Who prefers which?

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On Sep 4, 2017, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

I downloaded HDR2 to take a closer look, and it seems the ghosting of the
individuals in several places is serious to unacceptable. It looks as if you
didn’t take movement into account, to make the ghosting correction at HDR
merge. With the figures in the lower right quarter it is possible to see the
movement from exposure to exposure. With the figures mid-right, the same can
be seen, with some ghosting so bad that there is one individual who is just a
halo outline.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh93wv2rqs5ouyc/screenshot_161.png

You should re-render and make the ghost correction quite strong.

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On 9/4/2017 9:53 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

HDR2 has some possibilities but for some reason it's blindingly bright on my
monitor.

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 19:53:57 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Yes

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’

2:00pm. I just got there whan I did.

and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.

Yes, I knew all that. I was slightly surprised to find myself looking
almost exactly up sun at that time and place but I thought I would
give it a try. The principal glare was a reflection off the water.

The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

A later start would have had the sun lower and further to the left.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

Both HDR2 and HDR3 are made from the same set of exposures. Even with
HDR I had problems lifting the details of the rock in the immediate
foreground out of the shadows. Hence the two quite different
approaches. HDR2 was made afte HDR3 (don't ask) and while in some way
it answered my reservations about HDR3 I am far from satisfied with
it. In many way I prefer the direction of HDR3 but I first want to
deal with the problems of the rock.

You will know that during the construction of the merged HDR exposure
Photoshop builds a stack of images and layer masks from which it
builds the final image. Is there any way of stopping the processing at
that point and manually adjusting individual masks?
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 20:24:17 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On Sep 4, 2017, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

I downloaded HDR2 to take a closer look, and it seems the ghosting of the
individuals in several places is serious to unacceptable. It looks as if you
didn’t take movement into account, to make the ghosting correction at HDR
merge.

Oh, but I did.

With the figures in the lower right quarter it is possible to see the
movement from exposure to exposure. With the figures mid-right, the same can
be seen, with some ghosting so bad that there is one individual who is just a
halo outline.

Yep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh93wv2rqs5ouyc/screenshot_161.png

I like that sausage on legs galloping along in the background.

You should re-render and make the ghost correction quite strong.

As far as I can see the ghosting correction is either on or off. There
is no control.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Mon, 4 Sep 2017 23:16:28 -0500, gray_wolf
wrote:

On 9/4/2017 9:53 PM, Savageduck wrote:
On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which has
some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows, it
has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

HDR2 has some possibilities but for some reason it's blindingly bright on my
monitor.


Is your monitor calibrated?
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 19:53:57 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Yes

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’

2:00pm. I just got there whan I did.

I guess that is a bit early for the ‘Golden Hour’.

and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.

Yes, I knew all that. I was slightly surprised to find myself looking
almost exactly up sun at that time and place but I thought I would
give it a try. The principal glare was a reflection off the water.

With the Sun lower in the sky the reflection incidence on the water should
have changed to reduce the glare. Also, this might have been the time to
introduce a CPF, and/or that ND Grad.


The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

A later start would have had the sun lower and further to the left.

....and that would have been a problem?


HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which
has some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows,
it has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could be
an acceptable presentation.

Both HDR2 and HDR3 are made from the same set of exposures. Even with
HDR I had problems lifting the details of the rock in the immediate
foreground out of the shadows. Hence the two quite different
approaches. HDR2 was made afte HDR3 (don't ask) and while in some way
it answered my reservations about HDR3 I am far from satisfied with
it. In many way I prefer the direction of HDR3 but I first want to
deal with the problems of the rock.

You will know that during the construction of the merged HDR exposure
Photoshop builds a stack of images and layer masks from which it
builds the final image. Is there any way of stopping the processing at
that point and manually adjusting individual masks?

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 20:24:17 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On Sep 4, 2017, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around
experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which
has some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows,
it has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could
be an acceptable presentation.

I downloaded HDR2 to take a closer look, and it seems the ghosting of the
individuals in several places is serious to unacceptable. It looks as if you
didn’t take movement into account, to make the ghosting correction at HDR
merge.

Oh, but I did.

Hmmm...

With the figures in the lower right quarter it is possible to see the
movement from exposure to exposure. With the figures mid-right, the same can
be seen, with some ghosting so bad that there is one individual who is just
a halo outline.

Yep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh93wv2rqs5ouyc/screenshot_161.png
I like that sausage on legs galloping along in the background.

You should re-render and make the ghost correction quite strong.

As far as I can see the ghosting correction is either on or off. There
is no control.

OK! Just to confirm, you are using ACR and PS CC to make this HDR merge?

