First Try at HDR

[Jim Milby]

We moved back to Japan and I wanted to have a picture of our neighborhood for friends. This was an opportunity to try HDR for the first time. The colors and terrain are pretty drab with a single shot since we're in rainy season. I used PaintshopProX4 with 5 shots at -2,-1,0,1,2 all taken on a tripod. Is this over processed or within acceptable limits?

Thanks for your help improving with C&C. Jim

[kridsada]

you can down load photomatix and try it. trial version is fully operational only disadvantage is that your hdr will have few watermaks of photomatix logo on it.
it should give pretty good result.

[Jim Milby]

Originally Posted by kridsada

you can down load photomatix and try it. trial version is fully operational only disadvantage is that your hdr will have few watermaks of photomatix logo on it.
it should give pretty good result.

Thanks for the info. It would be interesting to see if a better result is possible with it. Jim

[J-man]

Its quite a nice natural looking scene , there are a few programs out there you can try instead of PSP , if you check in the Hdr section at the top under guidelines and tutorials there is a list of useful programs to have a play with

[kridsada]

for landscapes shots of this type it is possible to get good natural result without
noise using masking in photoshop i.e. getting sky from the underexposed shot
and foreground from the overexposed shot. but this method works only if you
are using tripod. i prefer this method over hdrs. if you post two of your shots
in raw format one with highlight not blown and one with sufficiently good
details of the foreground . i can show how good it can be. i use bracketing
three shots usually exposer difference between underexposed and overexposed
not more than 2 stops and get good result.

[Stiga]

Jim,

Welcome! It seems to me that PSP is no better at making HDRs than Photoshop!
I's extraordinary that these great photo-editors cannot do HDR properly.

If you want to do more HDR, try some of the free software trials. There is a list of the
main ones in Guidelines, Settings, Tutorials and Useful Information - including one excellent free application.

Your image leans to the left - here it is corrected and the colour balance tweaked a bit:



Martin

[jessea]

Hello Jim!Welcome from the portrait section!
Your post is quite acceptable for me!
If you try PHOTOMATIX on a free basis,instead of saving your file which will be watermarked,capture it at full screen:for posting here,it's quite sufficient and you won't have watermarks.If you want to print it at full resolution,you have to buy the software to get rid of the watermarks.Martin is right about the leaning but his accentuation is a little too much for me:I prefer yours.

[Jim Milby]

Thanks for your comments and help, guys. Using PSPX4 for HDR, I had no controls over how the images were combined together. I expect a designated HDR software will allow creative choices in how they are combined. I'll download a trial version and give it a try latter.

Stiga, does "image leans to the left" mean underexposed?

Kridsada, I shot in raw and then converted to JPG for the 5 exposures. Then, I deleted the raw files from the CF card. So I don't have the raw files anymore. For my Alaska glacier pictures I saved the raw files in JPG with -2, 0, +2 exposure and then combined using masks. It was a lot of work but the result was very nice. This shot has a slight halo-ing along the tree line. Masking the Alaska shots meticulously, I was able to keep them much cleaner.

One thing I would do differently next time is use the camera's bracketing function. I changed the exposure in steps manually. Looking at the 5 exposures I can see the movement of the clouds, street light and house lights coming on.
Jim

[Stiga]

Originally Posted by Jim Milby

..................
Stiga, does "image leans to the left" mean underexposed?

No, it was tilted to the left!

Originally Posted by Jim Milby

Kridsada, I shot in raw and then converted to JPG for the 5 exposures. Then, I deleted the raw files from the CF card. So I don't have the raw

With HDR Software you don't have to do this. You can work with the RAWs which contain a wider tonal range.

Martin

[Jim Milby]

Martin, thanks for the clarification. The area is a river canyon with many mountains. The road along the river however goes up and down as you climb up the canyon. I will have to go up on the ridge and check if the row of homes along the main road are "leaning to the left". While there I'll try again to get better images to experiment with.

Being able to process RAW files would be a major advantage for tonal range and noise. I'll check if PSP can do that. It does read and edit RAW files.
Jim