Halifax HDR (kind of)

[shane_c]

Well, it's one of my first attempts at HDR and I think I failed. I was hoping for it to have that "sim-city/cartoon'ish" feel like most of the city ones I see on here but instead it just looks like a regular photo that's exposed pretty good. It was 3 exposures (-2, 0, +2).

http://img100.imageshack.us/img100/7097/halifaxhdr22.jpg

[sas8888]

What program did you use to create the HDR? In photomatrix you can just move the sliders around until you get what you want. There are a couple of presets that can get you started also

[sas8888]

What you did is very good. I like that look

[JulieNick]

not sure how to do hdr so I'm no help to you.
Just waving hello to a fellow bluenoser :)

[polarbare]

It's a little blue but I think you did well. If you want that cartoonish look and are using Photomatix turn light smoothing all the way down. You'll lose contrast and get that illustrated look in no time.

[Scottes]

You did well, even though you failed to get that look you desired.

IMHO, not all shots fit that grunge HDR style. I've damn-near killed myself trying to get that look but the image wouldn't cooperate.


However, I recently watched Ben Willmore's video and he discussed how he gets that look, which often requires two passes through Photomatix, and sometimes three. Each pass is done with different goals in mind, such as getting detail in one pass, then exaggeration in the next. Finally, he often does some serious edits in Photoshop itself - serious in the way certain areas transform, such as (relatively) massive changes in brightness of an area, or (definitely) massive transformations in color. There's one image of a mask or totem pole, and the image that came out of Photomatix is nowhere near as exaggerated as the final image after Photoshopping.

I really need to find some time to take this new knowledge and apply it to some existing HDR sequences.

[shane_c]

Thanks everyone,
I used Photoshop CS3 for the conversion. I'll throw it into Photomatix when I get home and see what kind of difference it makes.

[Scottes]

I don't think that CS3 is capable of producing that grungy HDR look. You could come close with a lot of editing, no doubt, but all those grungy/cartoonish HDR shots around the web were just about all done with Photomatix.

[polarbare]

The only way I know of to get a grungy, heavy handed HDR look with Photoshop that I know of is to buy something like Nik Software Color FX pro and use the tonal contrast filters.

[Scottes]

Yeah, that's right. Topaz Adjust can do similar things, too.

[polarbare]

forgot about Topaz..

[dellplain]

For the money, Topaz Adjust is a pretty fantastic plug-in. It also has a bunch of sliders that can be easily abused but once you get the hang of it, it can really help you achieve that grunge look.

Brad mentioned the Tonal Contrast by Nik, in Color Efex Pro. That's another awesome plugin that I apply to just about every HDR image that I process.

[Scottes]

I really wish that Nik would get on the 64-bit bandwagon. I won't even consider buying a 32-bit plugin any more, since I just won't use it. I've seriously been debating on finding a new sharpener since I'm seeing limits to Photokit, so their Sharpener is interesting, too. But I won't even trial a 32-bit, since then I'll be ticked off that it's not 64-bit so I won't buy it anyway.


Sorry for the hijack. Back to your regularly-scheduled thread...

[dellplain]

I really wish that Nik would get on the 64-bit bandwagon. I won't even consider buying a 32-bit plugin any more, since I just won't use it. I've seriously been debating on finding a new sharpener since I'm seeing limits to Photokit, so their Sharpener is interesting, too. But I won't even trial a 32-bit, since then I'll be ticked off that it's not 64-bit so I won't buy it anyway.


Sorry for the hijack. Back to your regularly-scheduled thread...

I hear you. At the very least, I wish more of these apps support multithreading better, or at all. I have an 8 Core Nehalem Mac Pro and it's amazing how poorly optimized most of these apps are. Lightroom is probably the worst offender. I can sit for upwards of 20-30 seconds just for it to render one of my images (granted they are about 400-500mb HDR TIFF Files).

I have to give a huge round of applause to HDRSoft with their latest release of Photomatix fully supporting multithreading. The performance boost in tone mapping is amazing.

[shane_c]

Downloaded Photomatix and threw it in there and here is the result...
Would I have to purchase the full version to not have the watermark on it?

http://img402.imageshack.us/img402/5126/img13100809.jpg

[Scottes]

Yes, purchasing removes the watermark.

By the way, you can find discount codes all over the web to save 15% usually. If you're a student, you can save (I think) 70%. (There's a post in this forum somewhere...) If you have Photoshop, the plugin alone saves you $40 - but I don't like it because it lacks tone compressor and the preview is too small for me. Others here use nothing but the plugin.


And - excellent work. I like that a lot better than the first, and it's not too overdone. It's a little overdone, but pops nicely rather than graishly.

[shane_c]

And - excellent work. I like that a lot better than the first, and it's not too overdone. It's a little overdone, but pops nicely rather than graishly.

Thanks! I don't think I'll ever buy the software. I tend to not over do any post processing so I'm not sure what I think of the HDR technique but just wanted to try it out. I tend to like things looking more natural, but I'll keep the free download on my machine to play around with once in a while.

[Scottes]

I tend to like things looking more natural, but I'll keep the free download on my machine to play around with once in a while.
Take a look at Picturenaut, QTPFSGui (both free) and Dynamic HDR (not free). A natural look seems to be much easier with these three than Photomatix, IMHO.

[Edbee]

Yeah, $99 gets rid of the watermark :)