Personally I have only used that method one or two times experimentally. I
very much prefer to use Lightroom’s version of Merge to HDR, or one of two
other very good HDR plugin tools; Aurora HDR, or Pinnacle HDR Express 3. Each
of those provide different methods of dealing with ghosting. Lightroom has
the simplest implementation of deghosting adjustment. Aurora does it a little
differently by selecting a ‘Master image' against which potential ghosts
are compared and fixed.

I am not about to toy around with ACR right now to see if perhaps you might
have missed something.
However, I checked with Julieanne Kost and there is an adjustment for
deghosting in ACR.
https://youtu.be/gwsB6yU2czo

LR Merge to HDR preview panel:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h4ctsboigjxwid4/screenshot_162.png

Aurora HDR
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uv8ypaa94ha9ngc/screenshot_163.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wjow23j8e885lm/screenshot_165.png

--

Regards,
Savageduck

On Sep 4, 2017, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

On Mon, 04 Sep 2017 20:24:17 -0700, Savageduck
wrote:

On Sep 4, 2017, Savageduck wrote
(in iganews.com):

On Sep 4, 2017, Eric Stevens wrote
(in ):

Part of my continued messing around with HDR: two tratments of an HDR
shot looking up one of our west coast beaches (Muriwai) early on a
mid-winter afternoon. The low sun (just out of frame) makes this a
difficult shot from any point of viw. The question is, which treatment
is the best way to handle it? Opinions are wanted.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/0ttx3jvyvi..._HDR2.jpg?dl=0

https://www.dropbox.com/s/hc9pwr9crg..._HDR3.jpg?dl=0

This might seem to be an answer which hedges its bets, but the first thing
would be to ask your intent, or were these just a messing around
experiment.

The post merging to HDR adjustments are one of the critical elements, and
perhaps these could have benefitted from a slightly different touch with
saturation/contrast/vibrance.

Another personal observation is, you seemed to have been too early for
‘Golden Hour’ and the light is too harsh blwing the highlights so much
there is little hope of recovering anything from the blown areas with HDR.
The blown highlights in both renditions which might have benefitted from
an
ND Grad, or a later start. Perhaps next time.

HDR2 has all the elements of a well processed HDR with the shadow detail
in
the foreground lifted, and the individual figures discernible. The only
HDR
issue I have with HDR2 is the one figure in the lower right quarter which
has some haloing, possibly due to ghosting. I also have an issue with the
highlights which are undoubtably blown. That might be fixable with a
rerendering. This image is one which might benefit from a rethink
regarding
color adjustment.

HDR3 is an effective capture of the time of day, and the feel of the
deepening shadows. However, as a capture of Sunset at Golden hour it just
doesn’t work. Also, because you didn’t lift the detail in the shadows,
it has a muddy feel, and to my eye it feels wrong.

So of the two, HDR2 gets my vote, and with a few fixing adjustments could
be an acceptable presentation.

I downloaded HDR2 to take a closer look, and it seems the ghosting of the
individuals in several places is serious to unacceptable. It looks as if
you
didn’t take movement into account, to make the ghosting correction at HDR
merge.

Oh, but I did.

Hmmm...

With the figures in the lower right quarter it is possible to see the
movement from exposure to exposure. With the figures mid-right, the same
can
be seen, with some ghosting so bad that there is one individual who is just
a halo outline.

Yep.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/rh93wv2rqs5ouyc/screenshot_161.png
I like that sausage on legs galloping along in the background.

You should re-render and make the ghost correction quite strong.

As far as I can see the ghosting correction is either on or off. There
is no control.

OK! Just to confirm, you are using ACR and PS CC to make this HDR merge?

Personally I have only used that method one or two times experimentally. I
very much prefer to use Lightroom’s version of Merge to HDR, or one of two
other very good HDR plugin tools; Aurora HDR, or Pinnacle HDR Express 3. Each
of those provide different methods of dealing with ghosting. Lightroom has
the simplest implementation of deghosting adjustment. Aurora does it a little
differently by selecting a ‘Master image' against which potential ghosts
are compared and fixed.

I am not about to toy around with ACR right now to see if perhaps you might
have missed something.
However, I checked with Julieanne Kost and there is an adjustment for
deghosting in ACR.
https://youtu.be/gwsB6yU2czo

LR Merge to HDR preview panel:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/h4ctsboigjxwid4/screenshot_162.png

Aurora HDR
https://www.dropbox.com/s/uv8ypaa94ha9ngc/screenshot_163.png
https://www.dropbox.com/s/1wjow23j8e885lm/screenshot_165.png

BTW: here is the HDR produced in LR with Merge to HDR.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/blaa0lry54gap9p/DSC_1595-HDR.jpg

....and using Aurora HDR as an LR plugin.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5tzb8gchrglw5hq/DSC_1595_AuHDR.jpg

--

Regards,
Savageduck