LR & exposure fusion?

I currently use PSE 12 and am wanting to give LR a shot. I haven't had good luck with the Photomerge exposure but have seen and heard good things about LR and the plug-in. Aside from purchasing Lightroom, what else would I need?

You need LigthRoom and LR Enfuse. LR Enfuse is donation-ware - you will need to make a small donation to get it to work correctly but you can try it out first. I think there is a free utility you also need to install but all that is on the LR Enfuse website.

I much prefer Exposure Fusion to HDR. The results are much more natural and you can easily tweak them with LR after the fusion process is completed. EF is pretty much the same as layer blending in PS except it's automated and capable of much more precise work than most of us can do by hand.

You really do need to learn LR. You will find you rarely use Elements once you've sorted out LR. It's just very "photographic". Good luck with it.

That's what I have heard. I have not used HDR on my real estate stuff and don't intend to. Is it possible that me and someone that has a copy of LR could exchange codes and I be able to use LR and they be able to use PSE 12? That may be a stupid question.

I don't think you can exchange codes. Here's a LR Enfuse shot. I expose for the density I want in the windows and then run an additional 6 shots with each one 1 stop (SS, not aperture) lighter than the last (0,+,++,+++, ect). Then, after importing into LR, I decide how many of the lighter brackets to use, run enfuse, and then tweak in LR as needed. Work very well.

You might check out Machinery2. Its an hdr program that can also do regular photo editing. Also it can do hdr from 1 photo. You can do hdr that is so natural that some wouldnt notice. I dont do much hdr but for sharpening its hard to beat.

Here are 2 that I just edited in about 2 minutes each. I believe Machinery2 may be an awesome tool in the future. I will have to practice more so I can make it look a little less HDR but I believe it is going to be my new go to editing tool for real estate. I should add that this was shot with a 7D and the new 10-18 lens. No flash, just natural light. I haven't mastered the off camera flash just yet.

The first was edited in Elements.....

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qaPP​R5

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/qQnK​Ti

Glad to be of help! I havent used it much but for one shot you can use bracketing, +2/-2 and then use the natural effect in the presets. Works really well for me and I can't believe how fast it is!

I forgot, its also a plugin for Lightroom, but I havent set that up yet.

No 1. Looks a good but a little dark and a little flat. How did you pull that door? Did you blend some images? If so you did a good job of it. I would want it to be a bit brighter and lighter (the adage is light and bright sells). You could do that by making the whole thing lighter (except maybe the door - do you have layers so you can make the room lighter without changing the window?) and then boosting, clarity (increases midtone contrast) and/or vibrance (increases midtone saturation). Saturation and contrast are too blunt of tools. You could also increase blacks or shadows SLIGHTLY which would broaden the overall tonal range pulling down the lighter tones.

No 2. Sorry - this one screams HDR to me - especially around the fan. And I know from experience that many agents and brokers don't like or are tired of HDR. They don't always know what it is but they don't like the look. They want the most appealing natural look they can get. The outside view in the doors is too light. HDR also tends to accentuate lines where darks and lights meet which sometimes makes it look a bit too much like an illustration rather than a photograph.

I hope you won't take these comments as being negative - they were intended to be instructive and if I missed that target, I'm very sorry.

One other little nicety. Look at the lights in the fan. See how they glare? Look at some lights in around you. You can't usually see the filament but you can usually see detail. If you use enough darker brackets (or balance flash well enough if you prefer that method) you can get a little detail in the light bulbs or shades and it look more natural. This is why my bracket routine is to start either at the outside exposure or 1 stop under and then to open up 1 stop at a time for 6 additional brackets. I don't necessarily use them all but I do have them if needed.

I ALWAYS welcome opinions. These were both done in about 2 minutes. I can't stand HDR myself. I'm still learning layering and being able to raise shadows and brightness without adding too much noise. I try to keep my editing to a minimum so I can keep the realistic look as much as possible. Thanks for your comments and I welcome all of them.

No HDR was used on this one!

IMAGE LINK: https://flic.kr/p/r7To​H2

rgs wrote in post #17424167
No 1. Looks a good but a little dark and a little flat. How did you pull that door? Did you blend some images? If so you did a good job of it. I would want it to be a bit brighter and lighter (the adage is light and bright sells). You could do that by making the whole thing lighter (except maybe the door - do you have layers so you can make the room lighter without changing the window?) and then boosting, clarity (increases midtone contrast) and/or vibrance (increases midtone saturation). Saturation and contrast are too blunt of tools. You could also increase blacks or shadows SLIGHTLY which would broaden the overall tonal range pulling down the lighter tones.

No 2. Sorry - this one screams HDR to me - especially around the fan. And I know from experience that many agents and brokers don't like or are tired of HDR. They don't always know what it is but they don't like the look. They want the most appealing natural look they can get. The outside view in the doors is too light. HDR also tends to accentuate lines where darks and lights meet which sometimes makes it look a bit too much like an illustration rather than a photograph.

I hope you won't take these comments as being negative - they were intended to be instructive and if I missed that target, I'm very sorry.

I'm also pretty sure that 90% of agent's/brokers don't even know what HDR is.

njstacker22 wrote in post #17425194
I'm also pretty sure that 90% of agent's/brokers don't even know what HDR is.

First, I would not underestimate the photographic sophistication of many real estate professionals. Many new phones have an (sort of) HDR function and some new DSLRs will do HDR in camera. I would not assume that many have at least a cursory knowledge of HDR.

Second, although they may not know what HDR is, they often recognize (and don't like) the HDR look. They will say it looks like a drawing or that it has a fantasy look or shadows are too bright. Often when I call on a broker or agent, they will pull out some work they have not liked and ask "why does it look like that". It's just about always bad HDR.

Don't underestimate these guys, they know how to sell and what they need to do it.

Question regarding machinery2.....I'm still using the demo mode because 1) I'm not sure the full version has anything more than what I use in the demo mode and 2) I can't figure out how to read the price as its not in American dollars. My question is why does it sometimes let me preview the .cr2 before i actually import and open it and other times it won't let me preview it unless I import and open.