I have been passive for a while, but now I come back with a new play raw. Went for a ski tour today, and I really don’t find an edit for these high-contrast winter photos that I like. Everything I try is worse than the original SOOC JPEG, but the JPEG is bad because the trees are totally black.
I give you a picture of myself for privacy reasons; rest assured that there are more attractive people on my other photos. Can you develop it into anything that looks better than the JPEG?
My result is much like @witsu - shallowing (is that even a word? If not, it should be! ) the shadows of the trees, also reduces the contrast on the skier. Yes, one could employ masks. I believe the scene itself - with its bright, sunny cloudless sky and the massively-reflective snow cover causes huge contrast. You can green up the trees by decreasing this, but the image then lacks punch.
In dt 4.6 I used the now removed AI edges setting in color calibration to remove the blue cast in the snow and applied one of my standard styles - simple “2-step-editing”
An alternate edit. Instead of Color Equalizer, I used Tone Equalizer with Boris’s method of a linear “curve” from max at the lowlights to zero at the highlights. I also used some Filmic highlight reconstruction in the snow tracks and the mountainside. dt 5.0
PS - When displayed at full resolution, I do see a nasty artifact of my highlight reconstruction at the lowest left of the deep snow track.
Hey @firefrorefiddle, always welcome back.
Challenging contrast to show the subject and the trees in the shadow.
Oops, I overexposed the film trying to do so. I do like the contrast of the snow on the trees on the right.
Using darktable for a linear export and then a custom film sim. IMGP9542.DNG.xmp (6.5 KB)
Most of the difference is white balance and lens correction. RT wb was tweaked a bit from temp correlation auto settings. RT also has post-resize sharpening which makes it a bit to sharp for these small sizes.
Can you develop it into anything that looks better than the JPEG?
I do like the contrast of the snow on the trees on the right.
