Luminous Landscape Forum
Raw & Post Processing, Printing => Adobe Lightroom Q&A => Topic started by: Tony Jay on June 03, 2012, 05:42:59 am
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I have been experimenting with using Lr4.1 for 32-bit editing.
I generated 32-bit TIFF files from merge to HDR Pro and then stuck them back into Lr4.1.
One can use ALL the tools in the Develop module to play with them.
The results are startlingly good.
Particularly because all the usual tonal controls are available, and work in the usual ways, tonal manipulation of the HDR 32-bit image is unbelievably easy.
Considering the chest pain that using the tone curve in Merge to HDR Pro used to give me there really is no comparison now.
At the risk of offending the "kill the HDR brigade" use it and experiment.
There is now no excuse for bad results now.
BTW, I am sure that if one tried hard enough one could reproduce the grunge look so hated by the "kill the HDR brigade" but Lr4.1 certainly does not produce this look if one doesn't want it.
OK, back into my hole now.
Regards
Tony Jay
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I have since LR4 RC2 also played with Photoshop CS5 and CS6 HDR Pro and got mixed results. In some cases the result was absolutely very good and much better than any HDR program I have ever used (have about 4 different ones (not Photoshop)). The problem in some cases were that it seemed like clipped highlights were mixed with non-clipped highlight giving very odd colors in e.g. a sky. In other cases no problem. Since there are no parameters in Photoshop HDR Pro is this a bug in PS HDR Pro? Just to avoid misunderstandings I merged several exposures from shadows with good exposure up to one exposure with no clipped highlights.
In the cases where the above did not happen, the tone mapping in LR4 is really very good and it is possible to make completely natural looking images, so thanks for that, Adobe.
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I have since LR4 RC2 also played with Photoshop CS5 and CS6 HDR Pro and got mixed results. In some cases the result was absolutely very good and much better than any HDR program I have ever used (have about 4 different ones (not Photoshop)). The problem in some cases were that it seemed like clipped highlights were mixed with non-clipped highlight giving very odd colors in e.g. a sky. In other cases no problem. Since there are no parameters in Photoshop HDR Pro is this a bug in PS HDR Pro? Just to avoid misunderstandings I merged several exposures from shadows with good exposure up to one exposure with no clipped highlights.
In the cases where the above did not happen, the tone mapping in LR4 is really very good and it is possible to make completely natural looking images, so thanks for that, Adobe.
FWIW, I got similar results with Photoshop HDR Pro. Now, I usually give HDR Pro a shot and if results are unsatisfactory (usually with weird colors or artifacts) I open my files as layers and do the masking manually.
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It's a start, at least. At least LR can catalogue 32 bit TIFF files. Better if it could catalogue all 32 bit file formats. Don't care if I can't edit them but cataloguing would be good.
There are some drawbacks with the LR approach. One, it handles only TIFF files which are significantly larger than a 32 bit .hdr or .exr file. As a comparative, I had a 32 bit .hdr file I was looking at yesterday that was about 40MB. The same image saved in TIFF format was 140MB. For anyone who does a fair bit of HDR work that'll chew up hard drive space pretty quickly.
Second, for some reason LR seems to automatically adjust the white point of 32 bit images imported. I'd prefer that they be left untouched and allow me to adjust as I see fit.
Played with some the other day and agree that results can be quite good. Completely natural, which is good.
It's a good first step but there's still a way to go.
@Hans, what do you mean there are no parameters in HDR Pro?
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Second, for some reason LR seems to automatically adjust the white point of 32 bit images imported. I'd prefer that they be left untouched and allow me to adjust as I see fit.
Played with some the other day and agree that results can be quite good. Completely natural, which is good.
It's a good first step but there's still a way to go.
@Hans, what do you mean there are no parameters in HDR Pro?
I meant that there are no parameters to adjust the blending process and it was more a point to make that since there are no way to steer the blending process I would think it is a bug in Photoshop HDR pro what looks like clipped data gets mixed with non clipped data. If that's really what's happening I don't know but the results sometimes simply do not look good. I can't imagine that any adjustment of the individual RAW files that go into the HDR blending could be a way to steer this process to avoid this problem, however adjusting e.g. WB could be for the final image.
