grounds for sculptures HDR tried!

[Cliff666]

went to grounds for sculpture(hamilton, nj) today and walked for about 3 hours around the park its beautiful there anyone in the south jersey area looking for a cool spot to walk around take pics this is it. plenty of sculptures and gardens in the park.
1&3 i tried doing a merge for HDR in CS3 please C&C and suggest how i can make the pictures possibly better.
thank you! enjoy

1HDR
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3077/2411334261_df9086ff20_o.jpg
2
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2404/2412119932_3050da628c_o.jpg
3HDR
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2407/2417437225_2f4c4e16f5_o.jpg

[JeanBaptiste]

Compositionally the first one isn't bad although together with the 3rd they look a little underexposed, also the ghosting in the trees from the HDR is a little distracting. The second one seems pretty well exposed and you've achieved that cotton candy effect pretty well.

Olivier

[Robert_Lay]

#'s 1 and 3 are not properly prepared for HDR, and the results for those two have similar problems. Looking at the Histogram for each, it is apparent that the highlights are blown out (no detail in the highlights of the sky) and that the shadows are badly underexposed (i.e., they are clumped up or blocked up at very low values).

This is typically caused by not understanding what exposures are need with your two primary shots. That is all you really need in most cases (2 shots) - not to say that you cannot use more than two.

The brighter of the two original shots should open the shadows sufficiently to avoid any blocked up areas. This means that the shadows in that image should show detail throughout - even if the higher tonal values are completely blown out in that same image. The darker of the two shots should provide highlights with plenty of detail. Make sure that there is no clipping of the highlights in that shot, and don't worry at all about the shadows in that shot. When you combine them the shadow detail from the brighter shot and the highlight detail from the darker shot will be combined to produce the final image which should show a high local contrast throughout the entire range of tones.

[Meaty0]

Bob speaks the truth Cliff. Just to be different however, I take about 8 exposures of the subject by varying the shutter speed only and I span about 4 stops (2 stops either side of the average). BUT when I do the HDR, I find myself only using about three of the images I have taken...and I look for the attributes that Bob mentioned in the images I use.

See how your first image looks a bit flat tonally? This is probably the lighting partially, but HDR also tends to do that. Try this to give the image a bit more oooomph:

Open your image in Photoshop.

On the right...click on the Channels tab.

At the bottom of the Channels palette there's a button with a "dotty" circle on it. When you hover the cursor over it, you will see "Load Channel As Selection" displayed. Click that button.

Now press the Ctrl+J buttons to load that selection on a new layer.

Go back to your Layers palette (Click the Layer tab). See the new layer that's been added?

Change the Mode of that layer to Soft Light. See the slight improvement in the image tonality?

In the Tool Bar, click Layer=>Duplicate Layer. See how the tones are a bit more dramatic again?

You could duplicate that layer again if you wanted, and just alter its transparency to give you the contrast you want.

Add a levels layer and change the Mid-Tone slider (move it to the right) to restore some of the highlights in the top left sky, that are blown out by this process, then paint on the mask on the levels layer with black to restrict the changes to just the bright area of sky. (You could use a diagonal white-to-black gradient if you wanted.)

I use this technique to restore a lot of my images after HDR. Try it and see what you think.

[Cliff666]

thanks u 2 actually helping its a trial for me to begin with ill try again and repost when i can thanks!

[chauncey]

Paul gave you his method, I kinda like to get my RAW's down pat first and fine tune with "shadows/highlights>midtone contrast".

Point is that there isn't a right or wrong way, only the result.

[chauncey]

As an add on, I found these today http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYxiWnqcTE0&feature=related , enjoy.