It's easy to fall on the "too-much" side when playing with raw editing software. I guess it is mainly a matter of moderation, and the question might raise criticism over his broadness, yet I am still wondering : are there a set of settings or ranges I should (generally) stick to or avoid if I want to ensure my final image has a "natural" appearance ?
By "natural", I mean something like "plausible as a real life eye view" (without sunglasses or anything).
NB : FWIW, I'm using rawtherapee.
NB2 : This question and this other question are somehow related, focusing respectively on philosophical aspects and ethics of image processing (though the questioner of the second one mentions a few relevant technical criterions).
Answer
Each control has two different uses; to compensate for shortcomings in the original exposure, or to add an effect to the image. In a certain range the control has the first use, beyond that it has the second use.
The problem is that there is no specific values where a control goes from compensating to effect, and in each case there isn't even a specific point where it goes from one to the other. It varies a lot depending on the type of image and how good the original exposure is, and it also depends on what you consider to be a natural image.
A reasonable value for some controls (for example contrast), can vary very much from one image to the next, while others (for example local contrast) usually lies within a small range.
One way to see what effect a control has is to push it way into the range where you know it's beyond just compensating. That gives you an idea of what exactly the control does to the image, and what to look for when determining if you use it too much. If you for example push the local contrast too far in either direction, you get halo effects around bright and dark items in the image.
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