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Author Topic: Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?  (Read 3674 times)

jfsavage

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Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?
« on: December 04, 2008, 03:30:20 pm »

I shoot a lot of images (~30%) using auto exposure bracketing for HDR use. I am trying to develop a reasonable workflow for handling these images and would appreciate any advice or input. I shoot 5 shot AEB with my Pentax K20D and 3 shot with my IR converted K100D. The key things I am looking for are to use batch processing wherever possible and to generate sample mapped files for evaluation with little effort.

1.   Copy files from camera to local disk
2.   Run exiftool to set keywords to indicate AEB. (Lightroom as appalling EXIF capabilities)
-  a.   exiftool.exe -if "$ExposureMode eq 'Auto bracket'" "-ExposureMode+>keywords" *.pef *.dng
3.   Load images into LR as normal
4.   Use a smart collection to identify the 3 and 5 shot AEB images that have not been processed and export them to a directory as original format.
5.   Update the exported files with a Keyword to indicate they have been processed
6.   Run Photomatix in batch mode, producing an HDR file and two TIFF files (compress and adapt)
a.   The two TIFF files are just for evaluation. They give you an idea of how the image will turn out for evaluation purposes.
7.   Load two TIFF files into LR, setting keyword to ‘HDR Processed’
8.   Move TIFF files through my normal rating system, except that discarded HDR TIFF files are deleted, not just marked to be ignored if they are not good enough
9.   To edit the HDR file, select the TIFF and use a custom .NET application that will locate the merged 32 bit file and open it in Photomatix for tweaking the mapping, producing a final TIFF
-  a.   If the 32 bit image is incorrectly merged, go back to the original files and remerge. (A custom .NET application should be able to find the original RAW files and start Photomatix with them. I’m not sure if I can do the same thing to load them into PhotoShop from .NET)
10.   Import final TIFF into LR, deleting temp copies
11.   Edit final TIFF in PhotoShop

This workflow does work, but is painful. Any suggestions?
« Last Edit: December 04, 2008, 03:31:34 pm by jfsavage »
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jfsavage

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Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?
« Reply #1 on: December 09, 2008, 11:11:22 am »

Well, my HDR workflow was way too cumbersome, so I decided to automate a lot of it. I have created a .NET application that will:

1 - Copy files from one directory tree to another (from camera to disk) and create a backup copy
2 - Parse the files and rename any auto bracketed files to "_AEB", as well as adding EXIF keywords to identify them as HDR
3 - Run photomatix from the command line, creating the .hdr and two .tif files
4 - Update the .tif files to add EXIF keywords to the .tif files to identify them as HDR results

I can now run the application to process all my images and then suck the results into Lightroom.

I've attached a screen shot and I can attach the source code if anyone wants a copy.

Jonathan
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Marlyn

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Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?
« Reply #2 on: December 09, 2008, 04:57:41 pm »

I'd love the source code please!

Being a .Net dev, and getting into HDR myself, this is somethng I'd like to play with.   (Recent trip, ~2500 out of 5000 frames taken, are part of a bracket set).

Your flow dosn't quite fit the way I process my images, but its close that I'm sure could modify it.     (I use Downloader-Pro to import, rename, backup and DNG my images).

The biggest thing would be using the app to process directories to pull out the HDR bracketing and flag them as such correctly.   Hmm, which I could probably run as a DL-Pro plug-in app actually (possibly).


Mark.
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jfsavage

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Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?
« Reply #3 on: December 10, 2008, 07:28:46 am »

Here is the source code - it was developed using Visual Studio 2008 Team, but I have tried it out on another machine with the free community version and it works fine.

Let me know if you have any questions.

Jonathan
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ptr727

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Re: Suggestions for a better HDR workflow?
« Reply #4 on: November 27, 2010, 01:39:23 am »

I'm wondering if posters in this thread has made any more progress on AEB / HDR automation?
E.g. updated tools, source, workflow?

P.
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