conkerwood

I set myself the task of taking a pic today so that I could document the steps. Its certainly not the best pic I have ever taken (photographing water and rocky boats on a windy cloudy day using HDR is plain dumb but thats the way it was) But a couple of people have been interested in the steps I take for HDR so here goes. The first three pics are +2, 0,-2. They are processed in photomatix. The 4th pic is of the Photomatix settings I used. The 5th pic is the output from Photomatix, needs sharpening, cropping and selective adjustments to contrast and brightness which are all done in PS. Final pic is the result. Not happy with the cropping, too tight on the left and bottom. I would normally live with it for a few days, looking, changing tweeking etc but for now I will go with this. Hope it helps anyone who is interested. I also added another pic from a while ago which I have always liked, though it may not be to everyone's taste.

Peter

DonTX Loc: San Antonio

Excellent results. Thank you for sharing Photomatix settings with the rest of us. When you bring photos into Photomatix, do you do the noise reduction and chromatic abberation reductions? Or do you do them in PS afterward the merge?

glojo Loc: South Devon, England

Really nice picture and it looks like the youth in background might have been moving but the software has dealt with it.

:thumbup: :thumbup:

conkerwood

Yes I do the noise reduction and the chromatic abberation setting buyt more often than not I need to further work in PS as the HDR process tends to amplify both noise and chromatic issues.

conkerwood

I decided that the crop, the intruding roof behind the trees and some of the overblown highlights were really not good so I reworked the pic and went for a slightly cooler temperature. I prefer it but I would be interested in your feedback.

Peter

glojo Loc: South Devon, England

Hi Peter,
If there is ANYONE that I would like to emulate on this forum regarding their HDR skills then you have set the bar.....

My thoughts are that this image surpasses the previous one.

Unfortunately sometimes folks chuck out compliments far to willy nilly on this forum but on this forum (HDR) this picture is the best I have seen so far.

Do I sound envious? :thumbup: :thumbup: :thumbup:

Quick query
Are the drums that rusty or orange in real life as they do seem VERY SLIGHTLY overpowering?

conkerwood

Yeah I hesitated over them. They are actually that bright because they are painted to be obvious but you are right I think the orangs in the picture is just a touch over and I will tweek it back a bit. I think I have said somewhere else that I usually live with a pic for a week, going back and tweeking it after a couple of days. Thers actually a slight fault of orange line around the two smoke stacks so I will fix those as well. Many thanks for your kind and helpful comments.

PS I just checked back at the original and I think what I am finding is that the orange is intensified a little on the ugly hedgehog sight. I have also found other pics seem a little less bright. But I still think the orange has to go back a bit.


Peter

Chinaman Loc: Adelaide, South Australia, Australia

Hi Peter
Love the close up shot. Its a winner. Looked at the downloaded image for the last one and it looks great. I am pleased you cool the colour down and also given the left side and bottom a bit more space again. I felt you cropped them off too much earlier on. I don't mind the orange drums. In fact they capture my attention and lead me to the ?barge in the middle. It also breaks up the expanse of water. I feel the barge is a bit lost in the background. Maybe moving more to your right will show a bit of water between the barge and background to give it that separation. Well done.
My Photomatix workflow is similar to yours. I try and do all the adjustments at this stage and then further adjustments of contrast, noise reduction and sharpening in Photoshop.

conkerwood

Thanks, I appreciate your comments and of course, you are absolutely right about the position of the barge and the point from which i took the pic. Unfortunately things sometimes conspire to prevent the perfect angle and in this case it was the road bridge just behind me, so I had nowhere else to go. Very inconvenient of the local council to put a bridge right where I want to stand.

Cheers

Peter