Unfortunately, accuracy is not a strong point of the “equaliser” 
Absolutely! If I didn’t “play” with things I have had to learn, I wouldn’t know half as much as I do 
For better or worse, I collected my to-post photos over the last month, and put them in the “January 2021” folder on my SmugMug magazine, at:
I’m starting the next month’s gallery (February 2021) - there’s a whole one photo there, which I need to update to the latest version - will do that tomorrow morning.
When I go on a “walkabout”, I typically take 50 or so images, throw away all but ten, and nine of the ten get posted after minimal editing, and one of them only gets posted on Smugmug after discussing it here.
Smugmug is supposed to be a way of earning money, but that’s not my goal. Anyone going there can v view the images up to full size, and probably download them as well. I’m doing it because I enjoy doing so, not to make money, and certainly not to get “work” as a photographer. Any of you are welcome to go there, and look around, and to leave comments too. I’m trying to think of a way to promote PL4 in my galleries. Maybe I’lll add “Edited on DxO PhotoLab 4” to the last line of my photo descriptions.
I also have quite a few more photos of India and Nepal to post in the next week or so. And I’ve got a lot of color prints of a Steam Locomotive Service area in Chennai, India - places like that no longer exist, for the most part.
More later - time for bed.
Ah you did a curveball,
you let us do the tryouts and kept the best image’s for smmg… 
Great sunsets.
I like , among others, the skyline and sun burst. Boat in front. Just the right yellow.
The one with sun at the right and orangje flair tovthe left that is for me to dark in the shadows i would like to have a glimp of detail to see before i drift of to the horizon.
But i understand why you didn’t.
You starting to get the hang of it.
I hope you left a comment below the image, so I know which images you are referring to.
Some of those came out nicely, and didn’t need much in way of editing beyond cropping. The ones I posted here were among my favorites, and when I started posting here, I was making many mistakes because I didn’t understand PL4. I thought I would learn better if we discussed one at a time. This “group think” helped me understand things, which at the time I was oblivious to.
Gee, if you think I kept the best images for SmugMug, which are mostly the ones I didn’t ask about here, that means I’m improving, both in capturing the original image, and in my editing.
I know people are viewing them, as I get the “statistics” from SmugMug, but I get next to no feedback.
Meanwhile, when posting here, I get an avalanche of feedback, more than enough (usually) to understand, and always helping me “see” what needs to be done, and “how to achieve it”.
The only feedback I get from email is “what beautiful photos”, but not a word about what in particular, if anything, made the person write that - but the people I mail photos to don’t understand what went into creating the photo. I also post on other forums, such as the Leica forum, but most people don’t understand what I meant. That’s OK. I mostly go there to learn technical things, not to discuss photos.
Anyway, thank you! I know what I think I like, and why, but I learn much more from photos that when posted here you guys have issues with them. Sort of like going to a class and submitting a photo, and after an eternity, getting positive feedback. I don’t learn when people say “how wonderful”, but I learn a LOT when people (here) suggest alternative ways to do things - and 98% of the time I agree. 
That’s what i meant.
Need to sign in to comment, but 14/41 nice golden light.
6/41 would be interested to what’s there if you caurefully lift the dark shadows just a bit to reveal some details. (structure)
Well, 14/41 was a compromise, as I didn’t know how to make it better.
For 6/41, I thought it was interesting, but I didn’t like the photo. The ultra-wide-angle lens distorted the photo too much. It’s from my Nikon Df with a 24mm lens - was very careful to remove any obvious distortion.
I re-opened the original. Now I can see some potential in the image, where before it looked like a dead end street to me. So, I re-edited it, using the tools I’ve recently learned. To add structure to the. dark areas, I think I first need to lighten them, and nothing I tried worked for me, so I did it just a little, cropped a little more, changed the watermark to match something in the image, and now I’ve got something I like MUCH more. Amazing! Your suggestion made a gigantic difference.
Any more suggestions?
_MJM2169 | 2020-12-25-Biscayne Jet Ski and Miami.nef (19.7 MB)
_MJM2169 | 2020-12-25-Biscayne Jet Ski and Miami.nef.dop (13.6 KB)
Added later - it looks much nicer on my calibrated ASUS display, and it looks MUCH nicer in a larger scale so I can actually see all the details.
If you ever want to, you and everyone else in this forum is welcome to sign into the SmugMug, so you can post at will, positive or negative, whatever you like.
So THAT is why so few people comment. I didn’t realize that before.
PL4 is starting to feel much more intuitive to me. That’s a good thing.
