>The more I look at the "lightroom version", the less I like it. For >me, >the orange is oversaturated; I preferred the softer, more "pastel" >look >of the original. Also, the dock is so dark in the original that trying >to recover any detail there doesn't look particularly good to my eye, >besides that I preferred it being just a silhouette anyway. > >I also looked at how I would crop it to 2:1 and... didn't like any of >*those* results either. You either lose a lot of the interesting bits >of >the sky, or the interesting detail on the sand in the lower corner, or >both. If you can keep the original aspect ratio, it might be worth >doing so. > >I decided to play around with it, and came up with this: >JPEG: >https://drive.google.com/file/d/16LIjBfkghhJr-A-6eDQCmlqTAe1mhRVv/view?usp=sharing >XCF: >https://drive.google.com/open?id=12Kp1HUB1tlQNgk2LzQSSh3vcrQg-3lYM > >(I crushed the quality rather severely on the JPEG to get the file >size >down. This is meant as a preview only; the XCF is lossless and >includes >all of the layers that were used to achieve this composition.) > >This reflects how I often process images in order to enhance local >contrast, although I usually throw in one or two mantiuk06 layers as >well. > >- The "equalize contrast" layer is the original, desaturated (I almost >always use luminosity mode), inverted, and then with a Gaussian blur >applied (which I forget to do this time, but the other layers hammer >the >values enough that it doesn't matter in this case). Without the blur, >this will tend to wash out the value range entirely in your image, >leaving you just color. *With* the blur, it will reduce global >contrast >while retaining local contrast; basically, it's a sort of "poor man's >HDR" that will bring back details in your shadows and highlights. In >this case, however, it didn't work very well, though it does keep the >light areas in the clouds from washing out quite so badly. > >- STRESS (Tools → GEGL Operation) is just fun. Not only will it help >your contrast, it has an uncanny ability to remove color bias. Lower >radius and iterations give more local contrast but are also more prone >to noise and artifacts. I usually like to use one layer with the >radius >and iterations as low as possible as a gentle (low opacity) overlay >(i.e. the "overlay" blending mode) to enhance contrast, and another >with >the radius cranked up (the recommendation is "longest image dimension" >— in this case, 4000 — or the max of 5000) and 15+ iterations as an >overall "improvement" layer that I usually blend in heavily or just >outright replace the original image at the bottom of the stack. > >- C2G (also GEGL) is basically STRESS without the color. I've started >more recently using this as an additional overlay layer, as dropping >the >color often lets me get away with using a lower radius without the >resulting artifacts being as bad. In this instance, I thought it made >the shadows on the waves *too* dark, so I added a layer mask to blend >it >out toward the bottom. > >- After playing with the blending on the above to get the contrast I >liked, the sky was *too* blue, so I cloned the original and applied it >with "color" blend mode to bring back some, but not all, of the pink. >Per above, I personally think *some* blue gives character to the >result, >especially thinking of it as a painting and not something trying to be >perfectly realistic. However, you could play with the opacity on this >layer to bring the colors more back toward the original, or also play >with Colors → Hue-Saturation (or maybe Colors → Curves) if you like a >more saturated look. > >I stopped at this point, which basically represents where I felt >satisfied with the overall color and contrast. Per my previous >suggestion, however, what I would do from here is to save this, then >start a new image from 'copy visible', scale it up to your desired >size/DPI, then play around with Oilify, Van Gogh, and/or >Gimpressionist >(or really anything under Filters → Artistic). For this piece, I felt >the best results from gimpressionist were obtained setting the stroke >direction and size both to 'adaptive', setting the brush relief to 0, >and cranking the density. You'll also almost certainly want 'evenly >distributed' placement. In any case, be warned that some of these may >take quite a while to run at high resolution; you may want to play >around for a while on a few small sections of the image.
Wow - the revision you created is beautiful! Honestly I don’t understand most of your explanation but the end product would be perfect! Bottom line - how large - realistically- could that be made and still look good? -- nickib (via www.gimpusers.com/forums) _______________________________________________ gimp-user-list mailing list List address: gimp-user-list@gnome.org List membership: https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/gimp-user-list List archives: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/gimp-user-list
