NYC skyline HDR.

VersusNYC

I took this shot of the downtown Manhattan area while at Governors Island this weekend. I have been working hard on my Photoshop/Photomatix skills.

HDR/Tonemapping done on Photomatix. Some cloning and levels done on CS3. I am trying to keep away from that horrible overcooked look a lot of HDRs tend to have. C+C appreciated.

Awais Yaqub

Very nice but i think it will be better to give buildings more room. But it still works very well

VersusNYC

I could of probably composed the shot with more buildings in it but i just love clouds . Thanks for the words Awais.

Richard

VersusNYC wrote:

I could of probably composed the shot with more buildings in it but i just love clouds . Thanks for the words Awais.

Well, they certainly are nice clouds. As a skyline shot, I agree with Awais that more emphasis on the buildings would help. I share your distaste for over the top HDR processing, but I think you should have paid more attention to what was happening in the shadows of the buildings. There's not much detail there, less than I would expect from HDR processing. In fact, the buildings seem a bit blurry. You might have gotten a better result with a single exposure metered on the sky.

dlplumer

Awais Yaqub wrote:

Very nice but i think it will be better to give buildings more room. But it still works very well

DaddyO

I can see why you like the sky in this one. Its sweet.
The near / far aspects of the horizon work but I too was
looking for more foreground city being brought into the shot.
Nice HDR work.

jeffmeyers

dlplumer wrote:

dlplumer

I often get artifacts/banding in my photomatix skys, especially clear skys. Have you had this problem, and if so how do you deal with it. This particular sky has lots of clouds so it doesn't appear to be an issue.

Thanks,

Dan

jeffreaux2

Richard wrote:

Well, they certainly are nice clouds. As a skyline shot, I agree with Awais that more emphasis on the buildings would help. I share your distaste for over the top HDR processing, but I think you should have paid more attention to what was happening in the shadows of the buildings. There's not much detail there, less than I would expect from HDR processing. In fact, the buildings seem a bit blurry. You might have gotten a better result with a single exposure metered on the sky.

I agree...a lack of detail in there yet the blacks don't look deep enough. Odd.

VersusNYC

dlplumer wrote:

I often get artifacts/banding in my photomatix skys, especially clear skys. Have you had this problem, and if so how do you deal with it. This particular sky has lots of clouds so it doesn't appear to be an issue.

Thanks,

Dan

Dan what you want to do is use the loupe to zoom into a problem area, click on the Micro tab > turn down micro-smoothing and turn up micro contrast, and play with the sliders until you have adjusted to taste.

Keep in mind that micro smoothing controls the level of haloing(sp?) so the lower you have it set the more halo's you might get, especially if light smoothing is turned down to low/very low. Then i bring in the toned image into PS, do any clean up and do noise reduction using Dfine 2.0. I am still learning the ropes, but it works well for me. I am picking up a 17-40L tomorrow for some more wide angle HDR goodness.

The reason the buildings look a bit weird was that they had really bad artifacting/color noise that i couldnt quite get cleared up well so i just brought the darks up to hide weird effects.

dlplumer

VersusNYC wrote:

Dan what you want to do is use the loupe to zoom into a problem area, click on the Micro tab > turn down micro-smoothing and turn up micro contrast, and play with the sliders until you have adjusted to taste.

Keep in mind that micro smoothing controls the level of haloing(sp?) so the lower you have it set the more halo's you might get, especially if light smoothing is turned down to low/very low. Then i bring in the toned image into PS, do any clean up and do noise reduction using Dfine 2.0. I am still learning the ropes, but it works well for me. I am picking up a 17-40L tomorrow for some more wide angle HDR goodness.

The reason the buildings look a bit weird was that they had really bad artifacting/color noise that i couldnt quite get cleared up well so i just brought the darks up to hide weird effects.

Thanks very much