Hoegaarden

[johnkrataii]

Last sunday, walking in the town of Hoegaarden Wheat Beer....

[rtbaum]

HDR is a little to extreme for my tastes

[grounded]

I heartily agree, doesn't look natural, guess you could call it artistic though.

[johnkrataii]

I want to create something good looking..... something who has a tale, or a fantasy...... my aim is photo-graphics..... still in the beginning.... Thank you Randy and John.... :-)

[rtbaum]

My saying that it isn't my cuppa is not to say it doesn't have a lot of appeal. It really comes down to what you envision. I've seen this extreme HDR taken some pretty stunning art.

[RockNGoalStar]

The buildings have come out OK in the conversion, although they are still overdone for my tastes. However it is the sky and trees that really make the image to seem so unnatural. If you could tone down the sky somehow and remove those awful halos around the edges of the buildings and around the trees then you may be on to something.

I think this kind of processing is very hit or miss with people, as you can see from the comments above. However, if it is done well I am sure you'll get more hits than misses.

[dubaiphil]

Holy saturation and halos, Batman

[revi]

For me, it's the halos and the excessive noise/mottling that put me off (the noise is most visible in the clouds and
some of the walls). Also, you seem to lose sharpness/detail in some areas, probably due to the halos. This is
especially unpleasant on the vertical wall under the clock and the right tree, and visible around the lamp post.

[Mark von Kanel]

Hi John, did you crop the bottom of the image or deliberately shoot it that way? i actually am a bit of a fan of HDR but its even too much for me (but hdr is very much personal taste) id have gone for a more antique look with the HDR i think it would have suited this kind of image. Unfortunately im at sea at the moment and cant post an example, but when i get home in november ill put one up for to see what you think of it.

[johnkrataii]

Sorry Mark to reply so late... yes, i shoot it deliberately, coz it full of parked cars, and i did not need them....

[FrankMi]

Hi John, good to see you getting started with HDR photography. This looks very much like some of my first images. Like any sophisticated tool it will take some practice to become really good at it so keep on shooting, processing, and posting. We'll help however we can along the way!

My guess is that this wasn't a High Dynamic Range scene with typically blown highlights and shadows so in order to avoid the typical issues of over saturation, strong halos and black clouds you will need to have a delicate hand with the settings. One of the things I found helped was to compare the results with a non-tonemapped image of the same scene and play with the adjustments to bring out shadow and highlight details without changing anything else in the image.

If you haven't seen it, take a look at the free HDR tutorial and some of the results posted by Trey Ratcliff at: http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial/

I'm looking forward to seeing more of your HDR images as you progress.

[johnkrataii]

Thanks Frank