[Dave]

Unsure about HDR ? Then why not join in this fun challenge to see if we can all help each other improve our HDR processing

Below are 4 differently exposed shots of the same subject. The shot was taken on the morning of a hard frost, where the sun had caused a mist to start rising through the trees. Reckon you can capture that ?

Download the shots below & using whichever method suits you best (eg. PS HDR, Photomatix, manual exposure blending etc) produce your final shot that you then share back here. Try to describe the methods, settings used etc, to help others.

So in summary

• Click on links below & right click on images & save to your hard disk
• Note the titles of images includes exposure settings
• Use your HDR method of choice to produce final image
• Resize / crop shot to best fit on screen & ensure less than 200K in size
• Post your image up in this thread, best describing method / setting used to get results
• Enjoy yourself....it's all for fun

Good luck all

Download these images :-

http://www.pixalo.com/gallery/data/7...us_4_stops.jpg
http://www.pixalo.com/gallery/data/7...us_2_stops.jpg
http://www.pixalo.com/gallery/data/7...Zero_stops.jpg
http://www.pixalo.com/gallery/data/7...s_one_stop.jpg

Want to know more about HDR, then look here :-

HDR Techniques
http://www.pixalo.com/community/tuto...ing-18219.html

[Dave]

Now wonder which will look best when finished ....Mono or Colour

[orangepeel]

photomatix

Luminosity 10
Strength 49%
Colour Saturation 100%
White Clip 1.22%
Black Clip 5%
Smoothing High
Microcontrast High

[Dave]

That's pretty impressive OP, as you've brought out the mist well , some great detail & tones in the clouds, whilst still keeping the shot looking natural Must have a go with Photomatix myself

[P-E]

A quick go......



Strength:75
Colour Saturation:70
Light Smooth:1
Luminosity:5
Micro Contrast:2
Micro smoothing:0
White Clip:0.200
Black Clip:0.175

Another go this time with LucasArt & a Nik Filter.......

[Victoria]

Wow! Some impressive stuff going on here!

[Charlotte]

Been trying to give this a go tonight, manually - no fancy plug-in's to hand ... might take me a week LOL as I've never done this before Will carry on with it tomorrow - my brain hurts now (and my eyes, even tho' I'm back on the grey )

P-E's + OP's ones are looking good

[Dave]

Photomatix Strength:90
Photomatix Colour Saturation:0
Photomatix Light Smooth:0
Photomatix Luminosity:2
Photomatix Micro Contrast:2
Photomatix White Clip:5.00
Photomatix Black Clip:5.00

Only problem I had with above was 2 completely burnt out highlights in sky to left, which I had to clone out ....so I'm disqualified Rest of shot is untouched apart from border.

[P-E]

Originally Posted by Dave

Only problem I had with above was 2 completely burnt out highlights in sky to left, which I had to clone out ....so I'm disqualified

Sorry so did I.

[Dave]

Well I think that is OK, as all original images had those parts burnt out..... terrible photographer

That LucasArt plugin is rather good. Did you use all the 4 images with it ? What's the main difference vs Photomatix ?

[P-E]

Originally Posted by Dave

That LucasArt plugin is rather good. Did you use all the 4 images with it ? What's the main difference vs Photomatix ?

It was just one image with the Lucas plugin.......I think the 2 stop under one.

I did a verion (I liked) with Photomatix + a Nik filter then airbrushed the mist in.

[Liam O'Neill]

This isn't actually a HDR image, it's the HDRChallengeminus_2_stops.jpg file, tweaked in DPP. All it is is DPP's Tone Curve Assist High and about 170 saturation to ut some colour in it, and a bit of sharpening.
I tried my usual mixing pictures technique, but wasn't getting anything out of it.

[Rob Barron]

Intertestingly, I tried merging to HDR in Photoshop CS2 but it wouldn't do it. Each attempt gave me the same error message: 'This image does not contain enough dynamic range to complete procedure'.

Instead, I took the two stops under shot and did the following:

Shadows/Highlights tool to lift the dark area at bottom (but applied to whole, not selection).
Adjusted contrast using Curves. I selected the burnt out area as the white point and a shadow in the bottom part of the picture as the black point to ensure it has the full range.
Slight adjustment to saturation just to boost the colour a bit, no more than 10%.

I then copied to a new layer and applied the LucisArt filter at the lowest level. I reduced this layer's opacity to 70% and then blended back to one layer.

This is the result:



Cheers,
Rob

[P-E]

Originally Posted by Rob Barron

Intertestingly, I tried merging to HDR in Photoshop CS2 but it wouldn't do it. Each attempt gave me the same error message: 'This image does not contain enough dynamic range to complete procedure'.

