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Author Topic: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape  (Read 8750 times)

ashikthomas.photography

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HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« on: August 08, 2014, 09:54:27 am »

I am just getting into landscape photography from Wedding photography and some HDR....i just want to know how most of you get such amazing dramatic mindblowing results...an inspiration would be Trey Ratcliff... I used Photoshop, Lightroom & HDR Efex for this...lotta time...what do you guys use??? thanks

https://scontent-a-mad.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/14178_343812105768138_7658650462605980183_n.jpg
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PeterAit

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #1 on: August 08, 2014, 11:11:42 am »

I must say that the photo you suggested is what I consider a horrid example of HDR. It is so blatantly fake and over-processed, I do not see how it can be considered attractive. But, different strokes and all that.

I did a lot with HDR out west last fall and am very happy with most of the results, this may be my fave. It was taken in a slot canyon in Utah using a D600 and a Sigma 35mm f/1.4. Three shots, handheld, one at the metered exposure and then 2 stops over and 2 stops under. The original raw files were combined in HDR Expose 3 and the resulting TIFF sent to Lightroom for final tweaking. So, the process is not really all that involved, although some people make it so (as they do with pano stitching).
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Alan Klein

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #2 on: August 08, 2014, 12:37:05 pm »

HDR tends to soak the contrast out of pictures, especially the blacks,  highlighting the mid-tones reducing the range of blacks to whites. 

I find that blacks and dark shadows are what adds interest to photos and makes them attractive to my eyes.  Why is it necessary to see every detail in the shadows just because we technically can do it?  When we look at a scene, we naturally look to the highlights and keep the shadows in the background of our minds.  When we open up the shadows, we present details and too much information that the brain isn't interested in looking at.   

Photography is art, or can be.  Unless there is an actual need to see shadow detail, it may be better to keep it darkened;  to subdue it making for a more attractive image to the brain.

Tony Jay

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #3 on: August 08, 2014, 06:14:38 pm »

For what it is worth I really like doing tonal manipulation with 32-bit files.
With regards to landscape images the great advantage is having all that information to play with in both shadows and highlights.
Being ale to precisely control highlights without blowing the highlights and to be able to "re-introduce" deep rich shadows while retaining subtle detail, all without the noise.
That said I continue to be astounded by the image quality of late-model cameras, both with regards to dynamic range and lack of shadow noise.
Perhaps HDR will yet reduced to the playground of the grunge artists.

Tony Jay
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jjj

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #4 on: August 08, 2014, 06:24:38 pm »

HDR tends to soak the contrast out of pictures, especially the blacks,  highlighting the mid-tones reducing the range of blacks to whites. 

I find that blacks and dark shadows are what adds interest to photos and makes them attractive to my eyes.  Why is it necessary to see every detail in the shadows just because we technically can do it? 
My view too. I like black shadows.
However being able to pull info out of some shots at the extremes is a fantastic tool at times, particularly with architectural work. HDR used well is an amazing tool, used badly it tends be grotesque and not in a good way.
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smthopr

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #5 on: August 09, 2014, 04:03:47 pm »

I don't do a lot of "HDR" , but I have tried some aps that do tone mapping and it hasn't pleased me.

I couldn't bring life to the image the way I imagined. But I do sometimes take multiple exposures and combine them by using the best exposure for each part of the image and "painting" them in using layer masks.

I've attached an example that was taken at midnight, by moonlight. I think I used 3 exposures for the final image. Is this what you have n mind?
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PeterAit

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #6 on: August 09, 2014, 05:38:39 pm »

I don't do a lot of "HDR" , but I have tried some aps that do tone mapping and it hasn't pleased me.

I couldn't bring life to the image the way I imagined. But I do sometimes take multiple exposures and combine them by using the best exposure for each part of the image and "painting" them in using layer masks.

I've attached an example that was taken at midnight, by moonlight. I think I used 3 exposures for the final image. Is this what you have n mind?

I like the photo - I can see HDR but in a subtle and effective way that improves the image without making it look at all fake.

Perhaps you can explain what "tome mapping" means. I have seen this term but never understood it. And, if there are HDR apps that do not do tome mapping, how do they work differently?
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smthopr

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #7 on: August 09, 2014, 07:12:08 pm »

Thanks Peter,

I think that "tone mapping" is the math that maps the tones from multiple exposures to one continuous tone image. If it's accurate, you'll get one very low contrast, but "normal" image.

