[Play Raw] St Monans Kirk, Fife.

My take, trying to create a dramatic look.
Didn’t spend time to clone out the cables

IMG_9927.CR2.xmp (19.1 KB)

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Great capture!


Here’s my edit in darktable 4.0, with a lot of stuff going on (I might’ve gone a little overboard):


IMG_9927.CR2.xmp (684.5 KB)

Let’s see, there’s:

  • Wire removal using multiple copies of the retouch module.
    • First, I focused on removing the wires by outlining the shape and using a mask to restrict it to the detailed parts (which finds the contrast of the wire to the sky), so it’s even more targeted. One module per wire because: why not?
    • As I have to pick up parts of the sky for the whole wire, it looks a little odd in a few places after this, so I went back with another copy to retouch the sky afterward.
    • Then, I made yet another instance of the module to remove the wire from the bricks, by finding corners of bricks that are similar enough and patch it in.
  • Typical modules:
    • denoise (profiled), to remove noise
    • chromatic aberrations (to remove the color fringing from the lens, visible between the building and skies)
  • A second instance of the color calibration module to darken the image based on the blue channel (and offset the darkness by bumping up blue and green to compensate)… This darkens the sky a good bit.
  • Tone equalizer, two instances: first to adjust the scene overall, second to darken the bushes (more or less).
  • Instances of “diffuse or sharpen” to: compensate for an AA filter, deblur the lens, and add a little bit of proper local contrast
  • Instances of color balance rgb to bump up color, selectively adjust the red color of the church, increase the contrast of the cemetery and gravestones (using a feathered brush to select it), adjust the contrast of the sky, and one to add a bit of magenta/purple (to balance some color contrast against the green, as an “artistic choice”).
  • Lastly, I use the local contrast module (which operates in LAB after everything else, so it’s not the best module to usually use) with a mask to only target the highlights of the sky, to add a bit more contrast drama.

For the color tinting of the sky (which is admittedly probably a bit overdone here), you can see the difference in the scope, where the purple is directly across from the green of the grass:

  • before:
    image
  • after:
    image

Apologies for those wanting to play around with this edit; it will really require a beefy computer with everything going on (especially with the “diffuse or sharpen” modules).


And here’s a super-vanilla version, where I basically removed everything but the wire removal. It’s probably a good starting point for anyone wanting to play with the image in darktable if they don’t want to mess with healing clone to remove the wires themselves. :wink:


IMG_9927_01.CR2.xmp (61.5 KB)

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