@Brian_Innes Windows > single wiondow mode
then organize to your heart’s desire. I personalize each gimp differently in this one dark theme and PS shortcuts =)
@McCap you’ve spolied us with those tutorials 
Full disclosure. I started on photoflow, linear version, as it seemed to me that the portray of the little dock’s advanced decay would need lumii masks, hey hoo lumii masks in D housse!!! I abandoned ship as soon as I saw the mph fireflies; little yellow dots that appear unannounced and ruin everything… aka miyazaki’s pixels from hell.
Important things come to those relaxed, said the tsunami, so I went to the gimp’s house. McGimp-2.9-cce version, compiled by Partha, the 2.8.x versions run faster but this has no ceeling. Loaded nufraw and the main excitement there was to (previous testing) bump exposure with input curve, turn clip highlights to soft caress and turn down contrast, think that was it.
Once in Gimp the first thing I did was to apply Dfine from (just bought from Goo by DXO) Nik collection… we’re old friends and I kinda know what to expect from its denoiser algae; that said there was somewhere a bug we already talked about using a new layer and apply effects “on current one”.
Then created luma masks (community extensions). G’mic showtime now.
Dynamic range increase (use this a lot) further screened by spliting in darker and lighter layers and opacities,
split details (wavelets) with 10th power bold guy’s punk, turn visibility on/off and/or adjust opacities and applying L mask to each if needed. Sky was too jaunty so new from visible and multiplyed on the lighter parts, still had to brush on mask’s bottom part.
Lazy that I am duplicated that layer set blend mode to screen, inverted mask and turned down opacity, yes those lovely wet pusies, I mean rocks needed some, made a nice whale shape out of a curve layer also. Irish violins and another glass of dunnos… yiihaaaa!!!
Back to super gmic and in custom LUT, I applied my own (for personal ref v4-1EV.cube), tweaked a bit parameters.
Argggghhh it looks too strong and instead of going back and turn down gmic’s strengh I go forward (the abyss) and mitigate its effects by adding a luma mask duplicating listening the accordion forgetting the voices or the b…
finally, completelly dizzy I flattern and apply a Tmax 400 grain with tweaked settings. How does the baby looks like? She’s beauuuutiful =) but I can tell I’m not the father (rosemary’s baby obscure ref).
Deep fried thoughts
My 2 main concerns were to preserve sky (do not burn) while increasing overall exposure and gain some definition (tonemapping) while preserving the tones and (softish) texture of watter-sky. I also developed it like this 'cause for the web… as many impurities are masked out in the downscaling. Below 1:1 version. Took me 56 minutes with this soft setup, in say PS would have taken 10/15 min max (manily has to do with speed and my knowledge of the platform and tools used) BUT I must say I enjoy the slow, convoluted trip to Kazakhst in a different manner, like trying new approaches, or listening to music, and organize the thousand loose threads and seed of ideas populating upper part of body, etc. between remderings =)
100%
PS
For those with an avid eye, the bluring at the end (of gif) was part of one LMI (last minute idea) that did not work.
so I have to listen)
- If anybody is annoyed by it, have no prob in removing it