To add contrast to make the image interesting, some math must be applied, often with the effect of the "HDR" look, which can be interesting, but not natural.

What I've done is akin to using grad filters after the fact so that my sky is a separate exposure than the mountains than the city. So what you see are three "normal" exposures blended together.
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Alan Klein

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #8 on: August 09, 2014, 11:24:41 pm »

I don't do a lot of "HDR" , but I have tried some aps that do tone mapping and it hasn't pleased me.

I couldn't bring life to the image the way I imagined. But I do sometimes take multiple exposures and combine them by using the best exposure for each part of the image and "painting" them in using layer masks.

I've attached an example that was taken at midnight, by moonlight. I think I used 3 exposures for the final image. Is this what you have n mind?

That's pretty good but the mountains are too light.  It doesn't comport with the blacks of the city and the lightness in the sky.  While you have the blacks dark, why would the mountains be that light?  I think part of the problem with HDR is even when you try to get it right, it's so hard to match reality.  The picture doesn't match what you really perceive in reality.

smthopr

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #9 on: August 09, 2014, 11:38:00 pm »

something happened on the way through the phone to the web and the contrast in my illustration photo looks a little bit crushed in the blacks, but I think it's a good example of using multiple exposures to capture a scene without using HDR software.
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Hening Bettermann

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #10 on: August 10, 2014, 06:03:19 pm »

>Perhaps you can explain what "tome mapping" means. I have seen this term but never understood it. And, if there are HDR apps that do not do tome mapping, how do they work differently?

>I think that "tone mapping" is the math that maps the tones from multiple exposures to one continuous tone image. If it's accurate, you'll get one very low contrast, but "normal" image.

My understanding is
-that the math that combines the tonal values of multiple images would be called 'fusion' or 'exposure stacking' or 'EDR' (extended dynamic range); resulting in an image that contains all values, but may look dark and/or dull;
-that HDR (in the narrower/correct sense of the word) is a special advanced form of such fusion using 32 bit floating point calculation;
-that the 2 terms are not always used correctly, but often confused 
-that 'tone mapping' is the process to transform this 'contains-all-but-looks-dull' image to something more natural/pleasing. This process can be done manually (by applying a tone curve), but there is software that automates it. I think Photomatix has both options.

Good light!

Wolfman

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #12 on: August 10, 2014, 06:47:35 pm »

I shot in the same slot canyon exactly a year ago and used the Merge to 32 bit HDR Pro in PS. Worked very well giving me a lot of room to adjust sliders in ACR.

« Last Edit: August 10, 2014, 07:30:31 pm by Wolfman »
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nma

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #13 on: August 10, 2014, 10:03:38 pm »

I'd like to take a crack at this conversation. We all know the light values in a scene can have a tremendous dynamic range. A faithful representation of the full dynamic range sometimes benefits from HDR techniques, namely capturing/converting the light values to floating point numbers (floats). This allows a much wider range than a 16 or 32 bit integer (ints).  Here is the point: Whether or not we are using floats or ints  we have to map the intensities to a display/output device, usually one with less dynamic range. This is tone mapping and it takes place in Lightroom and Photoshop as well as HDR programs. When we render from 16 bit ints to the screen, tone mapping is required. When we render from floats to a print, even more severe tone mapping is required because our papers and coatings have a low dynamic range. I argue that LDR and HDR are actually very similar, both requiring tone mapping, though with LDR this term is not often used.  Furthermore, it seems logical to at least capture the full dynamic range of the scene. How can that hurt our artistic version? Maybe next year there will be better output devices. Don't we use Prophoto RGB to assure that we can register all the colors, even though we can't display them?  It is up to the artist to decide how to tone map the data. Maybe the artistic decision is to throw away shadow and/or highlight information. But there is nothing sacred about capturing an image with a single exposure. I argue that there should be a way to advance our artistic vision by using more of the HDR data. I believe that we can restore the full contrast to the scene with less noise in the shadows and more detail in the highlights. We have all seen horrible LDR results from Photoshop and Lightroom. No one would conclude from such observations that those tools are worthless.  You would merely conclude that the user didn't know what he or she was doing.
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stamper

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #14 on: August 11, 2014, 03:53:44 am »

I shot in the same slot canyon exactly a year ago and used the Merge to 32 bit HDR Pro in PS. Worked very well giving me a lot of room to adjust sliders in ACR.



