First try at HDR

augustmelody

I hope this thread is "okay" here.

Went out yesterday for several hours with some new gear to try and learn to use, finally packed up and drove home and came across this 3 minutes from my house.

I've never played much in the HDR world, I think I went a bit overboard but it sure was fun. C&C is more than welcome!



Edit:

Richard

This is a fine place for posting HDR. Not to worry.

Not bad for a first try, I'd say. I'm glad to see that you kept the colors reasonable. The main fault I see is that you have strong halos where the trees meet the sky and also around the reflections in the water. But you used the technique well to bring out detail in the nearest boat and the dock.

augustmelody

Thanks for the quick response!

Can you offer me any suggestions on how to remedy that? The clouds/trees were my biggest obstacle and frustration in this one and I'd like to hope that this isn't the finished product. As I mentioned, total newbie to HDR work but I look forward to learning more!

augustmelody

I have to add that I am shocked to see how much detail is possible, even in very low light... Have to give my wonderful new 7D some credit for that too! But this was taken at about 8:30 PM, well after sunset/dusk, I wasn't actually expecting to get anything usable, but the fog over the water was just too beautiful to pass up.

Richard

I'm far from an expert and only know a little about CS5's HDR tools. What software are you using? Are you working from multiple exposures or multiple conversions of the same raw frame?

augustmelody

I'm using the CS5 HDR Merge Pro and I have the Photomatix Tone Mapping filter in CS5 but did not use that on this shot. I am working from 3 exposures.

Richard

Hmmm...maybe play around a bit with the edge glow radius and strength and the detail setting? Did you do any further processing in PS after creating the merged image? The halos look like the sort of thing that can happen when overdoing high-pass or HIRALOAM USM sharpening. Dunno. There are quite a few HDR experts on the forum, so hopefully one of them will jump in with something a little more solid.

Photostudent92

I know it does not have to deal with photography but that one boat looks like it was ment to be in a video game lol. Keep up the good work and yeah my dad has been messing around with HDR as well and he loves it some times when i see his photos i drool like i wish i had a eye for that and could do that on my lap top i am on now lol.

augustmelody

Thanks for the kind words! I'm certainly going to continue playing with this one.

Photostudent92

Yeah I think I am going to keep playing with my shots as well and see what I can get out of them ugh its really hard to do but if I am boar then I can do that as well. But anyways keep up the wonderful work.

augustmelody

Tried another today, added to original post.

Photostudent92

What is the name of the post?

augustmelody

Take a look in the "landscapes" forum.

knapph

Greetings from up the road in Portland.

I prefer a natural look and this is what I do to get it when I am working with bracketed exposures. What I have found that works well for me is to use only the default conversion in Photomatix and do the finishing of the shot in Photoshop. I open the raw images directly in Photomatix and use only one of the defaults to merge the individual shots. Which one depends on how things look. I do not mess around with any of the sliders. I open the merged image in PS as a Smart Object. Double click on the Smart Object to open the image in Camera Raw. Use camera raw to do the heavy lifting processing on the image. Working on the colors using luminosity in the HSL tab is a good approach. Close camera raw and back to PS for any finishing that may be needed.

Getting halos around things sticking up into the sky can be helped by insuring one of your shots is mostly black (works when using the above processing approach).

Hope this helps.

Knapp Hudson