RAW is wonderful ! my first HDR from one single RAW file

I was playing with the trial version of Photomatix and here is my first HDR obtained from one single RAW file converted twice with 2 different exposure and then merged in Photomatix. I'm pleasantly suprised by the result Here is the HDR image and then the original RAW file.

Nice one! HDR can be very effective, with the right touch! And yeah, doing a "pseudo HDR" with multi-processed Raw is a nice approach!

yes and I'm suprised that it is possible to obtain this kind of results from only 2 conversions !

If you think that's good, you should try single-frame HDR from a frame of Porta 160.

Oloneo does a very good job on many single images too. Here's an example using your original image. I put some contrast back in to make it more pleasing to my eye.

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Looks a bit oversaturated to me. But that's easier to mitigate than not having enough information to add saturation.

Tony-S wrote in post #11349214
If you think that's good, you should try single-frame HDR from a frame of Porta 160.

Sorry but I don't understand what you mean...
What is Porta 160 ? do you mean Portra 160 ?

Anyhow, if you mean this is not good, I don't say that this is good in an absolute way. I'm sure people experimented in HDR can do a better job. What pleasantly surprised me is to obtain this from only 2 images, furthermore from 1 single RAW file (usually people use at least 3 different images, 5 is current and I have seen people using 9 images).

navydoc wrote in post #11349300
Oloneo does a very good job on many single images too. Here's an example using your original image. I put some contrast back in to make it more pleasing to my eye.

Looks over contrasted in my screen. One of us has to calibrate his screen...

yb98 wrote in post #11349385
Anyhow, if you mean this is not good, I don't say that this is good in an absolute way.

No, I think it's fine - probably about as good as can be done from a single digital exposure.

Tony-S wrote in post #11349474
No, I think it's fine - probably about as good as can be done from a single digital exposure.

Yeah, I think it comes across pretty natural-looking. The thing to avoid with HDR is to have it come out looking over-done.

The one thing that does show that is a headache with such scenes is the halo around the treetops. It's not just HDR, but with an attemt to get tones adjusted around such things -- you either have to do some super-painstaking stuff, accept some less-than great results, or at some point just say "good enough"!

As far as saturation and contrast, I think that boils down to personal taste. I did want to give you an alternate software suggestion to doing 'hdr' from a single image. If you do look into Oloneo, it is a free download in it's beta stage of development.

navydoc wrote in post #11349680
As far as saturation and contrast, I think that boils down to personal taste. I did want to give you an alternate software suggestion to doing 'hdr' from a single image. If you do look into Oloneo, it is a free download in it's beta stage of development.

Thanks. I have download the beta and it looks promising !