At last someone who understands HDR . It isn't a means to an end but the starting point for further editing. Harold Davis has been pointing this out for years but few have listened/read what he has stated.

Hans Kruse

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #15 on: August 11, 2014, 06:11:46 am »

That's pretty good but the mountains are too light.  It doesn't comport with the blacks of the city and the lightness in the sky.  While you have the blacks dark, why would the mountains be that light?  I think part of the problem with HDR is even when you try to get it right, it's so hard to match reality.  The picture doesn't match what you really perceive in reality.

Maybe the goal of that picture is not to represent reality. I believe picture making is a lot more than "just" representing reality, whatever that is  ;)

Tony Jay

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #16 on: August 11, 2014, 06:35:11 am »

Maybe the goal of that picture is not to represent reality. I believe picture making is a lot more than "just" representing reality, whatever that is  ;)
I agree with Alan's comment about that image - I would not personally have gone with that interpretation.
However it is an interpretation - this is not a fault or deficiency in the process of HDR.
All HDR gives you is much more depth of image data to play with.

HDR does not drive your interpretation in any particular direction however fine-tuning the technique of tone-mapping does take practice but now that we can bring 32-bit TIFF files into Lightroom it is easier to learn how.
The result that makes an individual happy is an aesthetic one not ultimately a function of the HDR process.

Tony Jay
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Alan Klein

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #17 on: August 11, 2014, 10:47:42 am »

I can accept  HDR when used to create "grunge" because "grunge" could be an expression of style.  There's no apparent attempt to duplicate reality, so the brain interprets it as artistic, although some might not like its effect. 

However, I think HDR fails, when in the attempt to better create "reality", it creates an imbalance in the lighting that flags the brain's sensitivity immediately to the imbalance.  How could mountains be lighter than the surrounding areas.  We've never seen that in reality.  The HDR attempt to improve reality MUST succeed or the attempt fails.  The brain won't accept incorrect lighting effects. 

On the other hand, the brain for whatever reason, doesn't have a problem with shadows being too dark.  It doesn't consider the image as being imbalanced.  In fact we can even add a vignette, which doesn't happen in nature at all, but the brain will accept, even applaud its effect.  We can argue all day long about what is reality.  But the brain will go on its own way as to what it will and will not accept. 

PeterAit

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #18 on: August 11, 2014, 10:58:49 am »

I shot in the same slot canyon exactly a year ago and used the Merge to 32 bit HDR Pro in PS. Worked very well giving me a lot of room to adjust sliders in ACR.



Very nice! I see that a few trees disappeared between your visit and mine, last October.
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Misirlou

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Re: HDR Do's and Dont for landscape
« Reply #19 on: August 11, 2014, 05:45:21 pm »

nma did a succinct job of explaining what tone mapping is actually all about. I've always said that the objections many photographers have to "HDR" is not so much the HDR foundation per se, but that they don't like the way some photographers handle the tone mapping part of an HDR workflow, frequently too aggressively.

Alan is right that HDR images, no matter how photometrically correct, can still look unnatural. It's something I struggle with a lot. At first, I made every effort to go down the path of attempting a completely realistic look. I'd often get frustrated by how much work it took to coax a traditional looking image out of an HDR original.

Then I met Dan Burkholder, and learned to embrace the surreal grunge look. Not my instinctual style, but I came to appreciate it nonetheless. Now I can put an enormous amount of tone mapped weirdness into prints, and people just love them all the more for it. In fact, the more outrageous my prints are, the more likely I am to sell them. Go figure.

But, instinct being instinct, I still try for something more traditional when I think it's appropriate. Take a look at the attached images. The church image looks pretty standard, but in fact it's an HDR from a 5 stop span. I knew there was no way my camera had enough dynamic range to hold the details in the whiter than white statue under blaring New Mexico sun, while still capturing the shadowed wall with enough light to prevent noise. But when I started tone mapping the sequence, it looked very strange. I didn't put much time into that image, but I did play with the HDR until I got some detail back into the statue, but not too much. You can judge whether or not I was successful. You can see from the straight train image that the black and white result is tone mapped beyond any level of reality. Again, a 5 stop range, only with this one, I was going for complete fantasy.
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