I always get that message when attempting to do HDR in CS

[skipper954]

I got the same stupid message. These images go from nearly zero to 255. Give me a break photoshop!!!!!

Gonna google n see if I can find an answer.

[abirkill]

That's because for some reason the EXIF data for all shots appears to be the same (ISO 100, 1/320, f/7.1). Photoshop sees this and doesn't know what to do about it. This typically occurs if you try and HDR different exposures of the same photograph obtained from a RAW processor or similar - images that are differently exposed in the camera should have different EXIF values and work fine, so I don't know what's going on here.

Anyway, you can use Exifer (free) to strip the EXIF data out of the photos, at which point Photoshop should revert to its (less accurate, but still good enough) 'look at the image and figure out the exposure' routine, which will work fine.

[Rob Barron]

Dave, did you adjust this photo using software rather than taking four separate photos? I have looked at the data and they all appear to have been taken using identical settings (f7.1 for 1.320th second and the same ISO of 100. I would have expected to see the shutter speed change for each shot to allow for the 4 stops, 2 stops, etc.

In order to get 4 stops below, you would need to do this manually but I'd be interested to know if this is one image or 4.

Cheers,
Rob

[skipper954]

Hey Rob....that would explain the problem in ps hdr. Betcha that is it.

skip

[Boofers]

I had some of the same pic's that are here. Couldn't get photoshop to work. Tried blending the two methods "detail enhancer" and "tone compressor". Didn't go ahead in photoshop and fix the blotchs in the sky to the left. What I do now is try and fix the tones in photoshop and seem to lose some of the highlights and shadows making it look more clear. My favorite layer adjustment right now is selective color, maybe that's a problem I will grow out of. This is stright out of Photomatrix.
[IMG][/IMG]

[Dave]

Originally Posted by Rob Barron

Dave, did you adjust this photo using software rather than taking four separate photos?

Yep sorry, was taken from 1 raw image (no tripod ). Didn't realise the impact on CS2, so now we know you cannot use mutiple images from 1 single RAW adjusted shot . At least Photomatix allows you to over ride the exposure stop settings.

Anyone got a decent set of differently exposed shots of the same subject, so we can try the CS2 route for fun ?

[Dave]

Originally Posted by abirkill

Anyway, you can use Exifer (free) to strip the EXIF data out of the photos, at which point Photoshop should revert to its (less accurate, but still good enough) 'look at the image and figure out the exposure' routine, which will work fine.

Tx for that abirkill. Anyone had chance to try it out & repeat test in Photoshop CS ?

[skipper954]

Originally Posted by Dave

Tx for that abirkill. Anyone had chance to try it out & repeat test in Photoshop CS ?

The good news is that removing the exif files with exifer does work. CS2 merges the images without difficulty.

The bad news is that I know nothing about the merge, and there is a lot of work to do here, unless you like surreal.



skip

[Dave]

Hey, that has an IR feel about it

[Rob Barron]

LOL, that has a 'high on acid' feel about it!

Good to know about the Exif stuff. I guess in reality there is little to be gained from using one photo lightened and darkened to doan HDR as you could just as easily use blending modes to put them together.

Anyway, will try this again if anyone has three or more pics taken for the purpose.

Cheers,
Rob

[P-E]

Thanks to the info in here I have been having a play with HDR in CS3 and have to say I am liking it .

I still take the merged file in to Photmatix for tone mapping.

[Boofers]

Is CS3 really improved in that aera, I just started useing photomatrix and have CS2. I found CS2 very time consuming to use with the HDR. I hav seen your latest pic's of the basement and they are fantastic..even the rat.

[P-E]

Hi Boofers.

My latest pictures (basement etc) were done with three images using Photmatix but I have been trying the same images in CS3 HDR and quite like the results.

I still take the final image in to Photomatix for tone mapping as the plug in tone map for CS is not as good.

It is a little bit time consuming but I enjoy it

You saw the rat too

[Boofers]

This afternood I was playing around with my new neutral density filter, so I shot a few for HDR with the filter on. Maybe not a good Idea. I am still very much learning my camera. I blended one from photomatrix and another form CS2, I did each one before blending the best I could, then used my artistic
freedom to blend them. I seem to try and use the extra color to help it look more like a normal shot. But am picking up on the very light and detailed views where I might gain some control semilar to your look with the bricks and wheel barrows.
[IMG][/IMG]

[P-E]

I will try and post something later showing how I got the wheel barrow shot.

[ArchRival]

Hi all. I was looking for photos to test my HDR code on when I found this thread. Thanks for the photos, Dave. They have been a great help.

Here's my take:

http://i24.photobucket.com/albums/c3..._processed.jpg

Program used is my own C++ spaghetti code. Saturation has been tweaked in Photoshop after merging.