Guidelines, Settings, Tutorials and Useful Information

[Stiga]

What to post on this board.

1. HDR (High Dynamic Range) photos – usually generated from 3 or more images.

2. Pdeudo-HDR or single images which have been tonemapped or modified to emulate HDR are also suitable.

3. Please do not post non-HDR images unless you want to illustrate part of your process or make a point to readers of your thread.

4. Only make links to your images under exceptional circumstances. Follow the Posting Images Tutorial if you are in doubt.
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What is HDR?
What is HDR? New | TimClarkeHDR.com
HDR Cookbook - farbspiel photography

How to Get Started
Search the internet and you will find numerous web sites which offer advice on this
topic. However, most of the reviews are out of date, some go back to 2008 or earlier.
Some reviews contain recycled phrases from different web sites and don't even mention
the most up to date software. As the HDR applications market is advancing and expanding
rapidly, the consensus on this forum is to download two or more of those listed below
and try the free trials for yourself. Features to look out for are:

Graphic Interface - is it too simple or too complex? After watching a tutorial, can you understand it?
Image Alignment - Does it work for you? if you want to take hand-held shots, this is very important.
Lightroom/Photoshop - if you use either of these, is there an an integral interface or plugin?
Thumbnail Presets - these are very useful for beginners. Do they cover your requirements?
The Bottom Line - Do you like the output? Post a few tests on this forum and ask if other Camels like them.

HDR Software (Most of the following are Windows only. Mac availabilty is shown in italics)
AKVIS HDRFactory
Dynamic Photo-HDR
EasyHDR Pro
Luminance HDR
Machinery HDR Effects
Nik HDR Efex Pro
Oloneo PhotoEngine
Photomatix Pro
Photoshop CS5 - Merge to HDR Feature
SNS Pro, Home and Lite (Lite: Installation instructions)
Unified Color HDR Expose 2and Express
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Software specific Tutorials.

There is a bonanza of HDR tutorials on the internet and Google will find them for
you. But, beware, many are for obsolescent software. Here are a few to get you
started or give you a feel for the product before purchase.

Photomatix:

Before the Coffee Photomatix Tutorial (ver. 4.0)– text and illustrations
Beginner’s Photomatix Tutorial (ver. 4.0) – video. There's a post-processing tutorial by the same author here.
Luke Zeme's Photomatix Video Tutorials
Photomatix 4.2 Tutorial

Halos!
Unfortunately halos are the most common fault seen in posts made by Photomatix users
Fixing halos and skies - this is a version 4.0 tutorial but it also applies to Photomatix 4.2

HDRSoft's own video of up-to-date tutorials can be found here: Videos tutorials on Photomatix and HDR shooting

There is also an excellent tutorial for Photomatix 4.2 on the EverydayHDR web site.
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nik HDR Efex Pro 2 on Youtube
Amazing Features of HDR Efex Pro 2
HDR Efex Pro 2: Lesson 1, Basic HDR
HDR Efex Pro 2: Lesson 2, Utilizing Ghost Reduction
HDR Efex Pro 2: Lesson 3 (Part 1 of 2), Taking Control of the HDR Image
HDR Efex Pro 2: Lesson 3 (Part 2 of 2), Taking Control of the HDR Image
Now that Google has bought nik software, they also provide extensive
documentation on their On Demand Video page.

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Photoshop Merge to HDR
How to Create HDR Images in Photoshop- this tutorial is for CS3 but is applicable to CS4, 5 & 6.

SNS-HDR:
SNS HDR PRO

SNS-HDR Pro VIDEO Tutorial
This is a 3 part video, but also applies to the Home version.
(Part 1 is mostly about Batch Processing for time-lapse photos.
Parts 2 & 3 deal with the Sliders and adjustments in the right hand pane)

Large image of the graphic interface with annotations:
http://www.hdrlabs.com/news/assets/sns-interface.jpg

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Oloneo PhotoEngine

Oloneo PhotoEngine HDR Tutorial

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Dynamic Photo-HDR

Dynamic Photo-HDR Interactive Demo

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Pre-Processing

Chromatic aberrations (CA) are common color-fringing effects caused by a lenses
inability to focus multiple colors to the same point. For example, the
resulting images from each light spectrum is in focus, but each image is a
slightly different size so that the colors to not align 100% correctly. If you
have CA in your original images, it will be 10 times worse after HDR processing.
Follow these turorials and find out how to remove CA in Lightroom or Photoshop
before you start any HDR processing.
Removing Chromatic Aberration 2 methods video tutorial

If you use Photoshop Elements, there is a good CA removal tutorial for you here:
http://www.photoshopelementsuser.com...Aberration.mov

