New to HDR - examples

[Edwin Harvey]

I haven't posted anything here until now, so I hope you like this HDR. Sorry, I meant Tone Mapped Panoramic, taken on Bribie Island, Qld; Australia.I swore that I'd never have anything to do with HDR, until I had a look at some of the images posted here. I was so impressed with what I saw, so bought Photomatix Pro. From what I've read & seen this software seems to be the best.



Cheers.......Edwin.

[Colin Southern]

Hi Edwin,

It's a pleasant enough shot - just not sure why you had to "Photomatix" it?

[David]

Hi Edwin - Welcome to CiC. Unfortunately the size of the image you've posted is a little small (ca.45 kB) to see much detail. Also, you don't say if this was a single exposure processed via Photomatix or a multiple exposure. So my further comments are guarded. The composition is good to my eye (including the format), as is the general colour balance (given we are talking about a tone-mapped image). To my mind it is not an over-the-top "HDR" image but neither is it photo-realistic. If I were treating the image(s) with Photomatix, I would be looking to bring out more detail in the shadow areas, after all this is one of the strengths of HDR and tone-mapping. I might also reduce the saturation a tad, and finally decide on how much realism I wanted.

Note that there are probably two schools of thought about HDR and tone-mapping to be found in CiC. One school probably prefers photo-realism and the other, to which I might belong, has a more catholic view. Nevertheless, have fun.

Cheers

David

[belong]

hi everyone at CiC!
im a new member here and i find it very nice to be in this community, everybody is so helpful especially like to me, a beginner in dslr photography.
whenever i find a photo processed in hdr, i was so amused on how did they do it.
my question is, can i make a hdr in adobe cs3 without photomatrix? i have a adobe cs3 however i have no "tone mapping" plug-in. (unless there are members who is generous to share their software... lol)
i tried some hdr process in adobe cs3 but i am not satisfied with the result, the highlights and shadows do not appear so detailed...

[Colin Southern]

my question is, can i make a hdr in adobe cs3 without photomatrix?

Yes. Click on File -> Automate -> Merge to HDR.

i tried some hdr process in adobe cs3 but i am not satisfied with the result, the highlights and shadows do not appear so detailed...

The results that you get are going to depend on a number of things, including ...

- The dynamic range of the bracketed images that you capture

- The clipping points that you choose during the merging process

- The processing that you do on the image after the HDR merge.

Hope this helps.

[Edwin Harvey]

Hi Edwin,

It's a pleasant enough shot - just not sure why you had to "Photomatix" it?

Just practising Colin, just seeing what the Photomatix software was capable of.