[Gimp-user] New User Need Help Enlarging/Enhancing Image

[nickib <forums gimpusers com>]

> 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)