The ultimate black and white subject.

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Hi Folks,

Been a while since I posted one of my own. This is a handheld shot of a magpie I took a few weeks ago and I’ve been re-working it.

I hope you don’t mind a double-post for comparison. Looking back, my previous effort was over-saturated and blew out the highlights.

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Starting from scratch and following the Scene-referred flow on darktable.info I’ve got a better, more natural look.

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This I think is a result trusting the process and worrying less about making it look ‘good’ at each step. Always keen to hear tips and to see what you can do with it.

DSC_1734.NEF (18.1 MB)
DSC_1734_01.NEF.xmp (16.3 KB)

These files are licensed Creative Commons, By-Attribution, Share-Alike.

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Oh, the nictitating membrane down.

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My version…

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Great shot of a beautiful subject. darktable 5.2.1 with FilmicRGB

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DSC_1734.NEF.xmp (7.9 KB)

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DT5.3 AgX
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Just trying to stick with the motif. :slight_smile:

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Y’all are really something! I didn’t even notice the blue feathers.

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Thanks all! Sterling work as always :slight_smile:

@lylejk - Love the stark treatment there. It suddenly looks much more sinister.

@Tim thank you! I was trying to lift the blacks myself and finding that the back of his head was shifting to blue, which was unexpected, but then in trying to solve that I started to lose the sheen on the wing feathers. (Also, I’m still pathologically averse to masking :smiley: ) It didn’t occur to me to make them a feature (nice work @Popanz )

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