First Attempts at HDR/Tonemapping...

I've been interested in giving this a go for a couple of months now. Over the past couple of weeks I've been giving 'Merge to HDR' within Photoshop but everything came out way worse than what I could output from a single RAW image. Maybe I'm missing something in the photoshop process?

So after hearing many people discussing Photomatix I grabbed myself a copy and actually started seeing some decent results from combining my auto bracketed exposures.

Here are a few before/after test shots:

Exposed for ground...

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a couple more tests....

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looks nice. ive gotta try HDR sometime.

I always have issues when it comes to the Tone Mapping part of HDR Shots..

Take a Look at this..

It never seems to look right for me..

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#2 looks good. Watch the colour correction though. The defaults are way too much for my liking.

set the light smoothing at around 0 or above...

how many images are u combining in PS? 3? 5?

cosworth wrote in post #3366788
#2 looks good. Watch the colour correction though. The defaults are way too much for my liking.

I agree as a more natural look is better.

thanks guys, more experimenting will be done for sure.

I definitely went a little color crazy with these, but hey, who wouldn't their first time around? I made the gross river near my job look like it was flowing through an enchanted forest

Very nice.
I'm yet to try HDR.
For the cars on the bridge, I believe CS3 has pixel matching or something where it compares the layers selected and will automatically mask out cars/people walking past.

Not sure if that feature would help you since you handheld it.

ed. wrote in post #3367947
Very nice.
I'm yet to try HDR.
For the cars on the bridge, I believe CS3 has pixel matching or something where it compares the layers selected and will automatically mask out cars/people walking past.

Not sure if that feature would help you since you handheld it.

hmmm, interesting. I have CS3 so I should probably look into it.

I'm dying to try more of this! must, go, outside! haha.