HDR Photography

[Debs.]

I have a little project on the go, and would like to create one or two 'special' digital images for subsequent display at an exhibition to celebrate the historic anniversary of a local, religious building.

 

I`ve been very taken with the HDR technique of combining multiple bracketed images, into one single, wide dynamic range photograph.....which I believe would be especially useful for rendering difficult areas of restricted-illumination within the building.

 

I think I understand the HDR photography/process basics, but wonder if anyone here on the forum uses the HDR technique, and if-so; might they recommend a suitably inexpensive HDR processing program for me to at least get-started and 'have a go' without too much 'techie' knowledge being needed!

 

Thank you.....

Deb. and Co(llies)

[emac]

hi not done much HDR but I know you can use Photoshop elements with some success available from amazon S/h for around £40 for v9 or EBay for less

tutorials online here

http://www.picturesocial.com/video/how-to-create-hdr-images-in

or

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-blog/10/cs5-09/hdr-elements-9-tonal-mapping.html

 

pleanty more tutorials online with google search

regards Eddie

 

forgot to add at adobe.com you can download a trial version of Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 11 software which is fully functional and offers every feature of the product for you to test-drive.

[Debs.]

hi not done much HDR but I know you can use Photoshop elements with some success available from amazon S/h for around £40 for v9 or EBay for less

tutorials online here

http://www.picturesocial.com/video/how-to-create-hdr-images-in

or

http://www.photoshopsupport.com/photoshop-blog/10/cs5-09/hdr-elements-9-tonal-mapping.html

 

pleanty more tutorials online with google search

regards Eddie

 

forgot to add at adobe.com you can download a trial version of Adobe® Photoshop® Elements 11 software which is fully functional and offers every feature of the product for you to test-drive.

 

 

That`s brilliant, Eddie......thanks very much.

[Ozexpatriate]

A colleague of mine does a lot of HDR images. I'll check with him.

Done. He uses Photoshop CS6.

He used to use Photomatix but dropped it when Adobe added HDR support in Photoshop. I think it first appeared in CS5.

[Debs.]

Thankyou William and 'Ozy'........To begin with, I`ll try the free Luminance version just to get a feel for the technique and practices.

 

I have a Fuji HS28 camera, so I can easily set it to make suitably bracketed sequential-exposures.

[lakeview770]

I use it quite alot its great in museums and ive also done some external work with it too. The first shot of the Doolittle raiders has no post processing done to it whereas the other 2 have had HDR-FX pro used on them

 

Andrew

 

[Ozexpatriate]

I use it quite alot its great in museums

Very nice idea - and nice results Andrew.

 

My colleague likes to use it to take photographs of street fronts - looking through shop windows, balancing interior and exterior exposures and removing window glare/reflections.

[A_S]

Regarding taking photos of street fronts - surely the best way to try and remove the reflections is using a polarising filter rather than HDR? maybe he has some other reason?

 

anyway - HDR..

 

wow, some of these are stunning, if you wouldnt mind could you share your settings - both exposure bracketting and post processing.

 

Ive experimented a bit but a lot of my images (both with CS6, or photomatrix or a combination of both) have come out very noisy, not well balanced in terms of colour or contrast and I haven't really got my head round HDR yet. best I've done is below:

 

 

IMG_8990_1_2_3_5_6_8_tonemapped_final by Andrew_S84, on Flickr

[Ozexpatriate]

Regarding taking photos of street fronts - surely the best way to try and remove the reflections is using a polarising filter rather than HDR? maybe he has some other reason?

Increased depth of field and balancing the different interior/exterior exposure conditions are the primary motivations.

[Mod5]

Moved from Wheeltappers to the Photography section where it can be of use to others in the future and won't be pruned by Wheeltappers (if that even happens now)!

[lakeview770]

For my settings I always shoot manual or AV mode (on Canon) as you dont want your depth of field altering during the shot. For the bracketing I found out trial and error was the best for me, so if a subject has a large range from the highlight to shaddow detail I find either 2 to 3 stops either way at 1 stop intervals or sometimes a stop either way works. I just play it by ear Ive tried various ways and now just asses the subject. This was three shots hand held +/- 1 1/2 stops.

[raymw]

Hi Deb,

 

I would suggest elements - or for free, but more clunky - gimp. You may like to try sagelight - http://www.sagelightforum.com/ far better than anything else, (try the clah function) but an odd interface, and nobody knows if Rob is still around (the author). If you really want to get the best from your prints, then qimage, but it may be a bit techy for you.

