Mirror lake HDR

Nikolai

Inspired by other fellow dgrinners, decided to play with HDR a little.

Three RAW originals were taken +/- 1.33EV apart, merged to HDR, converted to RGB (equalize histogram) and then slightly touched up in PS.

Day was rather grey, sorry.

Mirror Lake HDR image:



Enjoy!

PS
Boy, do I miss the old good vertical Larges :cry

David_S85

Nik, could you post the other three that you used for the merge so we can see what the results would have been without the HDR processing?

System

I agree, I'd love to see all 3 exposures. Stunning final product for sure.

Nikolai

David,

David_S85 wrote:

Nik, could you post the other three that you used for the merge so we can see what the results would have been without the HDR processing?

Here you go:

Mirror Lake Sources: Three original files (all auto checks cleared, linear curve):



I must admit that I probably should've taken couple more exposures to enhance the range. Oh well, almost next time, eh

Cheers!

Nikolai

Truth,

truth wrote:

I agree, I'd love to see all 3 exposures. Stunning final product for sure.

Thank you, you are too kind! :
It's not me, it's the subject, I only pointed the camera and pressed the shutter (well, several times:-)
Anyways, original exposures are posted!

System

That's really cool. On my to do list for something to work on in the near future. Just need a proper subject.

David_S85

HDR sure helped the cloud show up in the final image.

You did good to take the three that you did. Definately added to the scene's final image. And it looks like you didn't get the traditional HDR dull low-contrast result. Did you enhance it after HDR to make it POP more?

Nikolai

Pop

David_S85 wrote:

HDR sure helped the cloud show up in the final image.

You did good to take the three that you did. Definitely added to the scene's final image. And it looks like you didn't get the traditional HDR dull low-contrast result. Did you enhance it after HDR to make it POP more?

Yes, a little. I remember Marc's comment about "incredibly flat images", so I didn't leave it like this.

First I cleaned the "light" part of water, since I didn't like the dirt, it was "spoiling the mirror". To do this, I made a rough selection (I used quick mask, but lasso would do just fine), copied it to a new layer, changed the blend mode to lighten and shifted the layer just a few pixels horizontally. All the little dark specks disappeared, but the few light ones doubled. Well, merge, another similar action, now in "darken" mode and shifted vertically - and my "mirror" became clear as a teardrop:-)

After that I simply added some saturation (+35), and that was it. It was a very grey day, after all, so I didn't want to go wild with contrast and lab curves.

HTH

USAIR

Nikolai wrote:

Yes, a little. I remember Marc's comment about "incredibly flat images", so I didn't leave it like this.

First I cleaned the "light" part of water, since I didn't like the dirt, it was "spoiling the mirror". To do this, I made a rough selection (I used quick mask, but lasso would do just fine), copied it to a new layer, changed the blend mode to lighten and shifted the layer just a few pixels horizontally. All the little dark specks disappeared, but the few light ones doubled. Well, merge, another similar action, now in "darken" mode and shifted vertically - and my "mirror" became clear as a teardrop:-)

After that I simply added some saturation (+35), and that was it. It was a very grey day, after all, so I didn't want to go wild with contrast and lab curves.

HTH

Thanks Nik for this have to give it a try
And your HDR turned out good too

Fred

Nikolai

Thanks, Fred!

USAIR wrote:

Thanks Nik for this have to give it a try
And your HDR turned out good too
Fred

Appreciate your stopping by!