HDR process of a raw file

[bwana]

Sometimes no matter how a raw file is developed, I cannot bring out the appearance I want as easily as combining a light and a dark version as an hdr. Her for example is a picture of my dog taken with a sigma dp2-m. The jpg straight out of the camera is horrible. It was snowy, windy and cold so I didn't have much time to fiddle with the exposure. (Image 1) Developing the raw in Sigma photo pro yielded image 2. For this I lightened the shadows to 2.0 (maximum), increased the exposure to 1.5 and added X3fill to 1.6. Highlights were dropped to the minimum(-2). Iridient developer allowed me to get image 3. In all of these I wasn't happy with the contrast and tonality of the dog's fur. So i processed the raw into two tiffs - a light one to capture the highlights and a dark one. The next post has these two images (each post has a 4 image limit)

[bwana]

SNS-HDR gave image 4 and Expose 3 gave image 5. In both of these, there is more 3-dimensionality to the dog- perhaps because more micro contrast  give's the dog's fur more 'texture'. I prefer the dog in the SNS image but hate the weird and awful halo. no amount of photoshopping could make it right (and i was working with a 16 bit tiff file at original resolution). So I am looking for pointers on ridding myself of the 'HDR halo' It seems this is a common affliction and was a principal concern in a thread just started here a few days ago discussing photomatix. I tried photomatix but the results were underwhelming-anyway the demo version does not allow saving an image. I included a screen capture as the last image. It was grainier than all the other images even on my screen so I don't think that grain is the result of the screen capture.

A problem with combining two exposures of the same raw is that the HDR software asks for EV of each image. Well, Sigma photo pro just has these arbitrary numbers for the exposure parameters - and when I adjust exposure, shadows, highlights and x3fill light- there is no way to really know what i did to the image. I just guessed a 2 EV difference.

I am open to opinions on the process-of course I didn't tweak the images very much but if anyone would like to try their hand at it, here is a link with the original sigma raw file as well as the the two tiffs that i used to combine.

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/j33atgivz8tcrmq/VIuynhFUPh

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

A problem with combining two exposures of the same raw is that the HDR software asks for EV of each image. Well, Sigma photo pro just has these arbitrary numbers for the exposure parameters - and when I adjust exposure, shadows, highlights and x3fill light- there is no way to really know what i did to the image. I just guessed a 2 EV difference.

Hi,

SNS-HDR is very good at avoiding halos (possibly the best of all alternatives), provided you feed it good input. An exposure difference of 2 EV between brackets is too much. Steps of approx. 1 EV usually produce better results in any HDR tonemapping software, SNS is no different in that respect.

Of course using a single file is also not the same as actual multiple EV brackets, so you may need to experiment with what the Sigma software actually does to the output files, but do not make jumps that are too large.

Alternatively, you could try to produce a single lower contrast conversion to TIFF, and let SNS-HDR do it's magic on that.

Cheers,
Bart

[bwana]

Alternatively, you could try to produce a single lower contrast conversion to TIFF, and let SNS-HDR do it's magic on that.

Cheers,
Bart

wow, why does that work so well?

[Bart_van_der_Wolf]

wow, why does that work so well?

Maybe because it's a single exposure to begin with? The rest is very clever tonemapping.

Cheers
Bart

[Alan Klein]

Sometimes a picture isn't worth fiddling with.

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

I was looking at something similar in this article: http://echophoto.dnsalias.net/ekr/index.php/photoarticles/61-hdr-tone-mapping-on-ordinary-image

If you use Lightroom or ACR much of the same effect can be achieved by moving brightness to the left (50% or more) and lifting shadows (quite a lot) both brightness and shadows sliders apply some amount of tone mapping.


- So push brightness to the left (100% can be OK)

- Compensate with exposure for good highlights

- Adjust blacks (holding down alt or ctrl) so you get some pure blacks

- Move shadows slider to right

In the sample below I filled in extra shadows on the black dog using correction brush.

Best regards
Erik

[ErikKaffehr]

Hi,

Sometimes we like a picture or it is important to us.

Even if we don't like a picture a given technique can be used for other pictures.

Best regards
Erik

Sometimes a picture isn't worth fiddling with.