and the files look kind of flat, particularly with those kind of barren hillside landscapes. Can these be salvaged in editing or should we just wait for a better day and/or be more creative with our shots?
There are likely several things you could do… I have a preset that uses the old dehaze settings which were stronger than the current ones and then blend it in lightness so you don’t get the color/saturation shift and I often mask out the extreme highlights as sometimes dehaze pushes them… and of course you can then tweak the opacity… I’m also pretty sure you could land on a setting in D or S if you mess around… maybe share one of those images and ask or maybe the YT host would offer to do a live edit of his vision of your scene??
Thanks for the suggestions, Todd. Yes, I was wondering about doing a play RAW here. I have two similar shots, one with no obvious directional light and another a little time later with some thin sunlight coming through the clouds.
Thanks for the binge watch @TonyBarrett. That’s a good question. Flat light is difficult to deal with - any processing tends to veer dangerously towards “you’ve obviously processed this to make something out of nothing” territory.
The natural choice for dull scenes with no colour is to use black and white, but classic landscape scenes can often have too much detail for that and you just end up with a morasse. So if I do shoot on a dull day I will head for the coast where the topography is simpler and you can make use of somewhat more graphic compositions, reflections and textures in the sand, and dramatic skies. My other option on overcast days is breaking out the macro option and maybe a flash to take advantage of the even lighting.
Having said that I will have a look through the library for some overcast scenes and see what I can do. I’m also north of the wall so I’ve got plenty!
I think one thing I see and I am not sure best how to describe it but I often feel we have a perceptual 3D vision of the scene as we remember it and we try to recreate this on a 2D medium so we end up over processing it to get that sense of depth. I see this all the time with peoples edits including mine wrt clouds and fog and haze… in an effort to recreate that atmospheric depth or whatever you would call it we often mess with tone in a way that attempts to recreate it but is way over done… I think creative use of lighting is the way to go if you can manage it… I haven’t mastered that at all … it would be nice to see your take on the some scenes like that…
Very true - restoring that sense of depth is best done with composition in the field and it’s really hard to hard effectively post-hoc. You can do it in a localised way with some dodging and burning but it’s much easier said than done effectively.
. That’s a good question. Flat light is difficult to deal with - any processing tends to veer dangerously towards “you’ve obviously processed this to make something out of nothing” territory.
