Underpass at the train station

[Gianluca Drago]

Not my usual editing. Not sure this is working.

 

[Gary R. Smith]

I see that you used Darktable. What do you usually use?
ISO: 640, ss: 1/400, f/4, @ 60mm all look reasonable.
What did you see in the blown out regions?

 

[Gianluca Drago]

The blown-out areas in the photos were not originally overexposed, nor was there any digital noise in the midtones before my edits. In this case, I was simply experimenting with the Filmic RGB module—not to recover highlights, but deliberately to create them, with a more “creative” or “graphical” intent. Just an occasional exercise.

 

[Gary R. Smith]

How do you like Darktable? I downloaded it at one time onto my (since gone) older computer and used it a couple of times. This was prior to landing on Affinity Photo as my primary tool for post and way before adding Topaz and DxO Photo Lab. My latest experiment is RapidRaw. I'm still on the fence with it as a raw converter.

 

[Gianluca Drago]

@Gary R. Smith, Darktable appeals to me a lot, even though the learning curve is steep and the abundance of modules is intimidating. But once you start to understand which modules you actually need and organize your own workspace, things begin to work well. What Darktable is missing—at least for now—is AI. I’ve tried other open-source software, but not paid ones. RapidRaw, in my opinion, is still a bit primitive and limited.