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Author Topic: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1  (Read 14100 times)

Tony Jay

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32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« on: June 03, 2012, 05:42:59 am »

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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Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #1 on: June 03, 2012, 09:56:31 am »

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.

francois

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #2 on: June 03, 2012, 12:03:20 pm »

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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Francois

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #3 on: June 03, 2012, 12:34:31 pm »

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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Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #4 on: June 03, 2012, 05:19:44 pm »

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.

RFPhotography

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #5 on: June 03, 2012, 06:34:42 pm »

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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Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #6 on: June 25, 2012, 02:50:13 pm »

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
« Last Edit: June 25, 2012, 03:00:46 pm by Hans Kruse »
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Schewe

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #7 on: June 25, 2012, 07:51:32 pm »

...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? The SIGGRAPH 2011 paper is here: Local Laplacian Filters: Edge-aware Image Processing with a Laplacian Pyramid. 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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Remo Nonaz

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #8 on: June 26, 2012, 09:52:56 am »

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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Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #9 on: June 26, 2012, 11:34:28 am »

The picture I linked to in the post above looked like this when imported back into Lightroom as a 32bit HDR file from Photoshop.



and the adjustments made for the link above was the following

Remo Nonaz

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #10 on: June 26, 2012, 09:25:55 pm »

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 really enjoy using old primes on my m4/3 camera. There's something about having to choose your aperture and actually focusing your camera that makes it so much more like... like... PHOTOGRAPHY!

Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #11 on: June 27, 2012, 05:23:32 am »

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.

Remo Nonaz

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #12 on: June 27, 2012, 08:47:28 am »

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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I really enjoy using old primes on my m4/3 camera. There's something about having to choose your aperture and actually focusing your camera that makes it so much more like... like... PHOTOGRAPHY!

Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #13 on: June 27, 2012, 08:56:15 am »

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:

Nigel Johnson

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #14 on: June 27, 2012, 04:43:38 pm »

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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Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #15 on: June 27, 2012, 04:51:25 pm »

Oh, I see what you refer to. I always look at the RGB histogram at the top, so didn't pay attention to this.

Remo Nonaz

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #16 on: June 27, 2012, 08:26:31 pm »

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!)
« Last Edit: June 27, 2012, 08:28:19 pm by Remo Nonaz »
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I really enjoy using old primes on my m4/3 camera. There's something about having to choose your aperture and actually focusing your camera that makes it so much more like... like... PHOTOGRAPHY!

Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #17 on: June 28, 2012, 03:51:09 am »

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.

Remo Nonaz

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #18 on: June 28, 2012, 07:33:04 am »

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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I really enjoy using old primes on my m4/3 camera. There's something about having to choose your aperture and actually focusing your camera that makes it so much more like... like... PHOTOGRAPHY!

Hans Kruse

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Re: 32-bit editing in Lr4.1
« Reply #19 on: June 28, 2012, 08:31:20 am »

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:



You can see it here too http://www.pbase.com/hkruse/image/144380535/original

The settings were and a grad filter to lift the shadows a little more.

« Last Edit: June 28, 2012, 08:56:23 am by Hans Kruse »
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