HDR: How to?

Mnemosyne

Can anyone direct me to a good website that offers tutorials on HDR? Or maybe just to a thread on here?

I did a search and got mostly people's HDR photos. I'm trying to learn how and it doesn't seem to be working.

dbd

Mnemosyne wrote:

Can anyone direct me to a good website that offers tutorials on HDR? Or maybe just to a thread on here?

I did a search and got mostly people's HDR photos. I'm trying to learn how and it doesn't seem to be working.

Try a google search like:

hdr photo filetype:pdf

More application notes are .pdfs than .jpgs.

Dale B. Dalrymple
http://dbdimages.com

Scrubs

Yeah I feel your going through I hope this helps.....


OK...

1. Download trial of Photomatix pro

2. Set your camera to capture raw mode

3. Set your camera to exposure bracket mode two whole stops (as far as it will go)

4. set to contious shooting mode (not single).

5. make sure your subject is not moving.

6 . Take (three bracketed) test exposures.

7. Examine each in the histogram Paying attention to the blinking (over exposed highlights. The -2 image should have no blinking
highlights. the 0 (normal exposure) should just have a couple of small specks of blinking and the +2 image should have quite a lot
of over expose blinking. If you are not getting these results ie not enough or too much blinking over exposure showing on the histogram
for the images mentioned. Compensate and adjust with the shutter speed setting or iso (not aperture) till you are satisfied.

8. Fire up Photomatix and click generate HDR and locate files. Make sure allign source images is checked if you dident use a tripod.
Don't pay attention to what the image looks like initially - it will probably look far from satisfactory.

9. Assumming you want the Dave Hill Harry potter surreal look -- Click on Tone mapping and adjust strength, saturation, and luminosity
to highest setting.

10. put light smoothing on a low setting (the lower it's set the more surreal)

11. Micro contrast set to a high setting

12. open up 'Tone Settings' And adjust white and black point until it looks something like to bring out shadow and highlight detail.
The Gamma setting adjusts overall brightness.

13. Open up 'Smothing settings' and adjust Micro smoothing to a low setting. Play with shadow and highlight smoothing to bring detail
out of sky etc.. The smoothing settings will also remove noise, at the expense of making your image look more 'normal'. but don't worry
this can be removed to a certain extent after.

14. These are all general guidelines.. There is not one setting fits all but this should get you in the ball park -- so make some tweaks to
suit image.

15. When happy save as 16 bit tiff and take into photoshop to remove any more noise you are not happy with with your favourite noise
removal filter.



Hope this helps

Mnemosyne

I was hoping to do that with photoshop

Scrubs

in that case, disregard what I said

Mnemosyne

I want to keep it as simple as possible and learn WHY and HOW it's done, before I start exploring 3rd party/plug-in/additional software

Scrubs

There is not a great deal of difference between the two it is just tone mapping - no presets in photomatix - I use both and can create acceptable results in either Photoshop and photomatix but prefer the latter.

What exactly is it you are struggling with? what look are you trying to achieve? I don't want to waste time writing how to do something in Photoshop just in case it is not what you are trying to achieve.

What are you not happy with about your current efforts?

dnwvictor

Hdr
Hi Mnemosyne
Few tips, myself I shoot quite a bit in HDR.
If you would like to achieve what is called Flickr look it really doesn't matter which tool you're using,
because basically you're trying to distort information in the file.
In order to achieve the look as close as possible to reality Photomatix is superior to PS.
Process of HDR itself has no set of rules, this is fully intuitive process.
Only shooting for HDR has to be done certain way.
Bracketing is must, proper bracketing is at least two stops, one stop bracketing has no advantage in HDR process.
You can find a lot of information about proper shooting and process itself on Uwe Steinmueller http://www.outbackphoto.com/.
If you decide to buy Photomatix you can get discount buying through this side.

Victor

redleash

Check out one of our members' sites: http://www.mjsphotographyonline.com/. Go to his Featured link and you'll see a gallery for HDR. Jason has some nice work and he has given me some good info on shooting HDR.

THe suggestion to try the demo Photomatix is a good one. I used the demo for a couple of weeks and then bought the software. I have not tried HDR in PS but everything I read says it is not as good as using one of the HDR products. There are also some very good books out; if you stick with it, it would be worth picking up a book or two.

The outbackphoto.com site is excellent.

anonymouscuban

Not really sure what you're trying to achieve but if you are wanting to get a good understanding of HDR processing in theory and get practical information on using the different Programs available, I highly recommend this book:

redleash

That's the book I have and I use it a lot!

anonymouscuban

Yeah... it's not one of those books that you read them once and that's it... it really becomes reference material.

Professional

All are HDR shots done on Photoshop only.

pathfinder

Nicely rendered.