r/DarkTable • u/rvrbly • 5d ago
Help Can you edit this for me?
I've got something like 9000 photos posted to Flickr, only those that I'm not embarrassed about. I've been trying to do this for years, but as I was editing some photos from a trip to Utah last week, I just kept bumping against the same walls I always come against -- bad color control, loss of details in shadows, out of gamut, etc... and after 20 years of this, I've finally realized that I have no clue what I'm doing. From composition to RAW editing, I'm completely lost.
I feel like I've got to get some kind of breakthrough so that I can edit without wasting so much of my life away. And that this image might be what gets me to put the camera down for good, or allows me to keep going.
When I edit it, I get broken shadows in the greenery in the lower 1/3 of the image, and lots of broken highlights in the middle portions of the sky. But the thing is, yesterday, I edited it to a certain point, then turned it into my background image for my desktop, and it looks great. But as I look at it in Darktable today, it is broken. So I have no clue what is going on. And I'm tired of spending hours doing this only to be completely disappointed in my work. I had thought about printing this one, something I haven't done for years out of sheer disappointment.
Is there any way I could get one of you experts to edit this to show of the vibrant colors from real life, without destroying the image? I'm looking for a slightly contrived reality, but with an overall natural look.
The image is in my Microsoft Live Shared Images Folder. It is a Nikon NEF from a D7500. Hand held at 1/30, f/11, 800iso, Nikon 18-200 VR lens. So the sharpness is not really a thing, but it isn't terrible. Here is my first try at the image as it is posted to Flickr right now... unprintable. Would be a waste of good paper. Did I do so badly on the exposure that it's a waste of time? What am I doing wrong?
1
u/Donatzsky 3d ago
I recommend sharing it as a Play Raw on discuss.pixls.us
You'll be getting better feedback, and you'll be able to import the history to see exactly how others did it.