So, I was playing with luminosity masks again recently, and in combination with some local contrast enhancement. Then I remembered that this is basically what adobe is doing with the "Clarity" slider in lightroom. So I thought it might be helpful to write up a quick tutorial on doing this with GIMP.

Basically, it's just generating luminosity masks for your image (thank you, thank you, thank you to saulgoode for the quick script to do it), and then masking a copy of your base layer with mid-tones masks. Then just apply an aggressive local contrast enhancement on that layer.

You can use the normal hiraloam (high radius, low amount) USM, but I also look at using the various detail enhancements in G'MIC as well (local norm, local variance, freaky details, etc...).

Anyway, if anyone is interested, the post is here:

patdavid.net: Clarity in GIMP (Local Contrast + Mid Tones)

Thank you for this. I will have a try later.

This should be required Gimp reading for those interested in Photo Restoration/Enhancement; as well as anyone else looking to improve their Gimp skills.

Very well Wallace!

I would add that in http://blog.patdavid.net/ there is a wealth of information related to photography and image enhancement techniques. It is a mandatory stop.

PatDavid, thanks for replying to my question.
Using a higher resolution version of the image (around 3600x3600 iirc), explains the differences found.

Another interesting read, thanks PatDavid.

Ah good, glad it worked out! 2048 is a good size for fast loading on http, but not so great when I talk about parameters. I guess I should have just uploaded the full res image and offered a link (which I may now do).