This is first of my ideas for “speed processing challenge”.
Here’s the gist: I was under time constraint to process this image and I had trouble getting them to what I wanted them to look like. It took me AGES and i still couldn’t get the results I wanted.
Now for challenge: start timer and start processing to get something you like. Least time spent with best quality output wins.
Thanks for sharing! Here is my attempt: slightly above 1 minute for a basic version that I’m already happy with. Then, 3 more minutes for some (light) colour grading.
My standard fully-automatic raw processing gives an equalized (ie with a flat histogram) sRGB version. This is often ugly, but works fine with this image. Wall time: 2 minutes, with zero time from me.
I like the soft, gentle, placid atmosphere. I want to keep that.
I don’t like the highlighted waterfall at the left side. The simplest cure is to crop 10% from the left, creating a better balance. Wall time: 10 seconds from computer and me.
Sharpness could be added, and saturation could be boosted. In my opinion, both would detract from the image.
EDIT: I should add that the image could also be de-hazed. But I like the haze. It adds depth and mood.
Took 2.5 hours because I and my computer are slow, and I was busy cooking, eating and browsing discuss. Too crunchy where the light meets the leaves – oh well. PF+G’MIC. Like @snibgo’s, mostly automated, except exceedingly slow because each time I change a parameter it takes forever to run.
Lot’s of corner cutting, here. Rather than actually balancing the exposure I just compressed the hell out of it. Had some trouble with noise in the shadows, just clipped it off. And then there is the colors, not quite sure but I struggled with getting anything realistic. Almost felt a bit like mixed artificial lighting. Still if I’d do this for a living I’d probably be starving by now.
Did this on my Surface 3, which handicapped my time. Also, found that rawproc wasn’t using the black subtract correctly, so I had to accommodate that. About 8min:
Rather non-conventional filmic parameters to lift the shadows instead of crisping them, and an aggressive saturation.
Now, need to find a better way to handle black subtraction. This is one of the reasons I do PlayRaw; I’m a Nikon shoppe, so seeing other cameras’ raws is beneficial…
My attempt. Didn’t check the exact time, but should be around 10 mins. I actually did one version in about 3 mins, then went and played with some other raw files. Then came back and edited this some more. I’ve tried adding some haze around the borders.
