Fake HDR

I know its a cliche sunset but I was just testing it out. I tried with 3 actual different exposures in photoshops "merge hdr" but it froze my computer twice and when I finally got an image it looked flat and blown out. So I did a fake version with different layers and blend modes. My question is with regards to the noise; I shot this at 200 ISO so I'm confused as to why there is so much noise in the sky. I'm not sure if this upload size is good enough quality for you to see but if you can help me out I'd love to know. Thanks.

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IIRC any time you mimic HDR using layers (I'm assuming des,invert,gaus blur, and another layer using highpass both set to overlay) it will cause some sort of noise and it doesn't matter what ISO you shot at. But this is all off memory of course. Nice pic none the less

All accurate except the high pass. Thanks for the info I'll look into some better HDR methods.

Tone mapping - the actual algorithms necessary for HDR and associated with the "look" you've achieved - is a changing of the contrasts throughout the image. When used as you've chosen to do, it's severely stretching them. Especially if you've got a little noise to begin with, or shot JPEG where the colour intensities are recorded with less precision to start with, those errors are multiplied by a potentially large factor. Put another way, this kind of tone mapping treatment is actually asking for small colour differences - which unfortunately includes noise - to be exaggerated. Just think about the clouds: they were once shades of white/light-grey, now they range all the way to near-black. Similarly, a tiny difference in blue sky colour becomes a distinctly darker spot....

Cheers,
Tony

Use a noise filter first, then do your editing. Noise Ninja works really well. You can try finding a torrent with a keygen, for it. Thats what I did

Here's an easy way to do manual exposure blending.

With PS E7 (I'm sure others have this option)
File>New>Photomerge Panorama>Interactive Layout
This automatically puts each image on their own layer and creates a layer mask next to each image as well. Then simply mask out the part(s) you want to hide from each image

Crimzon wrote in post #9400421
Use a noise filter first, then do your editing. Noise Ninja works really well. You can try finding a torrent with a keygen, for it. Thats what I did

I would not recommend people pirate copyrighted software... Thats illegal in many countries and against the forum rules.

OP> Neat shot, but it doesn't really look HDR as the trees and such are all just black.