A few days ago I visited Schwäbisch Gmünd, which is famous for the biggest hall church of southern Germany (whose both towers collapsed 530 years ago).
But this Play is from inside an older church, the Curch of St. John, which was completed around 1250. The colourful wall paintings in historicist style are quite young. Here I show the Choir with its painted Apse and wooden ceiling. And somewhere the heraldic creature of Schwäbisch Gmünd, the Unicorn, is hidden.
That window was very difficult to tame. Preserve hue was necessary, and neither AgX nor Filmic wanted to bring the red into sRGB gamut.
Denoise profiled turned the image to mush at default settings, I had to turn strength waaay down.
I kind of like how it looks after taking the ‘glow’ away from the window area with Shadows and Highlights module, but I’m also not sure.
I cut the foreground, corrected a bit exposure with a little gamma, inverse vignette to add more light to the top of the image, just a tad of vibrancy on green and blue, and just a bit of sharpening at the end.
The folks in charge of this historical site should invest in some kind of more discreet lighting system… These projectors are ruining the “atmosphere” of the photo.
Wanted to see if I could get details out of the shadowed background. Also, it’s been nearly a decade since I used Polaroid’s Dust Scratch removal and the filter still works (in Irfanview). lol
The fake HDR look was done all using many different G’MIC presets.
Sorry. I’m uploading a new version because I realized, after the @Uli, that it needed to better emphasize the atmosphere I wanted to create. I’ve only changed the percentages of two masks.
I would not be… it is called play_raw so any play goes.
Besides that I do like both your versions, the 2nd a bit more…
And I guess many of us - me for sure - are inspired by Uli’s (@Popanz) exceptional ‘color and local contrast management’.
I had to deal with white bubble wine this evening…