N.B. If you still have CA after processing, you can use this method in Photoshop to remove it.
How to Remove Color Fringes from Photographs in Photoshop CS5 - Yahoo! Voices - voices.yahoo.com
This method works in Photoshop and Photoshop Elements: Removing Chromatic Abberation by Kev2010
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Correcting White Balance

If you get color casts or the colors just don't look right after a trial HDR
process, you probably need to adjust your White Balance (WB) before you merge
your images. It is much easier and more accurate to do this in your RAW converter
than it is after the HDR merge. Any uncorrected cast that is in your originals may
generate even more of an issue as you go through the merge and tonemap process.
If you have used a high ISO value, it may be advantageous to apply a small
amount of noise reduction before exporting as 16bit TIFFs and do your merge.
RAW file White balance adjustment tutorials using Adobe Camera Raw are listed below.

How to White balance in Camera Raw in Adobe Photoshop CS5 « Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop: White Balance Picker in Camera RAW

If you do not have Adobe Camera RAW associated with your photo-editor, you can use
Bibble, Capture One, DPP (Canon), DxO, Silkypix, SilverFast, or UFraw (free) for
adjusting White Balance.
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Post Processing (PP)

Web quote, “Alright everyone, this is it. This is where the overwhelming majority of
HDR photographers produce over-saturated, haloed, noisy, over-detailed, messes of
HDR imagery. Poor post processing is what gives HDR a bad name and causes people
to hate HDR for how psychedelic it looks. Post processing is the hardest and most
important part of high dynamic range photography.”
James Brandon, digital-photography-school.com (2010)

This edict is very important but should be qualified slightly. Currently, in 2012, a new
generation of HDR processing software has emerged which, with the exception of resizing,
is capable of making web-ready images. However, some simple post processing steps will
usually improve them.

A Google search for HDR Post Processing or Post Processing Workflow will find more
tutorials than you can digest in a week. Here are a few to get you started.
Digital Photo Editing Workflow
Post Processing Before The Coffee
Photoshop Post-Processing ? 7 Photoshop Tutorials For Image Post Processing
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Noise

One byproduct of HDR processing is noise. This is the graininess that appears
typically in the blue channels, as well as in darker, shadow areas. Most HDR
processors denoise your RAW files before tonemapping but they do not eliminate
noise created by the tonemapping process. Some HDR software is noise prone while
others generate much cleaner images. Whatever HDR product you use, denoising
should be should always be the first step in your post processing process.

N.B. If you pre-process your RAW images in order to make lens distortion corrections,
always denoise them before saving as TIF files for your HDR processing.

All good photo-editors have a denoising facility but the specialized denoising plugins
are more sophisticated and more effective. The most commonly used denoise plugins are:

Neat Image
nik Dfine 2
Noise Ninja
Noiseware Pro and Noiseware Community Edition (search for a free copy)
Topaz DeNoise

A tutorial for most of these products can be found here: Photo Noise Reduction Tutorial
Noiseware Pro hardly needs a tutorial as it has an intuitive interface. A good descrption with
screen-grabs can be found here: Photoshop Big Top: The New Noiseware 5
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Odds and Ends

Two often forgotten PPs on this forum are perspective correction and horizon levelling.
If you have Windows there is a free utility, ShiftN, which will do both these corrections
for you with one mouse click! Mac users will have to use a traditional method such as:
Tutorial 1 - Page 1 (Photoshop)
Lightroom 3 perspective correction | Tutorials | Digital Photographer
Perspective Correction In Photoshop CS6 - Repairing Keystoning
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Editing Mermbers’ images.

There is an option under each member’s avatar indicating whether or not they allow editing of their photos.
Members should enable this so that a “No”, "Yes" or “Ask First” appears. Please only edit those who have
a "YES" below their avatar and do not remove the original watermark/logo under any circumstances.
N.B. When editing other members’ images, we strongly encourage you to use the upload or attach options within a
thread rather than putting the reworked image in your gallery, where it could be mistaken for your original work.

Enabling the editing “Yes” option by new HDR workers is highly recommended as you are much more likely
to receive feed-back from other Camels in the form of a tweaked image and step by step advice.
This will help you to tackle the steep initial learning curve that is inherent in HDR.

To enable editing, follow this sequence:
Quick Links > Edit Profile > pan down to Additional Information > Check the Yes button

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Other useful Information

Camel Karma Explained

PhotoCamel Rules and Guidelines

Raw Vs Jpeg Image comparison

Murrays (Mistermonday) Tif Vs Jpg (Data Loss video Explanation)

Photoshop Vs Photomatix Alignment choices comparison & how to.


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