 

Whatever you do, in hdr, don't get the black clouds and halos/other artifacts. imnsho, an hdr image should not be seen as such, just as a well exposed 'normal' image. Of course, other opinions may vary, and that's OK too. If your camera saved raw files, for what you need you wouldn't need hdr -- but unfortunately, I don't think it does.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[A_S]

I do love some of these in here.

 

another from myself shot this morning and edited in CS6 merge to HDR. it was 3 bracketted images 1 stop apart (would have liked to do more but the rain came). What do you think?

 

 

car_HDR2 V2 web by Andrew_S84, on Flickr

 

 

If anyone has any tips on the following 2 questions that would help me a lot -

 

1.) How do you keep the sky from getting so noisy when you apply the fairly extreme exposure, highlight and shaddow adjustments as seen above. My image is noise reduced with noiseware but still, you can see those vertical lines of noise... I presume there is a way after the initial exposures? obviously by nature with the over exposed images you are always going to get blown highlights - one way would be to use more images stopped maybe 1/3 of a stop apart perhaps?

 

2.) How do you balance the sky and the rest of the exposure - on a lot of the HDRs i see the sky is more extremely adjusted than the rest of the image which creates quite a dramatic effect/contrast with the rest of the image looking more normal - is the sky edited as a separate adjustment by using the wand/poligon/freehand selection methods or are there ways to do the whole image but focus teh adjustments mainly on the sky (I am aware that editing the highlights will mainly focus on the sky so excluding this method..!)

 

Andy

[54Strat]

Hi Debs,

 

Have you considered exposure blending rather than HDR? it can give a much more natural feel to the lighting in a scene and you have way more control over it.

 

It's basically the same type of capture method as HDR, you start out by bracketing a few shots where you expose one for the lighter areas, one for the mid tones and one for the darker areas. You stack them in Photoshop and selective blend between them with masks. It sounds complicated but it's not. Kind of like using a ND Grad filter but at post processing.

 

For example, in a shot of a building, you expose for the building but then the sky is overexposed, or you expose for the sky and the building is too dark. Best of both is to combine the most pleasing exposures of the building and the sky into one image.

 

I shoot a lot in low light where there's high contrast and always use this technique over HDR

 

[Debs.]

Hi Debs,

 

Have you considered exposure blending rather than HDR? it can give a much more natural feel to the lighting in a scene and you have way more control over it.

 

It's basically the same type of capture method as HDR, you start out by bracketing a few shots where you expose one for the lighter areas, one for the mid tones and one for the darker areas. You stack them in Photoshop and selective blend between them with masks. It sounds complicated but it's not. Kind of like using a ND Grad filter but at post processing.

 

For example, in a shot of a building, you expose for the building but then the sky is overexposed, or you expose for the sky and the building is too dark. Best of both is to combine the most pleasing exposures of the building and the sky into one image.

 

I shoot a lot in low light where there's high contrast and always use this technique over HDR

 

Thank you for that, it`s very interesting and would seem to give the interior results I`m after.......I shall do some further-research as to the technique.......I don`t have Photoshop but I`m sure other processing packages allow such stacking with multiple-exposure corrections.

[raymw]

Hi Andy,

 

use layers, select the sky from original, and chose how to blend with your hdr. You may find this helpful - http://kelbytv.com/photoshopkillertips/2010/05/07/fixing-skies-with-layer-styles/  but just poke around on Kelby tv, plenty of hints there, including some specifics wrt hdr in ps user tv, iirc. (you get a brief description of episode contents if you hover over the thumbnail).

 

hth, best wishes, Ray

[A_S]

Thanks Ray I will have a look. The power of photoshop is incredible and HDR really gets you thinking. I dont have much experience of blending different layers so it is definatly one to try - unfortunatly the document you link to is not working (but i can look at the other articles on the site). In anycase how will that help me bring out the dynamic range of the sky, as surely the sky from the original will not have that tonal range?

[raymw]

Hi Andy,

 

Funny, now the link doesn't always work for me, but once you get to the page, it is the same url. Anyway, go to the photoshop killer tips section, go back a couple of pages to the older episodes, it refers to the one dated 2010/05/07 (which shows in the URL, even if it says page doesn't exist.)

 

You have to get the experience, and play around yourself, or spend time with Napp, or wherever. Separating the sky allows you to fiddle with that, independent of the rest of the image, and the blending style of the layers will dramatically effect the appearance. If it was easy, everybody would be doing it.  iirc, one of the guys at Napp has written a pretty good book on hdr, have a look through the peachpit (sp) publishing site.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[lakeview770]

Heres another one made with 6 images stacked .