HDR Getto Nuovo Venice

[Skitalez]

To the specialists of HDR! On sky there ALWAYS is a ghost line. How is it possible to avoid, not using PS? To masters of HDR! I like a photo - many details, clarity and sharpness, but... On sky there ALWAYS is a ghost line. How is it possible to avoid, not using PS? I tried many methods. But I do not want to change sky fully. Is this defect inevitable?








http://www.google.com/search?q=ghett...w=1618&bih=965

[Inkanyezi]

As I see it, not only the sky is a problem. There are artifacts all over from sloppy tone-mapping. And the image does not seem to be HDR; you should be able to take this scene in one shot.

But in essence, it depends much on what software you are using. It is fairly easy to use for example Photomatix, but if you are trying command line tone mapping in Linux, I haven't yet found anything that really works. It should be possible, but it's a jungle.

You can tone-map a single image too, if you want the sky a bit deeper and the tops of buildings retaining good local contrast, but it might be simpler to use a graduated ND filter with a soft dividing line ant pushed a bit upwards.

[Skitalez]

"And the image does not seem to be HDR"-? What concepts of HDR photo do you have? Where did I make a mistake? Exactly what I want to know
I use Photomatix, certainly. Moving aside a cursor of HighlightsSmoothness to the right it is possible to avoid ghosts. But to lose all effect. Maybe, did make a mistake with the capture of sky?

[Inkanyezi]

But HDR photography is intended to provide a natural looking image of a high dynamic range scene. The scene has medium high dynamic range and won't need HDR techniques, and all I can see is tone mapping of a normal dynamic range scene making it look unnatural, sorry.

[Geoff F]

There are different opinions on how HDR edits should appear.

I prefer the subtle approach so they end up looking the same as a normal photo but without any excessive over exposed highlights or areas where detail has been lost in the shadows.

And to reach this effect, I often simply make two conversions of the same Raw file but with different settings then merge them together with masks.

When I specifically shoot for HDR, I have still found that hand merging the layers using masks gives me a more pleasing result than the auto HDR software.

But higher toned HDR edits like your example, frequently get good results in the competitions. So it's really just a matter of personal taste.

How does the sky look in the original photos. Is it a natural occurrence or something which has happened during the editing.

[Inkanyezi]

HDR is an acronym for High Dynamic Range. A high dynamic range image can be acquired from a high dynamic scene, and with older digital cameras, more than one exposure of the same scene was needed. Newer cameras with up to 14 steps dynamic range often won't need more than a single exposure, although many cameras still need two exposures to capture HDR.

The HDR image, mostly merged to 32 bit, cannot be displayed or printed as it is, and that is why tone mapping is necessary, to convert the HDR image to a LDR image (Low Dynamic Range) that can be displayed on a monitor or printed. Ideally, tone mapping should be applied in a way that retains all tonality in the image with relatively high local contrast, although the global contrast is substantially lower than in the HDR.

The displayed image is of a scene captured in diffuse light, which can be seen on the shadows of the plants in pots. Maybe the light source is a rather heavily veiled sun, but the portion of sky included does not seem to have a strong veil.

When a low contrast scene is tone mapped like this, the effect you see in the sky is exactly the same as you see in the buildings, where the lower part of the brickwork has become unnaturally bright and saturated compared to the higher parts of the same building. Similar tone mapping artifacts exist elsewhere, and it is the same effect as in the sky. So the simple answer to why it becomes like that is that the controls for tone mapping have been handled to that effect.

And of course the defect is not inevitable, but if the general effect of the image is the one except the appearance of the sky, then Geoff's suggestion of merging layers is a viable solution.

But HDR is something completely different. There is a HDR image together with a normally exposed and processed image of the same street view in the post: http://foto.ifokus.se/discussions/50...scussions-2#48

[Skitalez]

On these photos, halos do not harm to the photo. But on the first, they, obviously, are very bad

[Inkanyezi]

The actual interpretation of a scene of course is up to artistic freedom.

A photographer that really masters HDR photography is Anna Kostenko:
http://www.photoforum.ru/user/23042/index.en.html