Today I went back to a capture from nearly 3 years ago - I like the capture, but I haven’t yet managed to render completely according to my satisfaction.
The deep shade with sunlit background, not to mention greenish cast from the tinted glass, confused the white-balance of the camera. My compromise back in 2017 was to go with the higher temperature. The chroma noise is thus less evident, especially on the nose of the tiger.
The more realistic white balance I achieved today, using filmic in the processing pipe, suffers more from noticeable noise.
The monochrome treatment I quite like - the noise in the background is less a distraction. Moreover, I could play with the monochrome colour filter to get my preferred look.
I’d be delighted if anyone would like to experiment and share their results.
In rawproc, I used a filmic curve to lift the subject out of the shadows, but it was still quite flat. So, I added a control point curve and put contrast in the specific place. I found the right-hand background to be distracting, so I cropped to remove it. It could use some denoise, but I’m on my tablet and the nlmeans tool takes too long. Actually, I think I like the texture of the noise.
Thanks, Glenn; I like your crop!
The tiger is flat, unfortunately … the dynamic range was traded off too cheaply for the sake of the bright background; Spot-metering the subject or applying compensation would have given a better raw to play with, but it’s easier to say that only with hindsight.
Thanks for this, enabled me to see how my previous process was flawed. I do quite like the tighter crops, but saving those highlights was a big part my new process, so don’t mind if I leave them in.
I also opted for a cropped version. I do believe the greenish tone seems under control, not entirely sure about the background colour though. But I don’t have a clue what it actually looked like. So I primarily focused on the tiger (man those are awesome animals, aren’t they…).
Very nice, Jacques! Certainly closer to “real” than my 2017 overcooked example. The tiger colours are correct, but my eyes would not have noticed them like that because of the deep shadow in which the tiger lay, combined with that frustratingly bright background. Your rendition is exactly the kind of result I am after … yes, it is artificial compared to naked eye on the day, but yes, it also looks real. Thank you!
Some very basic things with Rawtherapee, thereafter, with GIMP/G’MIC, some local contrast filters and color filters. Here is my somewhat grainy result:
Regarding the subsequent posts, I see an error in my ways. For white balance, I tend to just go with whatever the camera put into the metadata, but I can see now that decision renders a decidedly greenish tinge. I reprocessed with an additional “gray world” WB, then scooched the red multiplier up from that, and the colors look better. I’ll not post that render, as there are others above that have it nailed…
Nice, @iarga. I’ve come to the conclusion that colour is always going to be difficult with this capture because of the tint in the glass I was shooting through. One needs to compromise either by living with the green, or attempting to correct it and getting augmented pink/purple tones. As for grain, the compromise will remain between sharp details and noise.
Would you mind sharing the details of the colour filters that you applied?
I agree with you. My goal was going for a lot of (deliberately exaggerated) contrast and depth. The other renditions have a much more natural color. “My” tiger is more reddish and lacks the yellow and has a less pink nose (the yellow that makes a tiger a tyger ). I didn’t want magenta/purple in the wood below the tiger. I used the G’MIC “Mixer [PCA]” filter and G’MIC “curves”. With the “Mixer [PCA]” filter I reduced the variability in magenta/blue-green/yello. Therefore less green, yellow and magenta, still there is some green behind the tiger. Then I balanced the result with curves.
). I didn’t want magenta/purple in the wood below the tiger. I used the G’MIC “Mixer [PCA]” filter and G’MIC “curves”. With the “Mixer [PCA]” filter I reduced the variability in magenta/blue-green/yello. Therefore less green, yellow and magenta, still there is some green behind the tiger. Then I balanced the result with curves.