One more. Last month I thought I was finished with this image. Then I started thinking “what if”…? Is it “real” - well, sort of. Joanna will probably think I didn’t go far enough, while I’m wondering if I went too far. I remember things I’m learning here, such as lighting up the buildings enough to see them, and enhancing the clouds. It wasn’t (obviously) shot in B&W, but as long as it had that little bit of color, I boosted it slightly.
Funny thing, the more I work on it, the more attached I get to it, and the more I appreciate it. I wonder if I’ll feel the same way about it tomorrow?
L1002232 | 2021-01-25-M10 Lincoln Rd, boats.dng.dop (24.5 KB)
L1002232 | 2021-01-25-M10 Lincoln Rd, boats.dng (28.9 MB)
Instead of staring at my computer to find that the upload is done, is there an indicator in the main window of PL4 that indicates the software is still busy with an upload?
One more photo - I went looking for photos I took fairly recently, but didn’t know what to do with. Supposedly now I know more - maybe not enough, but definitely “more”.
_MJM0658.NEF (18.5 MB)
_MJM0658.NEF.dop (283.4 KB)
On my iMac, as I’m posting these images, they don’t look good, but on the ASUS I’m quite happy with them. I remember working on this last one, with the fisherman, only to give up on it. By lighting the guy a little, and making the image more “gold” because of the sunset, I’m starting to feel good about it. I’ll check back in the morning - hopefully it will still look this good.
There is something I would find very useful. At the top of the image, I see the file name. Is there any way to display the full path to that file, along with the name?
As with the majority of Mac apps, simply right-click, or Ctrl-Click or Cmd-Click on the little icon next to the file name…
The big problem you have with this one is that it is not sharp anywhere…
To prove the point, FastRawViewer shows the contrast edges as being rather thick…
And according to RawDigger you appear to have left the camera in auto-focus and it settled on 0.03 metres to focus on…
On the contrary. All I did was to add a tone curve…
… to remove the shadow and highlight clipping…
Unfortunately, by so doing, you got a slight light halo around him from the auto-mask. If you are going to do this kind of thing…
- Don’t alter the exposure
- Alter the shadows level up but the black level down
- Be very careful and subtle
In fact, I ended up removing the mask completely - on my monitor at least, there is just enough detail without it.
I also lowered and shortened the transition on the grad filter - it was too obvious where it was. But then I also very carefully erased the part of the mask that covered the guy’s head…
Oh, and I switched the NR to DeepPRIME to give the finished result of…
And the dop file with my version added…
_MJM0658.NEF.dop (419,4 Ko)
Then it is a windowshot through glas in AF. (when contrast is low by low light a camera focus often on the glas.
I wondered how a 24mm lens can use a focus distance of 30mm.
Exiftool says the same.
George
Unless the lens is not being reported correctly because it is not “connected”. But, anyhow, the focus was definitely “off” 
not really,
i downloaded your dop but it gave a internal error so i started from scratch.
i just pushed until it started to break.(just to see what’s in it.)
About focus, if its focussed that close (i can’t tell) it must be a window shot. (focus on the glass) and we have some issue’s:
100% corner should be sharp even in the dark.
(aperture is f7.1 (full frame?) so that’s not the problem here) 9m43 is f7.1 same as f16 FF near diffraction.
more nasty problem is the glare of magenta caused by underexposure.
i need nearly 2 stops to get proper brightnes in the image.
lifting til breakpoint shows nasty reflections in water.
took two control points and to negative’s to counter green and magenta.
brought in more warmt
technical is flawed, underexposed. commen problem in sunset shot’s i do it all the time so i use Ev compensation or backeting to have some backupshots.
magenta is popping up every time i try to fix something. :sky you can’t vibrance it or bring blue out on the left without raising magenta on the right.
But i think this would do:
_MJM2169 2020-12-25-Biscayne Jet Ski and Miami.nef.dop (11,1 KB)
if i turn off locals and re export my “best effort” the you see the damage in the shadows.
(water reflections and building right.)
Stil i think it’s good enough if you don’t pixel peep.
Those boats float in a total different light then the sky look like (mid image is no color correction)
my camera suffers also from magenta casting in underexposure so i think most camera’s do.
(edit final thought so keeping it darker is the best solution to hide all shadow problems.)
(you asked for it 
)
Is it the camera or the lens? I would say it’s ca.
George
Maybe both, i don’t know.
i have posted here redisch glow issue’s in night shots.
which where often in the low side if the exposure. (auto AF and exposure measureing)
i have to read in that to answer your question.
Wow, and double-wow!!! So useful to me. Thank you!!!
@mikemyers – please, check yourself (Active corrections = ON)
L1002232 2021-01-25-M10 Lincoln Rd, boats.dng.dop (53,1 KB) _MJM2169 2020-12-25-Biscayne Jet Ski and Miami.nef.dop (20,9 KB)
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