HDR Help Too Pastel

[KevinPourroy]

I Love HDR and finally had the time to try out a couple shots of my own but the colors are a little too pastel. Would I edit (Lightroom) the photos before Photmatix or after? Do you just De-Saturate to get that darker mood? Thanks for any help. (C&C Please. I will go out tomorrow and try to get some new shots with more bracketing, Some of the photos still haveblown out/dark spots)
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2676/3973749148_cc3375f3c8.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2436/3973749102_4863273b62.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2607/3972982147_bf7ec384ed.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2496/3973748380_5432631743.jpg
http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2458/3973747986_c78c23d32e.jpg
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3431/3972984273_33eacf5315.jpg

[kirkt]

The "pastel" look that you see is really a lack of contrast. While most people who tonemap their HDRs go for strong, sometimes overdone contrast enhancement, the lighter touch that you have in these images is more desireable in the end. What you have demonstrated is that the image made by Photomatix is only a starting point for the final image. If you open one of the above images andlook at the histogram, you will see the majority of pixels bunched together in a fraction of the total available histogram - while this may be an accurate representation of a scene in some special cases, it typically is not in for a scene that is supposed to be high dynamic range. You want to expand the range of the pixels to get more contrast. This can be done in Photomatix, but carefully so as not to overdo the effect of the Details Enhancer. Then, you can use Photoshop or whatever, to bring out the contrast in the tonemapped image (i.e., more, but gentler, tonemapping) using curves or levels, etc.

Give it a shot and see how the above images improve. I would suggest, as a first step, simply opening each image and using "Auto Color" from the Photoshop "Image" menu, to see how Photoshop would tonemap the image. Then play around with levels and curves to get a sense of how you can push and pull the historgram to get your desired result. If you can, save your Photomatix output as 16bit TIFF to give you more flexibility when tonemapping in Photoshop.

Have fun!

Kirk

PS - do not touch the as-shot images prior to combining them into an HDR dataset. If you are shooting your source images in JPEG, fix your white balance (daylight, for example) - if you set it to AUTO, it may change slightly between image captures.

[kirkt]

Here is an example from one of your images, above. The first figure shows the image, as opened and photoshop - see the histogram? I drew a gray box around the meat of your image data - it could use some expansion. The second figure is representative of what the image will look like with a little contrast enhancement and expansion of the histogram. I made the edit a little too robust, to make a point - the clipping in the blue shadows, for example, may be a little too much. See the new histogram? Much better in terms of distribution of available tones, especially in the shadow tones, where we get the most bang for our buck. In 16 bit, this edit would be better in terms of avoiding artifacts of our edits in the shadow tones, especially. If you open each image in PS and look at the histogram in LAB mode, you can study just the luminance (L channel) data, which will make things a little easier to assess and edit, IMO. I made a curves move on the L channel to expand the histogram and add contrast (i.e., I set the black and white points and made a steeper curve in the shadow tones to bring out contrast). Then I brought in the end points in the a and b channels to boost saturation without creating all sorts of crazy artifacts, a classic Lab move. Doing this in Lab makes more sense to me, but it is not necessary - I just identify with the Lab model more intuitively than RGB channels. I also added a little High Pass in overlay mode to add some local contrast (the gravel in the foreground exhibits this well, again a little overdone here for demonstrative purposes).

So, we can add contrast to the histogram through levels and curves, and we can add selective or local contrast to edges with High Pass or other edge enhancing schemes to give the "pastel" image more pop. Starting with a gentle tonemapping in Photomatix gives you much more flexibility in PS, especially with a 16 bit TIFF. If you are too heavy handed in Photomatix, you are limited in PS and spend a lot of time trying to undo the Photomatix tonemapping. In addition to these techniques, you can always blend some of the original exposures back into the tonemapped one to add more depth to your final image, etc.

Kirk

[AlphaChicken]

Do not increase contrast using levels. This clips information. Use curves and do precise adjustments to different tones.

[kirkt]

It is not a sin to clip, just a judgement call. ;)

[pixelbasher]

Kirt, that's a great improvement to the shot! To be honest I didn't think there was anything wrong with the OP's shots, (they are really nice IMHO Kevin) but I can see such an improvement after you added some more contrast to the examples for sure. And some great tips too! I tend to be just like what you explained, do most in photomatix, then try and "undo" it in PS, which is obv not the way to go.

Not wanting to hijack the thread, but I have no luck with curves, I just don't "get it" :oops: Time to spend time learning methinks!

[AlphaChicken]

It is not a sin to clip, just a judgement call. ;)

But why clip when you can keep all the info and do precise contrast adjustments that give the same look as clipping?