HDR photography

Hi, it's me again.

I think the forum should become more active (eventually will become more active, it just needs more users; anyway ...) so IMO everyone has to post (no spam though).

So ... HDR photography. I've made some shots over the last week and got some responses on this site, asking which techniques I used.

Well in most of my HDRs I had one RAW shot which I opened in Photoshop and then I processed then with a filter called Tone Mapping (which is a part of the well known HDR processing application Photomatix). The results very good, but I didn't achieve what on some of the images found on the internet is achieved. So I tried making the "ultimate" HDR, combined of three RAW images with different exposure. With that, you're able to anything and anywhere (by that I mean whether you process pictures in Photoshop or in Photomatix, the results are great).

So, are you practicing HDR? What techniques do you use?

Tags: HDR, photoshop

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Permalink Reply by Richard Schneider on November 26, 2007 at 9:43am

I have been thinking about getting Photomatix for while now and just haven't gotten around to it. The kind of HDR I do is very simple and it usually just combines two exposures in photoshop to make sure the foreground and background are evenly exposed.

Also when you use three exposures, do just use exposure bracketing to capture the different amounts of light, and if so, how many steps are they seperated by?

Is Photomatix easy to use? do you just give it the images and it does everything?

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Permalink Reply by Eugene Madison on November 26, 2007 at 9:48am

Here are a couple images that inspired me to start pursuing HDR:
Times Square by Trey Ratcliff
The Lighthouse by Matthew Spolin
And New York City by Paulo Barcellos Jr.

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Permalink Reply by Jernej Fink on November 26, 2007 at 10:12am

@Richard, as I said, most of the time I just take one RAW image and then process it in PS.

Once I took 3 RAW shots with exposure bracketing, I used 2 steps difference (-2,0,+2) but it's very hard even if you use a tripod. Because when you press the shutter, you move some camera for a bit and when shooting in bad light conditions, ghosting appears. That's why I'm considering buying a remote control or something like that. Or the cheapest way would be to just improve creating HDRIs from one RAW shot.

Photomatix ... well, I've been using this application too, but ... well: as told, I take one RAW picture and process it in PS without needing to change exposures via CameraRaw. But when I try to edit a picture in Photomatix, I have to open the RAW in PS and change the Exp. to -2, save it as TIFF, then as 0 and again save it and then as +2. So I get three pictures which I open in Photomatix under HDR -> Generate. The processing time is shorter than in Photoshop, but the result is not brilliant and you have to do the Tone Mapping thing - which is available also as a plugin for PS.

But you have to try, get a demo or something and ... create. You can get astonishing results.

@Eugene, yes, I happen to use the last image as my desktop background. Can you show us some of your results?

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Permalink Reply by Davers on December 12, 2007 at 8:09am

Recently I made a HRD with 5 images from Niagara Falls.

All images were seperated by 1. ev ranging from -2 to +2.

Instead of taking RAW and lowering ev in pp, 5 images were taken separately and small adjustments were made in photosuite.

Results turned out amazing, used highlights and shadows mode for a second HDR that really improves the picture.