Trail1_2-3-2-_810_0241-web

I would experiment with every so slightly bringing up the lower mid tones in your overall RGB curves tool with the sliders locked (i.e., all ganged, not individually).

Can't remember if Rawtherepee or GIMP has a eyedropper that will show you where a sampled pixel falls on the RGB curve, but if either does, take some time to sample the areas you want to bring up slightly and note where they fall on your RGB curve. This general area of the curve will be what you want to raise, but it will probably be very touchy and hard to control, so be patient.

It can be a delicate operation, as most curves tools are very crude,without the ability to make subtle adjustments via mouse, but it can be done. Hopefully the color channels will stay balanced with such a minor tweak; if not, you may have to ungang them and adjust RGB individually.

Thank you! I had not thought of doing it exactly that way... Gimp has an eye dropper tool that is generally used for color selection, but now that you mention it I checked and it also works with the RGB curves, just as you suggest. So I learned something really valuable from you today, thanks much!

No problem! Good luck!

Oh and BTW, if you get good with editing images with RGB curves, especially unganged, there isn't much you can't do to really super-tweak an image...

i've only recently come to the digital world and have gone through many different editing software solutions. i admit, i didn't, (and don't), want to spend my time becoming a software expert/digital guru.

After trying different solutions i'm amazed that i found lightroom cc to be really great! great not because it's intuitive, but because i've been able to do many of things to easily get to the end result of my vision.

i've concluded you get what you pay for - and things like LR CC have better algorithms to easily implement my vision.

p.s. i've rec'd no compensation for this endorsement!