Thought a thread like this might be useful. Also would appreciate feedback.
I started with linear curves and adjusted them on the low end to prevent shadow clipping (that's why they're raised) but also pulled down the very darkest parts that remained to preserve contrast. There was an uneven cast of light in the original so I pulled down the highlights until the intensity had diminished to my liking. I still pulled up the lighter areas remaining though for contrast's sake. I applied these adjustments with a LUT already on (not how I usually work but in this case I found the colours I liked after I'd already done some tone curve adjustments and went back and started over). Cropped 4:3 with rule of diagonal guidelines and resized for sharing online. Definitely curious how others would have approached adjusting the highlights and shadows in this one, if there were perhaps a better way or if I should have aimed for a lighter end result. I do like the end result but I'm still curious how else I could have done this.
I tried an odd crop on this one. Using the rule of diagonal guidelines, I place the points of most interest along the diagonal lines, which led to this odd aspect ratio (1.24:1). I do like the original composition but is this crop more effective at showing the most interesting parts of the scene? ie the party lights and the players.
This is what I adjusted to get the after. The two high points on the first tone curve are the guy on the left's face (the lower point) and the guy second from the right's face (the higher point). I pulled up the black point to prevent clipping but otherwise didn't adjust the shadows as they already seemed dark enough. On the second curve I did a small adjustment to the contrast in the crowd, pulling up the lightness on someone's shirt and bringing down a neighbouring dark area to just above the clipping point (this is easy with RawTherapee since you can ctrl click on areas of the picture to set points on the tone curve). I brought the saturation down to prevent clipping of out-of-gamut colours (this only matters for my display gamut) but I brought it down a lot more after that because the colours seemed really "inky" and "blotchy," still way too saturated.Let me know if you think these edits were effective, if I could do anything better, etc., or if I should have taken the edits in a different direction (maybe more high-key, black and white, etc.)
This link will be active for 24 hours. If you'd like to get the files after that, reply to this comment. Don't pass these off as your own photos on your personal social media. I'm only sharing the RAW data for the purposes of this thread. If you do edit the RAWs, leave a description of what you adjusted in your post.https://wormhole.app/qlQ1X1#c5y_KtocW56gnm5z7HFh5g
Anon get your fuckin eyes checked
>>4512370>>4512371Before is better in this case, in every possible way from exposure right through to the crop.
>>4512371I don't have time to do better but the colors are colorblind tier awful, it looks like a film negative. The crop is exceptionally awkward, ignoring the natural flow of the string lights while keeping a huge black space on the right, which feels extremely unbalanced and uncomfortable.>>4512356I actually like this one. I would say it's stupid to take such an underexposed photo, but there is not too much noise, and the color of the light is eerie in a good way. I think it's a cool photo.
>>4512429>The colors are colorblind tier awful. It looks like a film negative.I don't agree. I think you're overstating it. However, I'm open to hearing anything constructive you have to say about the colours. I'm not satisfied with the desaturated look I went for but I didn't find the fully saturated colours any better.>The crop is exceptionally awkward, ignoring the natural flow of the string lights while keeping a huge black space on the right, which feels extremely unbalanced and uncomfortable.I think you're exaggerating the awkwardness of the crop although I do tend to agree the lights are actually leading out of frame in the crop whereas their direction made sense in the original. I took on board what you said about the unnatural flow of the string lights and adjusted the crop. I think it captures more of their flow from the original shot while still cutting away some superfluous fluff.
>>4512441Different anon here... I don't like the colpr edit and the pic aint great, but the edit does make me look at the stage, while the original directs my eye to the left side. It's because of the lit area. Make it dark so it doesn't pull attention towards the edge. It will not make the pic great though
Bro these edits fucking suck. Somehow the SOOC JPGs are actually the better photos.
>>4512441You can disagree but I was not intentionally exaggerating. The crop and colors were very bad. I explained what made the crop bad, so it is constructive. What makes the color bad, is that you tried to correct extremely saturated stage lights. You cannot recover neutral tones from a subject lit with colored light in the dark. The result looks very unnatural, because you dulled the colors of the stage lights but the tones of everything is still fucked, including skin tones which anyone can see are wrong.Like, if you don't see what's wrong here, you are unironically colorblind.
