Bali, vacation, rice fields…nice, I thought, with all my new knowledge and processing power this should be a walk in the park. So I developed the picture, equalized contrast, made it nice and colorful and…Yikes!
This rice is mighty green
Went slower on the color and degreened the green and, phew, better. But then there was this purple in the palm leaves…D%&/!!
Corrected that and finally had a picture which looked…boring!
Why?
Ahh, equalized the contrast too much. The eye is lead nowhere, everything looks the same, the rice, the sky, the palm trees…ok, another try…
Develop the sky and the earth separately, imported into Gimp. Did a nice blending and, nope! Went overboard, looked nice from a distance but zoomed in huge mistakes were visible in the transition between the palm trees and the sky.
So again This time developed everything nicely, then went to Gimp did some little things with masks to lead the eye and finally a version which I think is ok.
So all in all this was a real challenge and a huge learning experience for me. And still I think it could be better. So I am reaaaally curious want you fine people will come up with.
Here is my attempt.
After playing with it in RT, I used GIMP with Sharpen Texture and Tone Enhancer 2 filters from GMIC applied to select parts via layer masks.
Then made a B&W copy and overlayed it on the sky of the colour image to give depth to the clouds in the sky.
Finally applied the frame filter from GMIC to give the photo a classic look.
I cropped (prob a bit too heavy), layer mask on sky boosting contrast, film emulation GMIC Kodachrome 64, tone enhance, warming filter and slight vignette
Tone enhancer 2 filter applied with layer mask only to the grass. In that
filter, I only adjusted the gamma. I suppose there are other ways to do it
too.
Really nice variations so far. This is truly intreresting as I am personally stuck with an image of the place and can’t deviate much from it. But you people have a totally different approach…
@chris: What did you do to the sky, and how did you get that hazy, “spilled light” feeling?
If you are interested in details, you should be able to load the jpeg as xmp in darktable. I applied the bloom iop to get rid of details in the sky and did some teal/orange toning with the colour correction, plus a little contrast reduction/shifting with the zone system and darkening of lower left/upper right. The letter box was tricky, it was done with the frame module, to skip additional editing in GIMP.
Aloha everyone. That is a beautiful shot. I just love the rice? in the foreground, and the smoke, and the old roofs. I got a little artistic with it too Tried to give a little bit of a sunny feel and some nice rich colors for a relaxed atmosphere. Took me 3 passes in Darktable.
I’d be glad to attach my xmp files if anyone’s interested. But I’m new to this group and don’t have permission yet.
This time developed everything nicely, then went to Gimp did some little things with masks to lead the eye and finally a version which I think is ok.
