Mike,
Don’t get me wrong, i am reacting positively to your posts but…
You starting a lot of dxo photolab 4 and… Threads and most of them are about editing and manipulating a rawfile to a certain point.
So all photo illustration’s in progres or bordering towards photo’s.
All great and good. But raw editing and restricting your self to “photo’s” will torment your mind and restrict your abillity to learn. Because the only way to learn a powerfull program from top to bottom is exploring all corners , dead ends, attic’s, basements, loft’s, terras’es.
Choose challenceing rawfiles and try every tool there is to make something.
Mono color, high key, low key, blistering color boost, hdr look, clone and repair, local adjustments… Arteficial blur or local sharpening.
What i try to say is pick a tool and explore it’s bounderies , it’s strongholds, it weaknesses using serveral rawfiles. Forget about making a sensible image or a “photograph” just push and pull untill the rawfile breaks.
This way you learn dxo PL’s toolset to use.
And then you can make decisions how to attack a rawfile and forecast how it will look when you done. Adjust on the fly direction and change tools to get better result.
When you have reached that level of skill you can tiptow through your image’s , scrape here, lift there, coloring this, sharpening that, compres such, mold a rawfile to a photograph and Virtual Copy at that point and build to a illustration version.
Some key things.
Always stack adjustments like bricks. Don’t push one tool slider to it’s end but use more tools moderest. As in don’t blow one trompet very hard and raw better to blow 10 clear and pure for the sound. An orchrestra sound is build with many groups of musical instruments to create that unique sound not just one instrument and a amplifier for each type of sound.
Controlpoints are working at best in large outer circles and placed on a carefully picked spot. Use desaturation (graying out effected area’s) and “m” to see influences and build a mask.
Use masking and feadering/erasing.
Remember you can lift a color with controlpoint and lower it at some spots with a mask brush at the same time!
And don’t try too much replicate others image’s. The build to that point it’s finished is every time different.(atleast for me.)
Most important Have fun.