Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom Derby #20 _ Results posted

Welcome to the Digital Darkroom Derby #20, a digital image editing/processing challenge. The rules are here. Please read them.

For this a bit festive (it being number 20!) digital derby, I present You a difficult image: lots of noise, flare, chromatic aberration, geometric issues, etc You can download a set of 5 bracketed images to play with. What You see now is an effort, a mid-way towards final solution processing; the original images will therefore be different.
I think this one will be a real challenge.

This picture was taken in the Duomo of Perugia, Italy, a city full of photo opportunities.

Church.jpg
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Original files can be found here for the RAW and here for the jpgs.

Competition closes March 4th at 08hrs AM (GMT+1)
 
Yep, a tough one, this.

HDR in Photoshop, using three files. Toning in Adobe Camera Raw. For me, the issue of most concern that I could address was flare from the street. That took some delicate brushwork after multiple failures. Once the exposure was semi-settled, over to Photoshop. There I replaced the jittery photographer from the #4 image and the multiple doorways from the #2 image. Once this was stamped, I used the Lens Correction tool to massage the perspective and a bit of Content Aware Fill to mend the bottom corners. After a couple of tries in Topaz Denoise AI, I decided the best noise reduction/detail retention came from downsizing for web display (that screen at left rear came out as mush at most settings). I put the resulting jpg through Denoise anyway and found that I got good results with a Denoise setting of 1(!), Sharpening ~20 and Retain Original Detail ~20.

Untitled_HDR-2 (1).jpg
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#2
Same base exposure adjustments. The differences are these:
Further brushwork in Photoshop (using a B&W layer set to luminosity and a Color Balance layer) to address the lens flare at the left.
Used image #1 to repair the horribly HDR-mangled roundel window above the entrance.
More moderate lens correction settings, leaving more lean-in.
After 20 minutes in Topaz Denoise AI using the comparison window, found settings that did a good job before downsizing.

Untitled_HDR-2.jpg
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Starting point was DXO PL4, deepprime NR. Opened in lightroom, got rid of the lightest and darkest exposures. Did some colour correction, added texture, adjusted highlights/shadows on each of the remaining three frames. Merged to HDR and opened in Photoshop. Adjusted the geometry, added a lut, did some cleaning, sharpened and added a border.

DDD20.jpg
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What is a a lut? @RichardC
Hi Sue,

a lut is a 'look up table'.

At the foot of the photoshop layers panel, click the half shaded circle and scroll down the menu to 'color lookup'.

This adds a new layer with a dozen or so default choices for adding a '3D LUT'. These are types of filter, either from pre-sets, or luts that you have saved yourself, or been conned into buying off the Internet (my view is that you will learn much more if you watch some 'how to' videos and make your own, that is unless you want your pictures to look like someone else's).

Some photographers will add their signature lut/look as a finishing touch to their images.

You need to experiment with blend modes and opacity. In normal/100% they can be something of a bludgeon, but adding say, 'Crisp_Warm.look' at 30% in soft light or overlay modes can do as the name suggests - a warmer and more contrasty look.

Richard.
 
Well, You surprised me: results are better than expected. I lost hours trying to work this image into something presentable. Still not finished.

@RichardC Did You merge in Photoshop or another program? What about ghosting of the photog?

Second place: @Mrs B mushy screen on the left, overexposure of the portal
First runner up: @betamax Unfortunately, the photog is unclear.
Overall winner: clearly @RichardC Geometry is a tad off, but otherwise impressive result!

if I find the time, I’ll revisit this one and will post my result (but only if I can get something resembing Richards picture).

Hope You enjoyed Yourselves and learned something.

Over to You Richard for the next DD.
 
Well, You surprised me: results are better than expected. I lost hours trying to work this image into something presentable. Still not finished.

@RichardC Did You merge in Photoshop or another program? What about ghosting of the photog?

Second place: @Mrs B mushy screen on the left, overexposure of the portal
First runner up: @betamax Unfortunately, the photog is unclear.
Overall winner: clearly @RichardC Geometry is a tad off, but otherwise impressive result!

if I find the time, I’ll revisit this one and will post my result (but only if I can get something resembing Richards picture).

Hope You enjoyed Yourselves and learned something.

Over to You Richard for the next DD.

Thank you :)

I'll have a new challenge ready later today.

First I ran all five images through Photolab 4, applied Deep Prime noise reduction at 80% and exported all five directly to Lightroom.

I then discarded lightest and darkest.

Next, some fine tuning on the remaining three, adding texture, raising shadows and dropping highlights. I dragged a gradient across the middle photo to try to even up the exposure.

I tried merge to HDR Pro so I could use the 32bit environment - but it didn't work, couldn't get rid of the ghosting.

So I merged to HDR in Lightroom and tried all four deghost settings to find the best one. Counter intuitive because the best result was 'medium' or 'low'.

This was my final of three attempts. Auto align/auto blend in Photoshop didn't work either. With this in mind, I used texture to push the contrast a bit, and decreased the Deep Prime noise reduction from 100% to 80 to give [Lightroom in the end] some better edges and a better chance of lining everything up.

Finished off in Photoshop. Geometry was a compromise so as not to lose the top window.

Fun :)
 
Interesting about the ghosting, I completely missed that in my entries.
So I redid the HDR in Aurora HDR 2018 and now applied the anti ghosting setting at medium and choosing the 0 EV picture as reference, I did not do anything else to the picture so this is all about the ghosting.
I think I got rid of it!
P9100059_DxO_DxO_Web.jpg
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So what do you think, did I get rid of it?
 
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