IMG_1925.CR2.pp3 (13.2 KB)
ND filters do magic with wavy water, so I added some HDR Tone Mapping, Retinex, CIECAM02 color, and Wavelet Final Contrast.
The call to grayscale is strong…
It’s interesting, once you desaturate the image, the things you can get away with using a tone curve are disconcerting, yet intriguing:
Nice image to play with thanks @Brian_Innes
I’ve gone for colourful, but trying to keep a toe in reality.
Because of this and the low gamut of the image, I opted to use CIECAM02 from the off.
I like the murkiness of the image so chose not to apply any sharpening.
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This was an interesting photo to work on. It had a few unique properties that informed my processing approach (example). I tried cropping and doing distortion / perspective correction but was not satisfied with the results. I might revisit this when I do the alt.
It ended up being a subtle smooth B&W that I really enjoy. 
My workflow is not colour managed or anything like that but I hope you can sort of see where I was going with it.
1 PhotoFlow → linear Rec.2020 (no clipping).
2 gmic → interpolate unwanted pixels → smooth (resize, close) → brighten → apply Kodak Tri-X 400 - → prep for your viewing pleasure: sharpen (tone), resize, sharpen (edge).
@Thomas, now that you’ve mentioned that, I’ve looked back at my images, and noticed the one I uploaded was the -2ev exposure from a bracketed set of exposures.
@afre, i’d be interested in seeing the steps you took to show those circular artefacts. I’ve done some googling, these artefacts may be what is known as “Newton’s Rings”. Perhaps caused by the fact that I had a UV filter, and the 10 stop nd filter on the lens? The reason I put the UV filter on, was to save the lens filter thread from screwing on and off the circular nd filter.
Must save up some cash for a square filter system 
Lots of lovely edits of my raw file, so I’ll use these as inspiration for a better edit of my own image (this time using the properly exposed image, rather than the -2ev bracket image)
I discovered the circular artifacts when pushing the image in various ways. They have an interference pattern that is dissimilar to Newton’s rings. (As above, I am guessing that they are a result of birefringence but I might not know what I am talking about.) And it isn’t just that: as you can see from my sample image, there are also horizontal rectangles and lines.
Anyway, a simple way to reveal the artifacts is doing what I would call a hessian norm. It is intended to be a higher order version of a gradient_norm, which is built in with G’MIC. Edit: I made a filter for the G’MIC plugin. Give it a try in GIMP. 
@afre, I wonder if the horizontal rectangles and lines were from light possibly leaking through the viewfinder of the camera? If practical, could you list step by step what you did to my image to make these artefacts appear, so I can test further images to see if it is possibly a fault with the camera? Thanks!
@Brian_Innes I may have discovered the reason for the circular deformations. In one of the PhotoFlow outputs, I turned on all corrections under lens corrections. I haven’t checked the other combinations. When I don’t have that setting on, I only see the horizontal lines and sort of make out where the rectangles would be. Need further testing to see if the circles still exist behind the noise. @Carmelo_DrRaw
I have prepared the Hessian filter for you. Give it a try in GIMP. Hint: update the filters list first.
As your exposure was 4s, this might be relevant, from an official 5D4 cam manual, but I think it applies to various Canon DSLRs -
“Using the Eyepiece Cover
When you take a picture without looking through the viewfinder, such as
when you use the self-timer, bulb exposure, or a remote switch, stray
light entering the viewfinder may cause the picture to look dark
(underexposed). To prevent this, use the eyepiece cover (p.37)
attached to the camera strap.
Note that attaching the eyepiece cover is not necessary in Live View
shooting or movie shooting.”
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lol, I’ve just noticed the eyepiece cover which came attached to the camera strap! Might try using that the next time I do long exposure photography
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Yes, there’s the hi-tech digital camera, then a weird rubber thing the stuff over the viewfinder, quite odd really…
As I am wearing a baseball cap most of the time I just put that over the camera when doing long exposures. Works like a charm and I don’t have to bring the camera strap with me.
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Wonderful image. Love the colours and texture in the breakwater and water.
Thought I would give Fotoxx some exercise for Linux users.
Opened the raw with Fotoxx and selected open RT and set a neutral profile and file type to 16bit tif. Closed RT. Then white balance, resize and sharpen in Fotoxx
2 undoes to get back to the original image size. Then zonal flatten and contrast edit followed by curve work to brighten bring the blacks back in and add a bit more contrast. The contrast edit is a form of tone mapping. Then resize and sharpen
2 undoes to get back to full sized image. Then a simple ramp followed by a resize and sharpen.
John
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