HDR softens when imported to Photoshop

[sumoetx]

Has anyone noticed a loss of detail when importing a HDR from Photomatix into Photoshop CS3?

I took a HDR of some trees and a waterfall, after merging the 5 shots to HDR in Photoshop I tonemapped in Photomatix 3.0, looks great! nice natural tones and sharp as a tack! I then import it into Photoshop CS3 and the whole thing softens up and the colors saturate, I've never noticed this before, and I've done this exact workflow around a hundred times now.
Any insight would be much appreciated, thanks!

sumoetx

[René Damkot]

On the "softening": View an image at 100% zoom to judge sharpening. (or 50% or 25%) at "odd" numbers (say: 15%) the resizing algorithm for screen will screw things up. (PSCS4 remedies that ;))

On the color difference: Does Photomatix color manage? I know if I use Hugin for instance, the icc profile gets stripped, so I have to assign the correct profile in PS.

[sumoetx]

Rene thanks for the reply,
I've compared both images at the same zoom, 50% and 100% they're very different the sharpness is noticeably different. As for Color management when importing into CS3 it asks to assign a color profile or leave alone, I've assigned it all color options and also left it alone. I get the same problem everytime, softer and more saturated. :-( I'm really perplexed about this.

[René Damkot]

Okay. Someone who uses PhotoMatix should confirm this, but I'd assume you need to assign the profile that the images that went into PM had. (probably sRGB or AdobeRGB)
On the sharpness: Sorry. Not enough experience. Lat time I tried PM was 3 years ago or so, and I didn't like it enough to buy it.

[canonloader]

What format are you exporting from Photomatix as? I export as a tif, then import that to CS3 as a RAW, so I can use the sliders. So basically, I never see it straight out of PM, before it goes into CS3. However, some images just look softer than they should, especially far shots of a hill side full of trees, even trees up close. Other things, like my recent 3 exposure shots of the locomotives are sharp enough, but I am finding either purple or magenta fringe, which I have to remove with the Hue/Saturation and eyedropper tools, once I get it into CS3 as a tif or jpg. That seems to help sharpness a lot. Plus regular sharpening at the end.

It's amazing what a little purple fringing will do to soften an image, and when shooting over or under exposure high contrast shots, your going to get purple fringe.

[sumoetx]

Thanks Rene & canonloader I appreciate the help, Here's my workflow Shots are captured as RAW, I select the frames in Bridge <tools<merge to HDR. Photoshop does its magic and I save that file as a radiance/HDR file and open it with Photomatix 3.0
Photomatix does its magic and I save that image as a 16bit TIFF which is the default option in Photomatix. Photomatix shows the tonemapped final image, so I'm able to see it and compare it to the 16bit TIFF I opened in Photoshop. At the same magnification I notice a loss of sharpness/contrast/detail from what I see in Photomatix vs Photoshop and Photoshop adds saturation, not alot but when I'm trying to keep it realistic it adds enough to ruin the look I'm trying to get. I can correct some of that in PS but not enough to be happy.
So that's my workflow, any tips or workarounds I should try? or is the photomatix display/render engine just better able to handle tonemapped images than PS?

Thanks again for the help!

sumoetx

[canonloader]

I have never tried it that way. Maybe try starting the HDRi genration from Photomatix, by opening the RAW's there first?

[12mnkys]

i agree with canonloader...you should open the raws with photomatix, do your hdr work, then go into CS3...that is how I do it, and have not had problems with lack of sharpness...

If you look at my zenfolio, there are a few pictures in the buildings section that are done with photomatix and CS3.

MK

[canonloader]

Well, I may have found part of the problem, and it has to do with alignment. I have been getting sloppy, and shooting three shot brackets hand held at high burst rate on the 40D. That's about 6fps or less. From what I have been seeing the last few days, it's not good enough. High frame rates work, with slow stuff, like clouds that aren't moving to fast. But other things that you think is slow stuff, isn't slow enough, like a river barge going down stream. Still about as fast as a man could jog, it's too fast for alignment to work over a three shot spread. It just moves to far per frame.

Here is an example. First, the three exposure HDR from 3 RAW and aligned in PM...
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/tranportation/swing-bridge-open-set18-img_3926_7_8-101008.jpg

Next, the correctly exposed raw frame, converted in ACR CS3, resized for the forum and no sharpening or noise removeal...
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/tranportation/swing-bridge-open-set18-img_3927-101008.jpg

And here is one I did from the single correctly exposed RAW, made two copies in ACR at 1.5 expouse +/- then did them im PM.
http://www.picturelacrosse.com/hdr/tranportation/swing-bridge-open-set18-img_3927-101008_2.jpg

I need to re-evaluate how I am taking the pics, start over and start using my tripod again and don't shoot moving things, including tree leaves in a slight breeze, no matter how red the fall colors are. Or, do the HDR from a single RAW. ;)

[sumoetx]

canonloader and 12mnkys, thanks for the suggestions. I use that workflow because in my experiments I noticed that I liked the way PS merged the files better than photomatix did. They actually are sharper when 1st merged to HDR in PS then opened in photomatix vs merging from the start in photomatix. I've tested it both ways numerous times on the same set of images and always like the HDR merged in PS over that done in photomatix. Interesting isn't it that I lose that initial sharpness when switching back? I've pretty much come to the conclussion that Photomatix has a better rendering engine for HDR than photoshop. My shots aren't misaligned since they're all done on tripod and the canyon rock wasn't moving ;-) (that's the detail I lost when I opened in PS.) I guess from now on I'll be adjusting the look in Photomatix to try and compensate for the loss of detail and added saturation I get when importing it to PS for final editing. I'll send an email to photomatix and see if anyone else has ever encountered this and see what they have to say if anything, I'll posty any response I get. Thanks again for the replies! I enjoy being able to pick the brains of much more experienced people.

sumoetx

[canonloader]

The e-mail is a great idea. The people there got back to me and answered everything in a day or so, even followed up on a question about using 1D RAW's which are in tif format, but would not open right in PM. Nice people.

[theague]

Well, I may have found part of the problem, and it has to do with alignment. I have been getting sloppy, and shooting three shot brackets hand held at high burst rate on the 40D. That's about 6fps or less. From what I have been seeing the last few days, it's not good enough. High frame rates work, with slow stuff, like clouds that aren't moving to fast. But other things that you think is slow stuff, isn't slow enough, like a river barge going down stream. Still about as fast as a man could jog, it's too fast for alignment to work over a three shot spread. It just moves to far per frame.

Here is an example. First, the three exposure HDR from 3 RAW and aligned in PM...
Next, the correctly exposed raw frame, converted in ACR CS3, resized for the forum and no sharpening or noise removeal...

And here is one I did from the single correctly exposed RAW, made two copies in ACR at 1.5 expouse +/- then did them im PM.

I need to re-evaluate how I am taking the pics, start over and start using my tripod again and don't shoot moving things, including tree leaves in a slight breeze, no matter how red the fall colors are. Or, do the HDR from a single RAW. ;)
Just a quick comment in playing with the program the last week. I have found the results from 3 bracketed shots on a tripod to be MUCH more desirable than a single raw, processed for three exposures. There is less noise in the 3 bracketed HDR than the single-file HDR. Just my two cents.

[René Damkot]

loss of sharpness/contrast/detail from what I see in Photomatix vs Photoshop and Photoshop adds saturation,

Click (http://photography-on-the.net/forum/showthread.php?t=583534). ;)