My HDR tutorial is finally done! **Updated** (Fullsize image/ big file)

[wattsbw2004]

Here is the link to the original size on Flickr.

I finally finished it while at work today and instead of posting up a picture I decided to go ahead release this for everyone. I hope this helps those who are just stepping into the world of HDR as well as people who have been with it for quite some time. If anyone has any questions don't hesitate to send me a Flickrmail

[Dave R.]

What are the odds of you posting this so I do not have to open a flickr account to view it? Thanks

[Worm324]

Ditto what Dave said

Jay

[wattsbw2004]

Originally Posted by Dave R.

What are the odds of you posting this so I do not have to open a flickr account to view it? Thanks

Hmmm I didn't think about that. Let me see what I can do and hopefully I can have it up here by today.

[Worm324]

Really nice job Brandon!! It's always interesting to see how others process there hdr photos andI'm sure many will learn a trick or 2 with this tutorial. It takes a lot of work to put something like this together and I certianly can appreciate your efforts!! Karma all the way

1 thing I noticed that I thought was a little odd in your workflow was the re-sharpening after using define. If you simple do a difne on a new layer and then add a mask, you can remove the noise reduction from the areas you didn't want reduced. This way you are not sharpening what has already been noise reduced. That will result in a loss of detail overall. You can then do the sharpening anyway to add a little more crispness. I would also highly recommend using 16-bit if your computer can handle it. It makes a pretty big difference when printing as well as banding issues. It does slow the computer way down though in PS which sucks and the file size is huge as you said.


If you want to speed up your workflow, I would also recommend using ony about 5 exposure's for a scene like that. Just my personal prefference, but the noise shouldn't be an issue with 5 versus 10 with the amouint of Dynamic range you were dealing with there.

Again really great job and I'll stick this up top for awhile!!

Thanks,
Jay

[wattsbw2004]

Hey thanks Worm. I know exactly what you'r talking about and I'm surpirsed I didn't think about that with all the masking I do anyways. I'm definitely gonna give that a try with the next image HDR I do

[KEVINS]

I have a stupid question. I do not understand the purpose of the masking at all probably b/c I don't fully understand what masking is for.
I was really hoping you would have gone into detail in your tutorial on how you masked the layers and what exactly your masks looked like for each layer (or several of them anyway) and what purpose they hold for the finished image.

I know people do it and I have some links on how to mask an image but I just can't grasp what each masked layer is contributing to the overall image.

ks

[wattsbw2004]

Hopefully the typos are corrected and I added the masked layer to show you exactly where I masked the light trails.

[wattsbw2004]

PDF is now available You can grab it here.