Yes, and this is my edit:
First checking the image
- Camera with decent sensor
- Aperture, focal length and exposure ok
- ISO 100 ok, not much noise to be expected
- Histogram looks good, on the right side it could show a bit overexposement
- Check RAW-indicator: Small white parts of the signs and the rails overexposed, but they are so tiny they shouldn’t make problems
White balance
set to 5100K, doesn’t look like auto balance. I check some neutral areas with color checker:
- 101,96,93 in grey backside of the sign right of ‘501’
- 153,156,161 in grey area in bottom-right corner
- 144,139,134 on grey ground in the open gate at the top corner
Spot while balance in these areas give me values from 4800 to 5300. Since I want to emphasize the rust I choose 5200 as a final result
Highlight reconstruction
Reconstruct color looks best to me in the white rail
Exposure
I increase to make the image brighter (‘Expose to the right’) and ignore the highlight clipping. Will deal with that later on the shadows/highlights module
Crop and rotate
The areas of interest for me are the wheels and signs therefore I cut off the top and left area. Using the ‘rules of thirds’ guide I crop the image that the axes are on the lower line of the guide.
Shadows and highlights
Since only tiny areas are overexposed I mostly leave the defaults and reduce the whitepoint a bit.
The white area on the rail was too distracting so I removed it with the retouch module.
Filmic
Just activated with the default settings, gives more contrast
White balance again
The image has a light red tint, I change the white balance to 5150
Local contrast
gives a bit more contrast to the image, increased to 140%
Color zones
The red signs take too much attention, I decrease lightness and saturation of the red color
Vibrance
Gives the wheels a bit more color
Denoise
I zoom in to 100% and look for an area where I can see noise and some details. The wheels are a good part. I want to reduce noise without loosing too much of the texture there.
Not much noise visible, no chroma noise.
Default strength of 1 in the profiled denoise is a bit strong, I loose too much details in the wheels.
Strength of 0,5 gives good results in the three brighter wheels in the middle, but leaves some noise in the shadows of the machine part on the right side.
Strength of 0.7 is a good compromise.
Chromatic aberrations
The machine part on the right side has some. First I try the lens correction module which has got a profile for that lens. After applying lens correction the aberrations are gone
Sharpening
A simple sharpening would give too much attention to the sand. I want to sharpen more coarse areas which can be done with the equalizer module. Moreover I only want to sharpen the wheels in mid, so I use a drawn mask for that.
After that I add the ‘sharpen’ module using the mask of the equalizer module.
Vignetting
I want to emphasize the wheels and use a vignette for that. After that I increase the exposure a bit.
Retouch
I find a white sticker on the big wheel disturbing and remove it using the retouch module.
Vignetting again
To give the upper part and the lower border less attention I add another vignette using a new instance of the exposure module (‘Vignette’) with a drawn mask.
To compensate I increase the exposure in the first exposure model.
Demosaic and export
Before export I change demosaicing method to AMaZE and max all options.
Darktable XMP
DSC_0617_.NEF.xmp (15.2 KB)