Shades of brown

I edited your post, hope you don’t mind

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On the contrary! Thanks a lot! :+1:

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There’s still a lot to improve but here’s my digital B&W rendition:


shades.of.brown_01.rw2.xmp (8.3 KB) dt 3.0.1

First thing I ran into while editing this one: You need a lot of wiggle room in the shadows (mainly) and highlights once you get to the desaturation/curve stage! This one still has crushed blacks, although I do think they are acceptable.

Thanks (especially @ggbutcher) I think I now have a better understanding of how to achieve adequate, and possibly later on good, B&W edits.

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My take.

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Interesting how the greenish tint emphasizes the decay that is happening in the leaves, I don’t immediately noticed that in the other (coloured) edits.

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I normally use RT, this time I post my version processed in DT.


test.dc-lx100m2.015.rw2.xmp (12,8 KB)

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@ggbutcher: Just build and installed rawproc and my initial reaction after one edit (attempt is more appropriate); That is a nice piece of software!

I do run into stuff, but that is possibly just me not knowing yet how to configure/use it correctly. For example demosaic doesn’t seem to work. It is set to half (i can change it in the config file to ahd) but the controls are greyed out. No problems during the build (either librtprocess or rawproc). I’ll figure it out…

Anyway used rawproc to give my own image another quick B&W attempt:

Here’s a screenshot of rawproc during my first use:

Thanks for making this software publicly available!

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That’s interesting - no demosaic in the toolchain. You must be zero-ing out the R and G channels in the grayscale, ?? Looks nice…

That’s curious; I open the same image and all the librtprocess Bayer demosaics are available. Half is a ‘toy’ demosaic I wrote, before @heckflosse and Co. generously provided librtprocess; i still use it for proof images…

If you would, right-click on the filename entry at the top of the tree, then select “Image Information”; select all the text in that dialog box and paste it in a PM or a new thread (so as not to pollute PlayRaw) - I’ll use that information to walk through the dialog box logic.

Thanks for trying rawproc; I make light of my single-user customer base (me), but others using it gives me valuable feedback to make it more robust.

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Ah, just realized the likely problem. Go to Edit->Properties, look for the input.raw.libraw.rawdata property, and set it to ‘crop’. If the property isn’t there, add it with that value. Without this, rawproc will use the dcraw processing and start you with a demosaiced RGB image.

From the start, I wanted rawproc to be a learning tool about raw processing, where one would start with the ‘really-raw’ data and do all the manipulations ‘by-hand’. Took a while to get there, and I used libraw’s dcraw processing until I built a sufficiently rich toolset to subsume it. This property reflects that legacy; I’d get rid of it if I didn’t have a couple of year’s worth of images that rely on the prior behavior.

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That helped! :+1:

test.dc-lx100m2.015.rw2.xmp (5.1 KB) test.dc-lx100m2.015_01.rw2.xmp (5.5 KB)

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I really do like that oil paint/silvery look. Both in the colour and B&W edits.

Clearly people are in favour of stronger interpretations. Understandable because the lens is soft, esp. at the corners. Maybe experiment to see what is your camera’s sharpest (hardware) setting and how else you could make it more interesting (e.g., lighting, tripod…).

BTW, where and when did you find the leaves? Did you arrange them?

A perfect image to test my Trigonometric Mapping G’MIC filter.

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I always carry my ‘little-lumix’ with me so the fast majority of the photos I take are from things my eye catches while being outside, most of the time I’m not consciously looking for stuff.

Every so often I do revisit a scene with my D750 and a tripod (if the scene and/or light conditions permit that).

I definitely do not like to (re-)arrange scenes. I might go as far as to remove a cigarette butt, bit of plastic or the likes but even then I’m rather careful not to disturb the main subject. Don’t know, just doesn’t feel right to me.

This particular shot is one of a short series I took in early February this year while on my way to do some shopping. Lots of parks/greens around where I live and I noticed the green/brown contrast, strayed from the path and ended up taking a few shots.

TL;DR: Feb. 2020, in the park and of the path, not arranged.

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@Jade_NL One of the things that makes this photo work is the texture. So I got to thinking about how some people use a texture to add to a background of a photo. Therefore i threw this together kinda quick like, to see how it might work. I used Gimp with my BW edit as the top layer over one of my photos. I played with the brightness/contrast & opacity and masked out the foreground. I had the notion of a spring-fall, yin-yang kind of theme.

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To me the background could now be seen as a nice tablecloth

@sovereign Interesting. That lens is a Sigma AF 24mm f/2.8 Super Wide II which isn’t great for a “busy” background. So, I turned my lawn into a tablecloth!

I didn’t mean it in a negative way ! :hugs:

@sovereign Not taken that way at all! I just found that amusing during this boring time we’re all having. You got me to thinking of adding a little “whirl&pinch” to that layer perhaps.