@seume I like how dynamic your photos are, esp. the ribbon like shapes in DSC00183. Thanks for sharing!
@chris: Thanks for your kind comment. Yes, I have seen the power of the profiled denoise module discussed in this forum before. I must confess, to my shame, that I don’t care much for denoising when playing with the PlayRaws 
. For my own work, I try to adapt the noise reduction to the final size/resolution of the image. The profiled denoise module is definitely great.
Nice pictures @seume ! Thanks for sharing. Here are my tries on two of them. Done in RT5.3.
Rest later!
DSC00213.jpg.out.pp3 (11.9 KB)
DSC00183.jpg.out.pp3 (12.4 KB)
A bit of GIMP for the second one.
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Hi all! thank you for your feedback!
Especially:
@chroma_ghost : thanks for the hint with “triadic palette” just knew triadic in context of classical painting. Next time I will look out for a magenta flower to add 
@Thomas_Do : shaping 213 as a panorama is a great idea! gives vertically nice 3rds! and makes the picture more balanced
@chris : you added two instances of denoise - would you also share the settings for the hidden one?
@shreedhar : I like your version of 183.
Thanks all for your comments - it is a pleasure to provide “raw material” to such a constructive and creative community!
Immanuel.
Since I like the ribbon like shapes in DSC00183, here is my take of that photo. I kept it very simple this time.
-
dcraw
Linear 16-bit sRGB export, highlight blend mode.I am already satisfied with the output! But what is the fun in that?
gmic
a) sharpen using tone mapping
b) curves to increase brightness, contrast
c) apply gamma, crop (not a special ratio
)
d) prep for your viewing pleasure
Edit: it doesn’t look good unless you click to zoom. As I said below:
The thing is that the mountains have lots of fine detail so they would look much better when viewed on a larger (and higher quality) screen or mode. I suppose that I could make it suitable for 690px or smaller widths but that would not do justice for such a magnificent view.
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The technique is something I learned from @hanatos in this thread. I did not want to post the image itself because I am not happy with the results (yet). The settings are: profile: ILCE-6000 iso 500; mode: wavelets; strength: 0.028; blend: uniformly; blend mode: lightness.
Btw, does somebody know what the blotch in the lower right of this picture is and how to remove it with dt (besides cropping it away)?
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That Is why I would wish for the ability to scroll through all the images of a thread zoomed. I often find that pictures that look good small not necesarilly look good big and vice versa.
BTW, nice version, what does highlight blend mode in dcraw do??
A. I recall the discussion on adding a gallery mode to discuss. The thing is that the mountains have lots of fine detail so they would look much better when viewed on a larger (and higher quality) screen or mode. I suppose that I could make it suitable for 690px or smaller widths but that would not do justice for such a magnificent view.
B. I believe that this mode is present in many raw processors. My understanding is that it is a compromise between clip and unclip modes. In dcraw, clip means that the multipliers go above 1 and values that exceed 255 or 65535 are clipped. Unclip means that the multipliers are normalized such that the greatest would be set to 1. That way, theoretically, there wouldn’t be any clipping from demosaicing.
The consequence of unclip is the possibility of color shift in the whites. Blend mode prevents that from happening. But I have noticed that the algorithm isn’t perfect and can actually produce clipping that is worse in appearance than clip itself. dcraw has other blend modes as well (RT has even more but many of the principles are the same) but I typically stick with clip, unclip and blend because of their simplicity. The rest I would rely on G’MIC or GIMP, or in your case RT, to do the heavy lifting.
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@shreedhar : beautiful! Your colours look more natural than mine (when in darktable I first hit “Velvia” - maybe for the larches/lake a little bit overdone…).
@afre: you observed the “details” in 183 (which seems to be kind of a favorite): when you do zoom in a lot you can even see the small cross at the main peak (in Austria on nearly every mountain peak there is a wooden/stelle cross with a height of typically 3-4 meter).
@chris: with “blotch” in the lower right - do you mean the white spot? This is a house - I like to include - if possible -
somewhere a building in my pictures to make the dimensions visible - kind of “big nature” and “small human”.
Yes! I noticed that too . However, my minimalism may have selected demosaicing, sharpening and resizing methods that didn’t perserve the cross all that well. If you compare the dcraw and gmic outputs, the cross is definitely not as defined in the latter 
.
I enjoy that attention to detail and picking out points of interest in a photo. It is kind of my approach to PlayRaws as well. I would try to make it [1] unique, [2] have an experimental element, [3] while honoring the original photo. It is not always easy to balance those 3 elements since I am a beginner at post-processing; I started doing this just this year believe it or not. I couldn’t resist the PlayRaw!
I mean the foggy structure in the lower right part of the following image, which has different character than the rest of the fog. I first thought that it is a finger print at my display, but fingerprints usually do not zoom with the picture on the display, and I don’t think it is the house you are talking about.
@chris Yes, that is why I liked your other post. I didn’t want to make another remark about it but it is there. The bottom right of the patch might be a house but the patch itself looks out of place.
With Filmulator: Highlight recovery 3, exposure comp +1, drama 63, white clipping point 0.6, and saturation +25.
Very nice photos @seume! Noisiness is not necessarily a bad thing. It has given your photos a film look and I like it a lot. Their BW version would be definitely great, too
In the second photo (DSC00183.ARW) I made some dodging&burning in the foreground to give a bit more dramatic look.
darktable: DSC00217.ARW.xmp (7.7 KB)
darktable: DSC00183.ARW.xmp (11.1 KB)
darktable: DSC00213.ARW.xmp (6.7 KB)
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@msd: thanks! I inspected your XMP for 217 and am really impressed - loads of sophisticated color settings and three profiled denoise with overall an effect totally eliminating noise, preserving all details and producing a nice grain. After having seen this I will never upload one of my XMPs (revealing how bloody a beginner to postprocessing I am… )
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Perhaps a beginner in post processing, but you’ve captured some amazing scenes, and that is most of the battle!