Boston Public Garden (HDR)

[Alis]

This is my first attempt at HDR. Created from a single RAW file. Sorry about the watermark. I am trying to see if it is worth buying the software.

Comments are welcome.

[kevinbythebeach]

it would be cool to see what the pic looked like before the hdr, just becasue it just looks like a normal photo too me....

[Alis]

it would be cool to see what the pic looked like before the hdr, just becasue it just looks like a normal photo too me....

You have no idea how much I laughed when I read your comment! You are right, I just realized after playing with three softwares and a lot of sliders for an hour or so, I came up with something almost identical to the original shot...

Good point; here is the original (directly converted from the RAW with WB and exposure adjustment (auto).



So here is what I have to say: I thought HDR images do not have to be abnormal looking. When I look at mine, I see some details that you can't get from just adjusting the exposure in the original one. You either lose the detail in the sky or in the dark areas, under the bridge for example.

And I have to add, that day I tried to get a shot for this purpose (playing with photomatix) so I dialed down the EV to get as much detail as I could and have no clipping in the picture. Not sure if this is how it should be done. I thought if I have areas of clipping then I will not be able to recover any details from those areas.

Let me know what you think and what process you recommend. Most of the time I do not have a chance to take more than one shot or at least multiple shots on a tripod and therefore I would like to learn this single shot technique.

Cheers.

[David]

Hi Sedali - From your original post I take it that this is a single exposure and treated in Photomatrix to give what I would call a pseudo-HDR image. As I see the image it looks like a saturated version of the original with very little extra detail in the darker tonal areas. Without having the original file (TIFF or RAW) I can't look into it in any further depth. What about trying a static subject and three exposures at 0 and +/- 2 stops. Use the default Photomatrix settings and post the result and the mid-exposure original. I've found that getting realistic HDR images sometimes requires working from an OTT image and paring back parameters bit by bit to get the image you want.

Hope this helps

David