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Using your scenario as the basis, there are no 'parameters' in Photomatix either.
Insofar as adjustments to the RAW files, whatever adjustments you make to the RAW files in either LR or ACR gets incorporated into the images that are merged in HDR Pro.
Could you post an example of what you're referring to as 'clipped data gets mixed with non-clipped'?
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I came back to this after some travel and I tried to reconstruct my previous issue and I don't see it now. I don't remember which updates came between that time and now, so maybe updates to Lightroom, ACR 7 and Photoshop CS6 has removed it. If I come across one example where there is a problem I will post it.
So now that it seems the issue is gone, I can only say that Photoshop HDR Pro and Lightroom 4.1 continue to amaze me. This is the most natural HDR processing I have ever seen. After merge in Photoshop and creating a 32bil file simply drag down the highlights slider and drag the shadows slider up, adjust exposure amd contrast and there is the start on refining the HDR image.
An example of a merge of 5 exposures and tone mapped only in Lightroom 4.1
http://www.hanskrusephotography.com/Landscapes/Landscapes-around-the-World/6999416_grFRrS#!i=1926970496&k=F65s4tZ&lb=1&s=A (http://www.hanskrusephotography.com/Landscapes/Landscapes-around-the-World/6999416_grFRrS#!i=1926970496&k=F65s4tZ&lb=1&s=A)
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...I can only say that Photoshop HDR Pro and Lightroom 4.1 continue to amaze me. This is the most natural HDR processing I have ever seen.
Actually, the original research for the tone mapping in PV 2012 was done for HDR tone mapping according to Eric Chan. That research was written about in this LR Journal post: Magic or Local Laplacian Filters (http://blogs.adobe.com/lightroomjournal/2012/02/magic-or-local-laplacian-filters.html)? The SIGGRAPH 2011 paper is here: Local Laplacian Filters: Edge-aware Image Processing with a Laplacian Pyramid (http://people.csail.mit.edu/sparis/publi/2011/siggraph/). Eric said it was relatively easy to make the jump from HRD to normal raw processing with the PV 2012 controls and it was a natural to add the 32-bit support for TIFFs in ACR/LR.
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I watched the Julianne Kost video on modifying 32-bit files in Lr4.1 and thought I’d give it a try. I am using CS4, which created a couple of minor issues, but essentially it works. (As does the panorama tool.)
My question is regarding the HDR feature within CS4. No matter what I do, I seem to always get tiff files that are very dark and the extremities of the tone curve always seem to be outside of the available exposure range – exactly what you are trying to avoid in an HDR. I messed around with setting the white point before creating the 32-bit file, but all the results are quite unacceptable. Taking the best exposure of a bracket set seems to yield better results than what I am getting from the HDR conversion results of three images.
I know that CS4 is probably not the best HDR software available, but I don’t really do this a lot and can’t justify one of the better packages. I’m just looking to pick up some exposure at either end of the normal range.
Any suggestions on how to make this work better?
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The picture I linked to in the post above looked like this when imported back into Lightroom as a 32bit HDR file from Photoshop.
(http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/144340927.jpg)
and the adjustments made for the link above was the following
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Well, Hans, I have to say that is pretty consistent with what I get - shadow slider way up, highlights way down. However, I notice that your histogram is fully within bounds. In the images I tried they were blown out on both ends even though the middle image of the set is actually in bounds. (I'd have included a copy but I tossed the image out.) ???
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I'm a little surprised about your comments on the histogram since I didn't include a histogram ;)
Anyway, unless the problem is with CS4 you should get results like mine. Try some examples.
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The historgram is shown in copy of your Lr controls. Technically it's not the histogram but the curves graph, but it clearly show that all of your image is within bound of complete under and over exposure.
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The historgram is shown in copy of your Lr controls. Technically it's not the histogram but the curves graph, but it clearly show that all of your image is within bound of complete under and over exposure.
The curves does not show anything about the histogram! I chose the medium contrast, but otherwise the tone curve was not touched at all. All adjustments were in the basic panel. So let me show you the real histogram before and after adjustment:
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The curves does not show anything about the histogram!
Hans,
The curves panel does show a histogram in addition to the curve - it is shown in the background to the curve as a grey image slighter lighter than the background.
