My take. Wish The crop wasn’t so great after the rotate, but rotate I did.
1. RawTherapee → @heckflosse’s sharpening workflow.
2. GIMP → rotate and crop. (I suppose I could have done it in RT.)
3. gmic → slightly smooth (guided) → brighten → add contrast for drama → sharpen → resize → zoom 100% to enjoy!
Hope it displays correctly because in my image viewer I see: (I will make this my alt take.)
The rotate made the crop a challenge. Amped saturation and sharpen:
Edit: forgot to include the processing specifics -
rawproc-0.8Dev Coffee_Drop_0040.CR2:autobright=0;colorspace=prophoto;gamma=prophoto;wavelet_denoise=1000; blackwhitepoint:rgb,0,179 curve:rgb,0.0,0.0,42.0,27.0,98.0,128.0,158.0,175.9,255.0,255.0 rotate:3.8 crop:1317,304,4216,4172 saturation:1.30 resize:800,0,lanczos3 denoise:29,1,3 sharpen:5
Of note are 1) two applications of denoise, dcraw wavelet=1000 and nlmeans after resize, didn’t feel comfortable going further with the dcraw algorithm, 2) there’s still a bit of the image edge in the bottom-right corner, an artifact of the compromise to get my take on composition after rotating the image to lay the top of the glass horizontal.
My alt2. I altered the aspect ratio slightly, making the glass taller.
1. RawTherapee → AMaZE+VNG4 → pixel filters → Rec2020 linear → rotate → auto-matched curve → 32f.
2. gmic → brighten → remove noise (wavelet) → sharpen → resize → vignette → zoom 100% to enjoy!
As I may have indicated, I don’t feel comfortable using dcraw’s wavelet denoising at all. Interesting how you denoised again, and after the resize. Still figuring out how best to resize, sharpen and smooth, but I think I am getting better at it, or at least have an eye for it now.
Oops, “two applications of denoise” was meant to end with a comma. One wavelet=1000, one nlmeans=29.
The NLMeans algorithm works really well, but my implementation is not optimized (one day I’ll get to it), and I’ve found the dcraw wavelet denoise to work well.
@afre, just looked and couldn’t find, what’s your concern with the dcraw algorithm?
Just saying that when I tried using it the results weren’t satisfactory. In my workflow for alt2, I simply split the image into several scales and removed a scale that contained almost all of the noise. Now, that doesn’t usually apply but what I am trying to say is that I prefer the good old fashioned way. 
As an aside, nlmeans is too much for my laptop to handle, so I haven’t been using it.
This image was too much for my Surface 3, had to move to the desktop computer with 8GB RAM. On the Surface, had all the processing stacked up, went to save, and the program aborted, no messages. May have to rethink my full-frame ambitions… 
As a side note, don’t be afraid to pump the ISO, better to have a high ISO, well exposed image than amplify the low ISO noise afterwards.
I don’t drink coffee but I cannot stop playing with the image! My alt3: Groggy in the morn, craving that caffeine fix.
1. RawTherapee → same as alt2.
2. gmic → extract noise from L* (D50) → remove hot pixels → smooth → brighten → screen blend with alt2.
Hi afre,
I like your alt2 recipe very much. Thank you!
But [why is there always a but?}]: why on earth did you convert into Rec2020 linear?
The only thing it did (?) was to shift the histogram to the left. Or is there something that I have misunderstood?
Have fun!
Claes in Lund, Sweden
Initially, I did it to reduce the amount of out-of-gamut values. Now, I do it to confound you. 
In truth, it has a different aesthetic, like medium format, and has become my signature.
Hmmm… if the histogram shifts left when the image is converted with a linear Rec2020 profile, that’d indicate to me the image already has a non-linear profile assigned. For my camera’s images, I start by assigning a linear calibrated profile, then I’ll convert to a gamma 1.8 Rec2020 profile for work, and the histogram shifts right. If I use the linear Rec2020 profile instead, the histogram doesn’t change. Thanks @elle, for all the neat profiles; they are the foundation of my “profile zoo”.
Instant americano!
And people have been pouring even more weird liquids into more weird liquids in the name of art.
I love coffee! Tried to capture the lazy feeling before my caffeination rituals.
Coffee_Drop_0040.CR2.xmp (12.9 KB)
A low key approach:
RawTherapee (Coffee_Drop_0040.jpg.pp3 (10.2 KB)) followed by some slight dodging in Gimp.
