Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Digital Image Processing => Topic started by: walter.sk on July 17, 2009, 12:03:02 pm
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I have been reluctant to get Photomatix, as very little I have seen in the way of HDR images looks "real." Most have halos, or color that is "off," or in other ways looks artificially processed. While that is OK for a surrealistic effect, I wanted HDR for, say, a landscape scene that is just beyond the dynamic range of my 1DII.
I tried the "Tone Compression" option and found that it really did not do the job for me, despite what most Photomatix users recommend. I found a tutorial from 6/25/09 by Mat Kozlowski on the NAPP website that uses the Detail Enhancer settings but leaves most of them at the defaults. He then imports the resultant tiff into Lightroom or Photoshop to adjust the contrast, saturation, etc.
I tried his method on an image using exposure compensation of +/- 3 stops, and the results were better than anything I could get using the Tone Compression method.
Unfortunately, the tutorial requires logging on to the NAPP site, so those who do not belong are out of luck here. But for those who can log on, follow his logic and method.
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I tried the "Tone Compression" option and found that it really did not do the job for me, despite what most Photomatix users recommend. I found a tutorial from 6/25/09 by Mat Kozlowski on the NAPP website that uses the Detail Enhancer settings but leaves most of them at the defaults. He then imports the resultant tiff into Lightroom or Photoshop to adjust the contrast, saturation, etc.
I tried his method on an image using exposure compensation of +/- 3 stops, and the results were better than anything I could get using the Tone Compression method.
Unfortunately, the tutorial requires logging on to the NAPP site, so those who do not belong are out of luck here. But for those who can log on, follow his logic and method.
NAPP user's area (http://www.photoshopuser.com/members/?page=view&id=hdr-feature)
Are those tutorials the same as those on YouTube?
HDR Part One (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKh554XWD0)
HDR Part Two (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFwpN-NF36Y)
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I have been reluctant to get Photomatix, as very little I have seen in the way of HDR images looks "real." Most have halos, or color that is "off," or in other ways looks artificially processed. While that is OK for a surrealistic effect, I wanted HDR for, say, a landscape scene that is just beyond the dynamic range of my 1DII.
I tried the "Tone Compression" option and found that it really did not do the job for me, despite what most Photomatix users recommend. I found a tutorial from 6/25/09 by Mat Kozlowski on the NAPP website that uses the Detail Enhancer settings but leaves most of them at the defaults. He then imports the resultant tiff into Lightroom or Photoshop to adjust the contrast, saturation, etc.
I tried his method on an image using exposure compensation of +/- 3 stops, and the results were better than anything I could get using the Tone Compression method.
Unfortunately, the tutorial requires logging on to the NAPP site, so those who do not belong are out of luck here. But for those who can log on, follow his logic and method.
For a natural HDR, try PhotoResampling.
jacopo
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Are those tutorials the same as those on YouTube?
HDR Part One (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dbKh554XWD0)
HDR Part Two (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zFwpN-NF36Y)
The second link is similar to the tutorial on the NAPP website, although not as clear and refined.
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For a natural HDR, try PhotoResampling.
jacopo
Too late! I already bought Photomatix. I will check out PhotoResampling anyway.
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I've recently been playing with Photomatix and find that it takes awhile to get used to what the controls do. I find that that you can get quite nice results along with over the top effects, which I don't care to much for. There's a place for those effects, just not that many IMHO.
I recently came across a Russel Brown tutorial on a faux HDR effect form a single shot, and it looked interesting.
http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/FauxHDR_SM.mov (http://av.adobe.com/russellbrown/FauxHDR_SM.mov)
It's a 10mb quicktime video so give it some time to load. He goes through one pic to show what he does(it's all in ACR and PS), than shows a before and after on a few more images.
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I recently came across a Russel Brown tutorial on a faux HDR effect form a single shot, and it looked interesting.
That's very funny. The use of the word "enhanced" without any irony was brilliant ;-)
The worry is that some people might actually take it all seriously.
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I find that Picturenaut (http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/) along with Photoshop and a film-emulation filter such as Alien Skin Exposure 2 worked great together to give a high dynamic range, yet non cartoonish image.
I wrote a short blog entry on my usual workflow for HDR a while back http://hxpham.xanga.com/691624851/uci-student-services-ii/ (http://hxpham.xanga.com/691624851/uci-student-services-ii/)
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Tried Picturenaut !
Seems promising after only 3 trials !
Thierry
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I find that Picturenaut (http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/) along with Photoshop and a film-emulation filter such as Alien Skin Exposure 2 worked great together to give a high dynamic range, yet non cartoonish image.
I wrote a short blog entry on my usual workflow for HDR a while back http://hxpham.xanga.com/691624851/uci-student-services-ii/ (http://hxpham.xanga.com/691624851/uci-student-services-ii/)
Well, I tried Picturenaut and found it superior to Photomatix in terms of speed, real-time monitoring of changes, and ease of use. So far, the few trial images I tried really worked nicely, but I have been able to get more control in PHotomatix. The downside is that Picturenaut does not work with RAW images.
The attitude of the developers reminds me of the Panorama Tools folks, with Helmut Dersch (I think that was his name) where the interest was to provide excellent software as an onlgoing project.
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Well, I tried Picturenaut and found it superior to Photomatix in terms of speed, real-time monitoring of changes, and ease of use. So far, the few trial images I tried really worked nicely, but I have been able to get more control in PHotomatix. The downside is that Picturenaut does not work with RAW images.
It has another, more pressing, downside for those of us who use Macs, of course.
Jeremy
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It has another, more pressing, downside for those of us who use Macs, of course.
Jeremy
I downloaded both Photomatix Basic and the trial of the full version, tried them and preferred the Basic one. My issue with Photomatix Pro is that there are too many options and therefore too many ways to get it wrong. I like to keep things simple and my way is to create the hdr from RAW images(as few as possible to reduce noise), take the pic to Tonemapping but do nothing to it, save it as a 16bit TIFF and then do the usual contrast, saturation, sharpen etc in Elements. The tonemapping part is a joke anyway as it only allows contrast and brightness adjustments. I`ve been quite happy with the results but I do accept that Hdr software is not always the best way to handle high contrast. I like the Basic version because I am unable to get my head round all this layers and masks stuff.