However, using the parametric curve it doesn't show individual colour channels - I am not certain, but I believe that it shows a luminance histogram with the corrections from the basic panel but without the effects of the curve (if you change the curve the histogram does not change).
Using the point curve in RGB mode the behaviour is the same as the parametric curve, but if the red green or blue point curves are selected the appropriate histogram is shown and the histogram is slightly coloured with the selected colour, rather than grey.
The separate colour point curves was only introduced in LR 4 whereas the histogram behind the parametric curve goes back to LR1.
Regards,
Nigel
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Oh, I see what you refer to. I always look at the RGB histogram at the top, so didn't pay attention to this.
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So I did some quick re-testing this evening. Attached are two screen shots. One is the merge to HDR directly from CS4, saved as a 32bit TIFF file. Notice the historgram - it's total junk. Most of the data is outside of the exposure range. I then re-did the same images, this time converting to 16bit, which allows me adjust the exposure and gamma before saving as a TIFF file. This is better in the Lr histogram but still not very good.
However, in order to get the second results I had to convert 16bit which, as I understand it, kind of defeats the point of working with 32bit files in Lr. How do you get around this?
(Ignore that boat scene on the right - that is the screen saver on my second monitor. Didn't know that would would be in a screen shot!)
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I can try it out, if you like. Send the RAW files to me, one per e-mail message should work. My e-mail is hans@hanskruse.com.
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Hans: I sent you the files; knock yourself out!
Here is what I get:
The file 32bit image.jpg is the output from the HDR conversion before saving as a TIFF - looks pretty good.
332bit image after conversion.jpg is the image after saving as a TIFF in CS4 - it's gone dark.
32bit unedited in Lr.jpg is the TIFF opened in Lr and you can see that the histrogram is blown out so badly that you really can't fully recover the image.
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Hans: I sent you the files; knock yourself out!
I used Lightroom 4.1 and Photoshop CS6. I select the three DNG files and right click and choose edit -> Merge to HDR Pro in Photoshop. Photoshop opens op and I choose 32bit and click ok and close the edit window in Photoshop after this operation and go back to Lightroom 4.1 where the resulting TIFF file is automatically imported and ready for the final tone mapping in Lightroom.
Here is the result I get:
(http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/144380535/original.jpg)
You can see it here too http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/144380535/original (http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/144380535/original)
The settings were and a grad filter to lift the shadows a little more.
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Well that certainly looks better. As noted, I am using CS4, not CS6, so that may be part of my problem. What I really need to understand is why the merged image looks good and has a good histogram, but the saved TIFF image becomes so dark and has a histogram that pushes all the data to the extremes of the exposure range.
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Download a CS6 trial and try with that. You should get exactly the same result as I did.
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OK. I downloaded CS6 and went through the process, even watching Julianne's video again. What happens is that Lr says that it can't display an "unsupported bit depth" (32-bit). I don't think that is supposed to be happening. Is there something I need to do with Lr to enable this? The only other thing that may be a factor is that I did not upgrade the camera RAW plug in as it would only be usable with the CS6 trial. Any suggestions? ???
I think I found an answer http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/2012/06/creating-32-bit-hdr-images-in-lightroom-4-1.html. Change file to tif -momentary memory loss. I had to do that with CS4 as well.
The attached image is the file right out of CS6 without modification. No surprise - it looks like the one you did. What I still don't understand is why CS4 is making the image so dark when it does the conversion. Up until that point the process is the same and Lr4 has no difficulties with the merged CS4 file.
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Yes the HDR file needs to be saved as a 32-bit TIFF.
This TIFF is then reimported back into Lr4 and edited at one's leisure.
Regards
Tony Jay
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A relevant question might be, which program, LR or ACR, actually produces the 32bit files. I have a feeling that it is ACR and that LR cannot create a 32 bit file.
I sure wish that it could.
Alan
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OK. I downloaded CS6 and went through the process, even watching Julianne's video again. What happens is that Lr says that it can't display an "unsupported bit depth" (32-bit). I don't think that is supposed to be happening. Is there something I need to do with Lr to enable this? The only other thing that may be a factor is that I did not upgrade the camera RAW plug in as it would only be usable with the CS6 trial. Any suggestions? ???
