pasjrwoctx👽One my passions in life has always been #photography, many may claim to love it many may claim to excel at it, many in fact may have mastered it; For a photograph is a collection of photons either on a sensor or some form of medium in which you develop to see the final image, these two photographs I have taken today, both with very different beasts, the one on the left is of a Black/red Bellied Whistler which was captured with a #Olympus OM-D E-M5 and the M.Zuiko Digital 70-300mm 4.8-6.7 II ED handheld and autofocus @ F6.7 1/500s ISO1000 300mm from 10m where as my self portrait on the right was taken with a #Nikon D5600 & Nikkor 50mm 1.8 D @ f5.6 1/60s ISO1000 from 1.5m with a tripod manually focused, two very different subjects two very different environments and with two completely different sets of gear, what is the same about them is my approach, first I am very comfortable with the gear I have to use, I always shoot full raw, focus depends on subject and gear I am shooting, by my development of those raws is the same in every shot, first without giving away a lot of technical detail, I open my raw file in Rawtherapee where my unique processing reveal a workflow that treats the RAW image as a structural foundation rather than a finished product. The adjustments in #RawTherapee focus on three primary goals: aggressive light management, extreme detail enhancement, and color neutralization.
1. Tone Architecture
The first phase involves a heavy reshaping of how the camera perceives light and dark. The blacks are pulled down significantly to create deep, rich shadows, while the overall exposure is boosted to keep the highlights bright and punchy. This creates a high-contrast "base" that feels cinematic and dramatic, rather than flat and digital.
2. Micro-Detail Enhancement
This is the core of the "etched" look. Instead of using standard sharpening, which can look artificial, the focus is shifted to "Wavelet" levels. This technique breaks the image down into different scales of detail—from fine pores to larger facial contours—and amplifies them. This makes textures like beard hair and skin topography appear incredibly sharp and three-dimensional.
3. Surface Smoothing and Edge Protection
While the details are being amplified, the processing is set up to protect the edges of the subject. This ensures that the extreme sharpening doesn't create "halos" or digital artifacts. It keeps the transition between the subject and the dark background clean and professional.
4. Color Neutralization
The color is subtly pulled back to give the image a timeless, almost monochromatic feel. This removes any distracting "yellowing" from the light source and shifts the viewer's focus entirely toward the textures and the expression of the subject.
5. Final Export for Layering
The image is not finalized here; it is exported as a high-quality file specifically prepared for the next stage of assembly. By leaving traditional noise reduction disabled, the natural grain is preserved to act as an organic texture for the final composite.
These are applied to 3 files, a base the color, and two different black and white files, all exported as .tiff's I then open as layers in #Gimp where the color again is the base and the two black and white files sit on top, where I first apply transparency to those two files, the middle black and white gets a HSV Value of 75% and the top black and white gets a Soft Light at 50% starting with the middle I merge it down, then I merge the top down, I then save again as X.tiff and open #Digikam where I apply Lens correction and cropping, then save as png, then I batch process to jpg, resize for say sharing online and apply my watermarks;
This process has slowly evolved over the years and my workflow may seem cumbersome to some, but my self portrait for example from shutter click to frame/print ready is about 10 mins of work now, repetition is key when your building your skills, the more you do something the more proficient and efficient you become;
Anyways I just thought I would share a small part of how I enjoy my passion;
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