Feedback pls...

[ivar_rs]

...on two HDRs I have made. Used Photomatix Pro & Lightroom 2... Quite a newbie to HDRs, so pls shed light on all the flaws...

[wolfden]

looks like you are doing fine, not over done, no halos, good color and contrast

[Bzrk]

The sky in the top picture is a bit too blue. Maybe tone down the saturation a bit on the blues.

[ivar_rs]

Wolfden: Thanks.
Bzrk: Will do.

I found the noise quite apparent in the skies in both shots. For some reason, I find the noise reduction part of Lightroom not very effective. Is there a better tool out there (that doesnt break the bank!) for this?

Thnx

[jj fad]

very nice...

[MrGreen]

Well, the first thing I notice with both of these images is the lack of dynamic range that HDR is supposed to help with.

Your blacks aren't black enough, but that's a simple levels adjustment, however you do have nice detail there. Next, the highlights are completely blown meaning you didn't take enough exposures to cover the whole DR present in the scene. Blown highlights are usually a lot more distracting than lack of shadow detail because our eyes are naturally drawn to bright spots, as opposed to dark areas.

If you took -2, 0, and +2 for the bracketed shots then next time shooting something similar go -5, -2, 0, +2, +5 to cover all your bases and be sure you have it all.

As for the nuclear cyan colours in the first image, that's an easy fix in Photoshop using a selective colour mask and adjusting the saturation, or you can just adjust the "cyan" channel in the saturation adjustment layer too.

[tmcman]

Agreeing w/ MrGreen: One of the brightest things on earth is whitewater in full sun. I took some shots at Yosemite and I couldn't believe how many stops down it took to capture the highlights in whitewater.

I use Imagenomic Noiseware Pro for noise reduction. But you will find you have less noise when you include one very overexposed frame in the hdr set. It should bring the shadows up into the area of lighter midtones. This way PM doesn't have to search for detail in the shadows of a noisy underexposed frame. That's been my experience anyway.

Thanks for sharing.