LR6: When the HDR boundary is obvious...

[dreed]

I did a two-picture HDR merge in LR6...

I was expecting an all of the dark rocks to be made better... but somehow the are selected by LR for HDR'ing was a little bit... wrong...

The images show noise after doing a 2 picture (-2, +2) HDR merge.

[Paul2660]

Do you have De-ghosting on?  If so this is what caused this.  Currently the de-ghosting pulls way way too much noise out of shadows.  This seems to happen for me mainly with De-ghosting on max, but at times I see it with any de-ghosting. 

If you had de-ghosting on, try the images again and make sure it's off and see if the noise issue goes away.

Paul C

[davidgp]

As Paul said, if you can avoided disable deghosting, it has the tendency of selecting always the darker scene with the most noisy part... In my personal experience


http://dgpfotografia.com

[TonyW]

Hopefully Adobe will pick this up and rectify soon

Not an answer to your problem but at least confirms that others having/had similar issues

http://www.ddroom.com/lightroom-cc-merge-to-hdr-ghosting-and-noise-issues/

https://forums.adobe.com/thread/1840602?start=0&tstart=0

[RikkFlohr]

To ensure Adobe 'picks this up' post a bug report with example images at the official site: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/categories/photoshop_family_photoshop_lightroom

[Paul2660]

It's been added for a while.   Still amazes me this was not caught in beta.   Effects my Canon 1ds Mikita and 5d MKII files the most. Both older cameras and it's possible this was only tested on more recent cameras.

Love the HDR tool and hope this issue can be addressed soon.

Also hope they work on the pano merge feature with HDR images where blown highlights are common.

http://forum.luminous-landscape.com/index.php?topic=108063.0


Paul C

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

Also hope they work on the pano merge feature with HDR images where blown highlights are common.

And the ability to remove Lateral Chromatic Aberrations before HDR and Pano stitching. After the merge, the CA is no longer centered and Radially symmetric adjustments make no sense. HDR tonemapping will further accentuate the colored aberrations.

Cheers,
Bart

[RikkFlohr]

If this is the reported thread: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-merge-to-hdr-creating-excessive-noise-in-shadows , it has had no response from the engineering staff and only one other user has bothered to click the me-too button.

The images in this thread illustrate the problem much better than the post on the Get Sat forum. I would recommend an additional post containing the images used here.

[Paul2660]

If this is the reported thread: https://feedback.photoshop.com/photoshop_family/topics/lightroom-merge-to-hdr-creating-excessive-noise-in-shadows , it has had no response from the engineering staff and only one other user has bothered to click the me-too button.

The images in this thread illustrate the problem much better than the post on the Get Sat forum. I would recommend an additional post containing the images used here.

Thanks for the heads up.

Will try to add some feedback later today.

Paul C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

Non-issue for non-Canon cameras

[Paul2660]

Actually I have found it an issue for all cameras, even the D810 at times, it just depends on the HDR images being worked.  My older Canon 1ds MKII and 5D MKII files have the issue the worst for sure.  But I have seen it with:

Fuji X-T1, Phase IQ160, Phase IQ260, Nikon D800 and D810. 

There also seems to be no reason when the issue crops up, but it will tend to show up just like the example.  And by turning off de-ghosting from Max seems to get rid of it most times, but I have found in LR HDR, you need de-ghosting on max if you have clouds moving through the series of scenes. 

Paul C

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

I'd venture an uneducated guess why this happens:

When we bracket, we usually vary shutter speed, keeping f/stop and ISO constant. Because of that the darkest frame has the highest shutter speed, and the least blurred movement. When we select high deghosting, the software selects the frame with the least movement, which happens to be the darkest frame, which happens to also have the highest amount of noise. Hence cameras with better dynamic range (i.e., less noise in shadows) tend to produce better results in HDR merge.

[IanSeward]

I'd venture an uneducated guess why this happens:

When we bracket, we usually vary shutter speed, keeping f/stop and ISO constant. Because of that the darkest frame has the highest shutter speed, and the least blurred movement. When we select high deghosting, the software selects the frame with the least movement, which happens to be the darkest frame, which happens to also have the highest amount of noise. Hence cameras with better dynamic range (i.e., less noise in shadows) tend to produce better results in HDR merge.

I believe you are correct.   

LR is the best "jack of all trades" program able to do basic Web, books, maps, hdr, pano etc.  I don't think you can expect an automated hdr or pano solution with little user options to do much better. Personally if I am going to bother to do a pano or hdr, I use Ptgui or Photomatix. However the programming in LR  to do these Q&D processes in raw is truly impressive.

Ian

[Slobodan Blagojevic]

... I don't think you can expect an automated hdr or pano solution with little user options to do much better. Personally if I am going to bother to do a pano or hdr, I use Ptgui or Photomatix. However the programming in LR  to do these Q&D processes in raw is truly impressive.

Correct.

With a rather complicated panorama, PTGui Pro was like putting a reading glasses on (well, at least for some of us): crisp detail, all lines corrected, vertical, etc., when compared with LR.

However... I am currently doing a lot of horizontal and vertical panoramas using a t/s lens, and LR does it admirably fast and simple, while PTGui gives me a crap collage of all three images in a single (i.e., non-panoarama) frame (granted, I tried vertical panos only). It is possible I didn't fiddle long enough to find a proper PTGui setting, but that is the very point: LR does it with one click and the end result looks good enough.