Do you have the Lightroom 4.1 final release? Also do you open CS6 from Lightroom via selecting the images? The if you do not have ACR7 it is important that you let Lightroom render the image. When you save in CS6 save as 32bit, of course and when back in Lightroom it will handle the 32bit file.
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A relevant question might be, which program, LR or ACR, actually produces the 32bit files. I have a feeling that it is ACR and that LR cannot create a 32 bit file.
I sure wish that it could.
Alan
It is CS6 that does the HDR Pro merge. ACR or Lightroom cannot do this and if you read about this, you will see clearly that it is CS6 that makes the 32bit HDR file and Lightroom supports it. So you do the tone mapping in Lightroom 4.1.
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The attached image is the file right out of CS6 without modification. No surprise - it looks like the one you did. What I still don't understand is why CS4 is making the image so dark when it does the conversion. Up until that point the process is the same and Lr4 has no difficulties with the merged CS4 file.
Well that is a surprise! You have no adjustments in the basic panel, so where did you tone map it?
As I said earlier on and showed as well, the file will look very dark in Lightroom when you bring it in from Photoshop and then you need to do the tone mapping in LR where I showed you the adjustments.
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A relevant question might be, which program, LR or ACR, actually produces the 32bit files. I have a feeling that it is ACR and that LR cannot create a 32 bit file.
Neither.
The 32-bit file is generated in PS.
Regards
Tony Jay
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Hans:
I'm pretty sure that the issue is with CS4. The steps for creating the 32-bit image are exactly the same for CS4 and CS6. The only difference in Lr that I can see is that if you do a control-s in CS6 it automatically imports to LR. I think with CS4 you have to still do an import or folder synchronize to get Lr to find the image.
Once Lr has the image, from either version of CS, the tone mapping and corrections are the same. The problem is that CS4 creates very dark images. I tried some other series and rearranging the files so that the order of the exposed images was different, neither made any difference. The merged file in CS4 looks good until you complete the process and create the 32-bit TIFF file. Then it is too dark. If you create a 16-bit TIFF you can change the exposure and gamma and make the image better, but still not good.
I think the basic issue is with the HDR feature of CS4, though searching around the web, I was not able to find any commentaries about this issue. CS4 has been around for quite a while. One would suppose that if it had a serious flaw in the HDR function there would be some dialog about it.
Also, I've been doing my HDR conversions with .dng files. If I have time, I'll try coverting them to .psd files before running automate/HDR and see if that makes any difference.
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I cannot really comment on HDR with CS4, only that with CS6 it works really well and despite some images where I had some problems earlier on (especially color shift in overexposed areas of those exposed for the shadows), they now see to have gone away almost. I still see color shift on HDR where the sun is included and all exposures are overexposed close to the sun, e.g. clouds. So instead of replacing these areas with pure white they are not.
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Neither.
The 32-bit file is generated in PS.
Regards
Tony Jay
I don't understand how PS can generate the 32-bit file. From what does it do the generation?
Thanks for your help on this.
Alan
Edit: I still don't understand how it works, but it certainly seems to work fine with LR4.1 and CS5.
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Two or more exposures are merged in Photoshop HDR Pro. The result is stored as a 32bit HDR file.
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I have since LR4 RC2 also played with Photoshop CS5 and CS6 HDR Pro and got mixed results. In some cases the result was absolutely very good and much better than any HDR program I have ever used (have about 4 different ones (not Photoshop)). The problem in some cases were that it seemed like clipped highlights were mixed with non-clipped highlight giving very odd colors in e.g. a sky. In other cases no problem. Since there are no parameters in Photoshop HDR Pro is this a bug in PS HDR Pro? Just to avoid misunderstandings I merged several exposures from shadows with good exposure up to one exposure with no clipped highlights.
In the cases where the above did not happen, the tone mapping in LR4 is really very good and it is possible to make completely natural looking images, so thanks for that, Adobe.
Funny you mention this as just last night I experienced similar problems. Then I tried the same images in HDR EFEX and they turned out much better. I was trying to get just a blend of like 3, 1 stop brackets, nothing elaborate and I did not want the "HDR look". EFEX worked and gave me what I was after.
There is probably a better way to accomplish this but I do not remember how to blend in PS5. Maybe I should try LR4.