I like your edit, but like quite a few other edits I see here, and like my JPG out of cam, it looks quite dark and also reddish, probably too dark for print. (My goal is to have this printed in large format as a gift.)
For comparison, I’m including the JPG out of cam, and a scan of the print.
Low contrast edit. Usually that works better for prints. Just ran the in development Temperature correlation wb tool which made a small tweak to the in camera wb. Then lowered exposure significantly before lifting again with Abstract profile and log tonemapping (local edit)
Edit: re upload with vignetting fix and put a bit of contrast back. Also flicked the temp back and forth to switch wb to “custom” might be more usable for those not running the wb dev build.
Thank you for the compliment, I usually under-expose the night scenes to highlight the light in the lit areas.
Here’s a second version
I cooled the scene with one of my presets from the colorize module.
I added 1IL of exposure and adapted the tone equalizer.
I haven’t compressed the history, so you can see my changes.
It’s just straight-up too underexposed. Finding the right WB wasn’t even the real problem. I now find the real problem is e.g. raising contrast and brightness without the sky becoming patchy-looking simply from a lack of shades of color in the underlying RAW.
I’ve been trying to carefully raise the brightness levels using several staggered layer masks, which can e.g. help preserve the highlights while adjusting the exposure of the base layer, or to add new shades and gradients to the sky using layer masks created from multiple different edits of the image.
Basically, the only question that remains for me is to figure out the best compromise between making the image bright enough for print while still looking technically acceptable. Or to figure out if that’s even possible with this image.
As we’ve all shown, the image clearly isn’t unsalvageable, and at least on screen, it can look really great in a wide variety of ways. However, the insight that the primary problem is that the image is too underexposed also gives me some peace and closure, and the motivation to redo the shot with better technical preparation. The hobbyist in me counts that as clear progress
Nevertheless, you have areas with eroded highlights. All cats are grey at night, we say in Germany
… and the histogram is mainly on the dark side. IMHO your exposure is good!
I must agree … precisely because of some blown highlights that I struggled to force into gamut. Experimenting with tone mapping (in my case using the Sigmoid function in darktable) allows for recovery of quite some detail, without paying the price of globally increasing the exposure. Also, the histogram shows mostly the dark end because it was - mostly dark!! Hence @Claes’s rhetorical question 1:
Ah, you’re right. This prompts a very beginner question from me: Is it possible to use ISO to adjust brightness in such situations, or would higher ISO burn the highlights even more?
The problem is dynamic range so for most cameras you should, if stable support is available, shoot at lowest available iso. Because that’s most often where the dynamic range is maximized.
In practical terms you can:
Bracket/hdr and merge several images with different exposures
Blow highlights in a controlled fashion (pretty much what you did)
Massively under expose and deal with the noise and limited data in post
I think the exposure is pretty good the blown highlights don’t really affect the image much.
Some cameras offer extended ISO settings. Mine has 100 as lowest available setting, but the base value is 200. In such cases the base ISO should be used. The Z5 used here offers down to 50, but 100 is the base ISO.