Photo editing question

[imeg]

Apologies if this is in the wrong section of the site but was hoping someone with photo editing knowledge could assist...

I used a drone to take this RAW photo of a lighthouse and as part of its design you can see the lighthouse has many horizontal 'lines' all the way up. These lines look a bit 'faded' especially down the left hand side of the lighthouse where the sun is hitting it. I am trying to edit the photo so that these lines become more prominent/darker and easier to see but I don't know how.

I have selected the lighthouse using the selection tool then experimented by changing different values (e.g. exposure, brightness, contrast, shadows/highlights etc) but with no luck. I have tried in the develop and photo personas too. The closest I got to making these lines more visible unfortunately also turned the entire lighthouse a dark grey but I was wanting to keep the lighthouse white and only darken the lines. 

Does anyone know how to go about this? 

Thanks

 

 

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, imeg said:

... but I was wanting to keep the lighthouse white and only darken the lines.

If you already tried everything and the rest of the image should remain as is, then you can instead simply draw over the lines and enhance their horizontal length flow with a small setup and accordingly colored grey/black brush!

[smadell]

Doing this with just adjustments is admittedly difficult. I am including an attempt, and it involves a mask, blend ranges, and Levels and Curves adjustments to target the darkest tones in the bottom portion of the lighthouse. (I also added a Vibrance adjustment because the colors were kind of flat.) I am including the JPG (for display) and an .afphoto file for your inspection. Not the greatest, but it does bring out the dark lines without altering the whites too much. It also avoids having to fuss with lines/vectors, although that’s not a bad approach if you can make it work.

Edited Lighthouse.afphoto

[smadell]

One more thing…. If you have a raw file, you have a lot more wiggle room to play with. If the whites along the left side of the lighthouse are completely burned out, there is no getting them back. But, if you can get some detail in the whites (even if it flattens or darkens the rest of the image) that gives you a far better starting point. Working with an already-developed file in which there is no detail in those whites, though, you’ll never retrieve anything.

If you’re doing your raw development in Affinity, try setting the Assistant to NOT apply a tone curve automatically. This is the equivalent of using a “linear profile” and is a good first step toward recovering those whites. Also, when you’re done in the Develop persona, apply the changes to an embedded raw file rather than creating a pixel layer. This gives you the opportunity to go back to the Develop persona and actually work on the raw file instead of a developed version.

[NotMyFault]

Another easy method:

1. use the raw file, 
2. check the histogram, and use highlights slider to regain outblown areas as much as possible
3. develop
4. duplicate layer (or use merge visible to create rgb layer)
5. switch to tone map persona
6. move strength to 0
7. move local contrast up until you see the dark lines clearly
8. apply to get back into photo petsona
9. Now experiment with blend mode (darker color, darken) and blend range to affect only the dark lines and leave light areas unchanged
10. may add a mask or a vector shape to further restrict effect to left side of lighthouse

[RichardMH]

I think for your image if you really want to save it, the aproach is to make a selection of the right side of the lighthouse, flip it horizontally and blend it in witht he left hand side. A bit of work though. Very quick and dirty version.