Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom Derby #133 - Closed - Results Posted

[griffljg]

This is Digital Darkroom Derby #133, a digital image editing/processing challenge.

Please read the rules here. - Short version: The host provides the challenge image / images and selects the winner, who then becomes the next host.

A couple of months ago, while I was wandering about northern Queensland on an extended road trip, I stopped in Longreach and paid a visit to the QANTAS Founders Museum. While on a tour through the hangars, I spotted this old De Havilland DH-61 Giant Moth with its nose pointed towards the hangar door. It was fairly dark inside the hangar, with very bright sunlight outside. It should have been a great candidate for an HDR Merge but, as we were moving quickly through the hangar, I didn't have time. So I (more or less) averaged the exposure and hoped for the best.

I was surprised at what I managed to get out of the image in PP and would be interested if you can do better. I'll post my attempt on conclusion of the challenge.

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The ORF (raw) and JPEG files are here: DDD #133.

The challenge will close at 05:00pm (17h00) AEST (07h00 GMT) on Saturday 15 July 2023.

Sorry for the late finish, but I will be away from home until Saturday afternoon (our time).

Have fun!

 

[betamax]

Hmmm... tricky one! In capture one 22 I applied auto mask to dark areas and lifted them, then applied auto mask to bright areas and dropped them. Skyswap in Luminar 4 and then into Topaz Denoise.

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[RobD]

#1. For some odd reason the .ORF file keeps crashing Aurora?
So anyway, I then made 3 exposures from the ORF file in ACR (saved them as Tiff files), and processed them in Aurora to get a HDR file.
Then back into ACR & PS to tweek and denoise.

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[griffljg]

#1. For some odd reason the .ORF file keeps crashing Aurora?
So anyway, I then made 3 exposures from the ORF file in ACR (saved them as Tiff files), and processed them in Aurora to get a HDR file.
Then back into ACR & PS to tweek and denoise.
View attachment 399360

Possibly Aurora hasn't been updated for the OM-1????

 

[RobD]

Possibly Aurora hasn't been updated for the OM-1????

Yes that could be it. I'll check it out. Thanks.

 

[Irene McC]

Capture One and Topaz DeNoise

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[Stiga]

#1. For some odd reason the .ORF file keeps crashing Aurora?
So anyway, I then made 3 exposures from the ORF file in ACR (saved them as Tiff files), and processed them in Aurora to get a HDR file.
Then back into ACR & PS to tweek and denoise.

Same for me tioo. I got around the issue by processing with DxO PL6, saving as a DNG. Aurora then accepted the DNG without any problems

As I understand it, spitting a RAW into 3 TIFs, gives no advantage over the single RAW

 

[Stiga]

#1 DxO PL6 export as DNG > tonemap with SNS-HDR > then tweaks in PS/ACR

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[RobD]

Same for me tioo. I got around the issue by processing with DxO PL6, saving as a DNG. Aurora then accepted the DNG without any problems

As I understand it, spitting a RAW into 3 TIFs, gives no advantage over the single RAW

Aurora accepted my 3 TIFs (of varied exposure), and doesn't like the new RAW .ORF files from the OM-1

 

[betamax]

hmm.. I may have 'over-engineered' my soln #1. But here's #2 in Dxo PL6.

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[griffljg]

Good entries so far. I can see that I am going to have difficulty choosing a winner. Keep them coming.

 

[Stiga]

#2 DxO PL6 > Aurora (High Contrast preset) > PS/ACR for tweaks

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[griffljg]

Just over 4 hours to go on this challenge.

 

[griffljg]

This challenge is now closed. Results shortly.

 

[griffljg]

As I expected, this was going to be a difficult one to judge. Most entries were IMHO better than my own attempt. I finally resorted to nit-picking and sorted by how I personally viewed the shortcomings. This does not mean that that there was anything wrong. - Just that I felt that the image could have been fine-tuned a bit further. As I said, nit picking.

Firstly, I must give an "honourable mention" to @RobD . Rob, your attempt was such an improvement on mine, that I went back to see whether I could improve it further. Sadly, that was beyond my editing skills and so I left it as it was. One area where I felt you could have improved matters, was in the area of White Balance. The temperature was probably a bit too cool, which left a blue tinge to the image.

Here are my choices for the top three:

• Third Runner-up: @Irene McC . Your entry was closest to how I remembered the original view and was the closest to my own attempt. A little bit more shadow recovery would have helped. - My criticism of my own attempt too. The amount of shadow recovery required really pushed the MFT sensor to the max. ISO 200 shouldn't really need much noise reduction, but it did. It looks like Topaz may have struggled a bit.
  
  
• Second Runner-up: @betamax #2. Alan, there was not much to criticise about this entry. I agree that your first entry was a bit "over engineered", but your second entry was great. I really liked your sky treatment. There was really just a bit too much boring blue sky on that day. It was only "pipped at the post" by..........
  
  
• Winner: @Stiga #1: You did just about everything right here. You managed to dig a lot more out of the shadows than I managed, all while taking care of the highlights so that nothing looked artificial. Very well done!

Well done @Stiga . Over to you now.

Finally, here is my attempt. You can see how most of you managed to do better with my own image that I did.

De Havilland DH-61 Giant Moth by Laurence Griffiths, on Flickr​

 

[Stiga]

Many thanks for the win, Larry. This is a lovely photo to work on - it's my kind of shot. A lot of my stuff is against the light so that ius why my favourite tonemapper (SNS-HDR) was used for #1. It's not heavy on resources, produces very natural colours and does not cost an arm and a leg!

I'll get a new challenge up asap bit that may be tomorrow.

Thanks again - Martin

 

[Stiga]

The next DDD is live!