Thread: Matt's HDRs.

Yep. You might wanna use the 0.7ev setting to notice the difference. 0.3ev may be too subtle.

Messed about with photoshop and photomatix today, its amazing how much more detail you can get messing about with tonemapping. This is not a true HDR as I only had one exposure to play with, but here is the result:

Original



Tone Mapped



Looks like I have a new way to waste hours on the laptop! Thanks for the inspiration Matt, (I think??)

Tim

Yes I too had another crack at the HDR today with a photo I took this morning

Before



After



I don't know what you guys think but I feel its taken the flatness out of the pic....I like it anyway

Assuming your pic is neither under or over exposed; can you take one raw pic, create a separate lighter and darker pic, then create a HDR from the 3?

you can do that with in photomatix! take the one pic and then change the values on the other two (as it gives you the option to do this if you only export one pic to the program)....but to be honest I would rather bracket like I did to get the picture above.

the before pic is a 0 exposure it was then generated with a -2 pic and a +2 pic exposure. I was told once that is probably better to go 2stops and I agree you get much more of the light and dark areas in..

Another one from Cambodia, 3x exposure HDR of a sunrise, and lightroom colour change. Kind of like the look of this, sort of makes it look old fashion.

Have decided that sunrise's/sunset's need minium of 5x exposures! which is a pain on my camera!




Matt.

Originally Posted by WhiteD3

Assuming your pic is neither under or over exposed; can you take one raw pic, create a separate lighter and darker pic, then create a HDR from the 3?

Yes you can. However, you aren't adding data which wasn't there. In a true HDR you are taking a wide range of data from multiple images and compressing it into one.

The raw file has the full dynamic range in it but you are limited by how much you can display on your monitor - which is generally an 8 bit device. So HDR is an easy way of dropping the data you don't need and compressing it to the range you can display, bringing both extremes of highlight and shadow into view. They were always there, but your monitor couldn't display it.

The harder way is to use dodging, burning, masks, grad filters, etc. in PS to do the same thing. All these techniques do is make the most of the range that is there.

However, if you want the surreal look of HDR you can use that technique.

In my testing I'm happier with the natural look of using the manual tools on a single exposure RAW for some shots and the surreal HDR for others.

Cheers, Steve

My first HDR. Just took 4 shots (freehand) of the dog on the bed. Dark coloured dog on a cream fleece throw.

Originals have Cooper in good detail but the fleece is whited out, through to fleece in good details and Cooper as a black outline!!!



I need to get some better quality originals to play with, these were taken quick as he never sits still for long once the camera is out.