Thank you, @james, it works now. I like your brave tone curves. I also remember those dcp profiles, even found them on my disk. (I wasn’t using them “for a while now”, which means “like 3 years” (*).) Have a nice day!
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Thanks, multiple interpretations go into the very-dark-background directions. Probably the boring me didn’t think of this, since it was shot in the middle of a sunny day, in the shadow, though. The guy is also good for rough details and such.
By the way, this has been obviously fixed before I noticed, in the past the forum used to delete the editing metadata from the darktable files, but this one works, used as a “sidecar file”.
@Jacal Thanks for the raw portrait and everybody showing their interesting versions, like @james rawness =)
Gonna try an limit the BS leaving my mouth, not so much 'cause I think you (anybody reading) are unworthy but 'cause the bread is almost leavened and ready to the oven, which is cho kute that when turned on, makes the fuses jump… so yes fiber optic net speed and an electric oven who thinks it’s a fusion reactor. 
steer not shake, please, GODZILLAAA!!!
When I saw the image inmediately came to my mind ummmhh… not a nice portrait, meaning neither good nor bad, personally I like extremes makes decisions easier, I’m lazy. Then I though people (we) should enter nicer images to the playraws… there’s going to be a dude that’s not me looking at this for some time… also need alligators and naked people. Then I went on in a absolutely ignominious free fall of concatenated shitty thoughts about totally random stuff, almost forgot to breath. Time passed and despite I surely have better (in the sense of “urgent”) things to do, or maybe exactly 'cause of that, I completely changed my mind and decided this was a challenge… not one that so much needed reaching somewhere, but of relating to the image.
I must say, it is easier to change our minds… not easier but a lot more fun, 'cause the moment I started looking with new eyes to the image was just lean learning to jump potatoes (!!!).
The first thing I noticed was the “triangle”; his head dead center, the blood coming from the bottom, light on the right and darker on the left. – I wish I had the time to go on about how many films and characters, even stories, books and philosophical theories; associations, thoughts, etc. went on through my head, a storm a true brainstorm =)
In PhF I made those areas’ qualities more pronounced - two worlds collide - darkening the left side and brightening (also a bit of contrast) on the right, with heavy use of different (types of) luma masks and patching the holes with path masks. Some more masking to preserve light on him and to help in parts where areas mix. Red and green should never be seen without another colour in between. I knew I would tame the red, but what could I use to balance those two very strong hues? As a first step I make the smoke more present by increasing luminosity and contrast, as smoke is whitish and also connects center with right side and to me kind of represented his spirit (do you have any tobacco?), then thought of overlaying a layer with a purplish blue, a between green’s and red’s triad mixed tone… left that for the second part (never happened as such), before leaving PhF I still applied a sort of tonemapping with split details. So got here, not too bad
dcc_0013_PhF_split.tif.zip (3.5 KB)
Went through some LUTs to see if I could find something soothing my in between red and green idea… Looking at them I had very clear I didn’t want to bring back light to the dark BG, that green needed to remain green and not blue, that hot t-shirt would benefit lower saturation (or maybe just less light) and shifting to a warmer (blood) tone. It was here when I abandoned the triad-mix idea and decided to give BACK POWER TO THE MAN, that if done well enough, the already nice palette would stand by itself… this is not a great portrait, how long are people going to look at it? and that sort of dough clogging the only eye of the soul 
So, off I went to mix the homemade LUT in the center (SELEN for personal ref), and the one in the left, from a very well establish grading house.
Finally in gimp and gmic to apply the LUTs, just normal blend 50%, simple. Then the usual routines dynamic range popcorn… or was it before (?) which had to turn down quite a bit especially the lighter layer and on top of the mess grain offff course =)
That was a good & fun ride, off to bake the bread, cheers
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Good luck with your bread, @chroma_ghost, I’m glad you took the time to do things with this. I’ll go through it again tomorrow, with a “fresh mind”, but I am a friend of your approaches, both when doing photos and when doing text (where my basic Yasser Arafat English isn’t good enough).
The annoying t-shirt is what you usually get, where one takes the first clean one (never ironed) in the “morning”.
The slightly greenish guy’s grey hair might indicate some mosses living there. (Or is it my monitor? Or both circumstances?)
Anyway, it was really nice to hear from you, thanks, bee fine!
Way to multitask! Photo of your smoking hot bread or it didn’t happen!
Yeah, that was what I noticed too. I also couldn’t help but notice the shape of his head. With the jawline, his head is like an apricot seed or a teardrop (esp. apparent in @Wocket’s crop). Anyway, good take. I would have done the same in the initial steps but I am too lazy to tackle this PlayRaw (also major back pains this past week).
@Jacal There is something going on with his ear (esp. apparent in @shreedhar’s take). It looks like plastic for some reason; maybe the texture or color…
Could be the bad, old equipment, and an incompetent photographer. Or, maybe, many veterans have plastic ears. This guy has seen attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion.
@afre very quick grab as didn’t want to disturb the guy’s sweating; gonna write it down before you ask, je je: red lentils, 4 flowers (2 kinds of weat, rye and carob), walnuts, cummin seeds and just a hair of virgin olive oil and soy souce. No smoke 'cause still very hot here, this bread can go 2 weeks and does no get spoilt, also is good to improvise barricades =)
Sorry @jacal for the detour, but if I don’t answer the good afre he will chase me yhrough my dreams
Tshirt is not annoying, me like red. Mosses live in everybody’s rooftop, some hide it, some use it as a wig, je eje. All good bro
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The uncountable fonts are another Pandora’s box, that I wouldn’t open too much. (smiley here)
Exercising new filmic / color balance tools in Darktable.
Going for the same approach as others to darken the background turned out to be very straightforward in filmic.
dcc_0013.cr2.xmp (3.9 KB)
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Two versions from me.
Very simple RT adjustment
dcc_0013.cr2.pp3 (10.2 KB)
Then the GIMP wavelet decompose to layers and some work on those. Added a strong softlight layer to the result. Reduce and colour reduced in Fotoxx
B&W
Some Colour left in - the softlight layer makes colours very strong.
I dimmed down and masked distracting detail in the GIMP as thought cropping spoils the composition.
John
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Thanks for posting. I find Play Raw a great way to test out presets that I have created. I love to see how the image loads without any further tweaks.
Here is a recent one I created and named Black & White Portrait. I actually use a color film LUT (Stuart Sowerby’s Velvia) in addition to the black and white tool with a red-yellow filter as well as pushing the exposure. This combo seems to give very light skin tones but retains deep blacks elsewhere. I also used the Contrast Level by Details tool to smooth out skin blemishes.
Black & White portrait.jpg.out.pp3 (14.2 KB)
After loading my preset, I changed the film sim to Acros, lowered the exposure, and turned off Contrast Level by details. This accentuated the skin and skin ‘blemishes’
Black & White portrait 2.jpg.out.pp3 (14.2 KB)
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