Darkroom Challenge Digital Darkroom Derby #228 - Winner announced

[kae1]

Start Date

Sep 23, 2024

End Date

Sep 27, 2024

This is Digital Darkroom Derby #228, a digital image editing/processing challenge.

These challenges are open to everyone. If you have any interest in practicing or improving your image editing and post-processing skills, please feel free to join in!

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

Another of my "Should have made more of an effort before pressing the shutter" images. A barge on the Leeds Liverpool canal passing Salts Mill, Saltaire.

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RAW and JPEG files are here.

Derby closes on Friday 27th September at 08:00UTC.

 

[griffljg]

Thanks Ken,

That is a bit of a challenge. - How to extract as much as possible out of the blown highlights, without it looking too artificial. I think that some "intelligent fill" may be required which is sadly way outside my skill set. So I'll just have to see what I can do with what I have.

ARW file -> DxO PureRAW 4 (Mainly for lens correction purposes) -> DNG file -> Capture One Pro (Perspective Correction, Crop to suit, fiddling around with Exposure, Contrast, Highlight and Shadow recovery, White Balance and Clarity. Masked out the worst of the blown highlights and attempted some more Highlight Recovery.) -> JPEG file.

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[Zeus1]

Entry #1

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[RobD]

#1. ACR & PS

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[WhidbeyLVR]

It looks like I won't be very active on the forum for several more weeks -- maybe even into next year. I had a free hour today, so I am giving this a try, but I am staying out of the competition for now.

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DxO PL7 and Gimp/G'mic/Nik. I played with the crop and decided I liked this one best. I painted and cloned some texture into the blown-out bits. Then I used Nik Color Efex to boost the local contrast. I made a final sharpening pass with Topaz Photo AI.

 

[Rob R]

A good challenge
I decided to crop out the blown highlight section a bit.
It was a big difference in the highlights and shadows.

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[Rob R]

A Black and white version.

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[gecko]

Nice Challenge. As usual, edited raw file using DxO PL7 the tweaked in Elements (with ON1 Effects and Topaz Photo AI as plug-ins).

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[Peano]

Not competing, just practicing. Two main aims: 1) Repair (not recover, because there's nothing to recover) the blown areas, and 2) concentrate the light across the center to make the boat the center of interest.

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[gecko]

Entry #2: Experimented with cut-&-paste to shorten the horizontal distance between the man and woman on the upper levels (not sure how successfully).

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[Zeus1]

Entry #2

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​

 

[kae1]

My dad always said "a poor workman blames his tools" so I take full responsibility for this picture and am not going to mention "small sensor", lack of viewfinder or small fiddly body ..... more than once . If I'd taken a bit more time to sort out the exposure the Sony would have shown more of its' capabilities although there would still have been quite a large dynamic range for it to cope with. However, we are where we are.

By now you probably know my style which isn't "pray and spray" but "snap then pray (that post processing will sort things out)" . Apart from seeing what you could make of the picture I had no preconceived ideas of the "recovery", colours, which bits are interesting, or the final crop of the image. You've all submitted some great edits and I like them all.

My top three are :-
Winner - @Rob R #2 - I like the crop and the "dreamy" look of both entries but my favourite is the B&W with a lovely amount of contrast
First runner up - @griffljg - I like the original crop, the warmer colours, the clarity and the "blown" highlight treatment
Second runner up - @gecko #2 - I like the "HDR" look but especially love the crop (which sorts out other issues)

Congratulations, Rob and over to you for the next challenge .
(PS I can't remember if you've hosted before but if you need any help just ask.)

For completion, my attempts

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[Rob R]

Thanks for the win Kai.
I thought some the non competing entries were pretty good,
I will get something up soon.

 

[Rob R]

#229 is live
https://cameraderie.org/threads/digital-darkroom-derby-229.58180/post-657461
let me know if there are any problems.

 

[gecko]

My dad always said "a poor workman blames his tools" so I take full responsibility for this picture and am not going to mention "small sensor", lack of viewfinder or small fiddly body ..... more than once . If I'd taken a bit more time to sort out the exposure the Sony would have shown more of its' capabilities although there would still have been quite a large dynamic range for it to cope with. However, we are where we are.

By now you probably know my style which isn't "pray and spray" but "snap then pray (that post processing will sort things out)" . Apart from seeing what you could make of the picture I had no preconceived ideas of the "recovery", colours, which bits are interesting, or the final crop of the image. You've all submitted some great edits and I like them all.


My top three are :-
Winner - @Rob R #2 - I like the crop and the "dreamy" look of both entries but my favourite is the B&W with a lovely amount of contrast
First runner up - @griffljg - I like the original crop, the warmer colours, the clarity and the "blown" highlight treatment
Second runner up - @gecko #2 - I like the "HDR" look but especially love the crop (which sorts out other issues)

Congratulations, Rob and over to you for the next challenge .
(PS I can't remember if you've hosted before but if you need any help just ask.)

For completion, my attempts

Thank you so much, Ken, for your HDR comment on my entry. That was an eye-opener: I did not intend to get such an effect, but I now realize that I must perceive things as washed out, so I guess I try to compensate by overdoing the contrast, hence the HDR effect. I really have no business posting photos with the current state of my vision . But I guess that at the same time this may provide me with some protection from winning .