I’ve only recently discovered pixls.us and I’m finding it really interesting and helpful. Equally recently, I discovered the hidden marvels of Raw shooting and processing. What a revelation! I’m still a novice but very keen to learn. So I’ve decided to post a photo I took a few months ago in the hills of West Sussex, England, on a misty evening, towards sunset.
What you see here is my latest attempt at producing something interesting in Darktable but, of course, I’m not entirely happy with it and I’m very curious to see what other people can do with it. I hope you enjoy playing with it!
In RawTherapee 5.2, processed with retinex highlight method. For the trail, retinex set to low method, and masked back in with Gimp. DSC_0539.NEF.pp3 (12.8 KB)
@Mario_Saraceni thanks mr 4 the lovely misty path and everybody sharing their own =)
This must be my most frustrating playraw ever, I managed a nice version on photoflow and even split in 2 could not export. Then also managed a pretty good one in rawtherapee and the program crashed on me, when saving… very frustrating.
@afre@Mario_Saraceni thanks for the feedback! What I like about this shot is the multiple golden section sense of the layers and the s-curve: very photogenic data.
Honestly this image is just great as it is, thanks for sharing.
As it is great out of camera (I would totally leave it as it is), I tried to come up with something creative…
…so I desaturated the greens to put them more into the mist and highlighted (by saturation and detail) the path and its lighter green side on the right.
Destressing again. Not entirely happy with the result. Let me know what you like and don’t like so that I can improve next time.
dcraw
a) Output linear 16-bit TIF.
gmic
a) Lightness: increase regional contrast + reduce noise.
b) Chroma: stretch contrast.
c) Redistribute pixel values, favoring shadows.
d) Sharpen by tone mapping.
e) Reduce noise (maybe before step d next time?).
GIMP
a) Spot heal blotches at center-left and bottom-left.
Thought I’d try something different. I used Fotoxx to open the raw and stayed in it rather than switching to RT. Produced 2 images. On one I clarified the mist as much as I could to bring out detail with Fotoxx tools. The other I just adjusted for a sort of nice look not worrying about mist detail. Then the gimp with images as layers. Blended in the detail shot in normal mode with the opacity slider. Looked a bit flat so new from visible duplicate and softlight at about 50% opacity. Maybe too much. I noticed that the lower part had a darker area that didn’t blend in well so back to Fotoxx and a none linear gradient. Final resize and slight sharpen.
Only thing is that if I look at it in an hour or so I might decide I need to change it and go through the lot again. Often happens with me but I’ll leave it in this case.
Oh forgot to mention I messed with the high end of the red channel to avoid clipping when contrast was pushed up via a simple curve. Suppose I could also have played with the sky colour.
Edit I feel I should have cropped some of the foreground out. The darkness of that doesn’t fit in well with a web site that uses a white foreground but I decided to “forget” that. It can only be viewed in a lightbox type display really.
John
@Mario_Saraceni very nice picture, thank you for sharing and letting us play with it!!!
Here are two versions of mine, both edited with photoflow, one in colors and one grayscale.
In both cases I have basically used several instances of contrast, saturation, brightness and curves adjustments, masked with horizontal gradients to protect the areas I didn’t want to modify:
In both cases, I have tried to emphasize the curvy shape of the road in the foreground.
The .PFI file for the grayscale version is here: DSC_0539.pfi (68.1 KB)
The color version can be obtained by simply disabling the second layer group…
I’m curious to see what you all think of those two edits!
@paperdigits Nice crop. It works and I actually don’t mind the path being there.
@Carmelo_DrRaw Wow, nicely done. The results remind me of technicolor and B&W film. Earlier in the thread, I mentioned that I preferred a brighter foreground and I think you have done it well. Makes me a hypocrite because I didn’t do that with my own attempt . I will probably give it another go.
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The darkness of that doesn’t fit in well with a web site that uses a white foreground but I decided to “forget” that. It can only be viewed in a lightbox type display really.
. I will probably give it another go.
