I’m new to photography, and I’m struggling processing raw files to get the most out of them, and in this case with a high contrast one. I’ve always done it trying to avoid underexposed and burnt zones, but I guess I’m starting to learn that sometimes you have to leave underexposed zones.
I would love to see what you can get out of this one, and preferably on RawTherapee, because that’s the only image processing software I have used (I want to give ART a try) and I want to see your pp3 files to learn from you.
P.S.: Also I have to learn how to remove that flare that looks like a distant moon in GIMP.
Wysyłanie: CRW_0009-HDR_Night-LAB.jpg
Short ball.
Demosaic SNS-HDR Lite GUI, further GIMP, Heal selection, Layout for LAB
L channel denoising channel A and B a little color change
Color Propagation highlight recovery mode gave me the best looking transition around the sun - but then the sun almost disappears in the sky. To make it look more natural, I added an LC curve adjustment to reduce the chroma (saturation) of the lightest colours in the image.
My test with ART is relatively easy.
Impossible for me to have an acceptable result with darktable relative to the scene (fimical colour calibration).
Too much saturation.
Colour drift towards green on the ground.
Thank you all for your views, I see I have to learn a lot still. I thought really high contrast would be the only option, but I was proven wrong. I’ll try out your pp3 files and see how you did it, although if you used curves, that’s out of my league.
Don’t be afraid of curves, they are soooo powerful and not as complicated as they seem. Watch a tutorial about tone curves and about additive color theory and you’re good to go.
In short:
The left border is black the right border is white. Make 2 points on the diagonal: 1/4 in and 3/4 in. Pull the left one down, the right one up. You’re increasing contrast: shadows down, highlights up.
Now do the opposite. Left one up, right one down. You’re decreasing the contrast: shadows up, highlights down.
On RGB curves it’s basically the same but for every color channel individually so you can change the colors in every direction.
In my version I was pulling down the blue channel which introduces yellow (red <–> cyan / green <–> magenta / blue <–> yellow) and increasing the red channel which then made it more orange.
I can only encourage you to dive into it. It looks scary but it really isn’t. Check out the pp3, deactivate RGB curves to the what it does and play with the nodes to see how they affect the image.