A Different GDR Tool

On 2015-03-05 01:53:27 +0000, Eric Stevens said:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 14:11:29 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:
On 2015-03-04 22:08:16 +0000, Savageduck said:
On 2015-03-04 21:02:02 +0000, Eric Stevens said:
On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 12:04:22 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:
On 2015-03-04 19:25:52 +0000, Savageduck said:

In the April edition of Photoshop User magazine, which was focused on
an editorial theme I am not particularly intrested in, wedding
photography, I found in the "Product Review" section, a review on
Unified Color's "HDR Express 3".
HDR Express 3 is a trimmed version of their top of the line "HDR Expose
3" and the review was enough to bait me into visiting their web site.

To cut to the chase, I have dowloaded the 30 day trial. It installs as
a stand-alone, and PS, & LR plug-ins. I have run a few tests of some
old 5 exposure bracket sets, and I am impressed.
I deliberately picked sets which had major ghosting issues due to
movement of people in the background. This was an issue neither NIK HDR
Efex Pro 2, nor PS HDR Pro have not been able to solve completely. HDR
Express dealt with the ghost movement & image alignment easily.

Then for those not favoring the surreal look of much HDR rendering this
seems to aim at producing realistically rendered images, and does so
quite succesfully.

They have a fair number of video tutorials available and I think this
is going to be my future go-to HDR tool

Just as another image processing tool to play with, give the trial a test.
http://www.unifiedcolor.com/products/hdr-express-3

Here is the result for my set with the ghosting problem, shared with
Adobe CC & DB sharing;
http://adobe.ly/18kdrTj
https://db.tt/SveGaRIl

...and here is another 5 exposure HDR with a ghosting issue, namely the
folks walking on the pier, and birds.
https://db.tt/y2GSamf5

Those are all darned good shots and I wouldn't have known they were
HDR unless you told me.

Thanks for that. I was primarily checking to see how HDR Express 3
dealt with ghosts, and reasonably "natural" appearing images. Both of
those sets were good for checking that.

Can you tell us the magnitude of the dynamic range (stops) covered by
the images that were used to make the final HDR?

The Bugatti was shot at ISO 400, the aperture was a constant f/5.0 and
the exposure bracket was controlled by shutter speed:
1/1250; 1/2000; 1/800; 1/500; & 1/320.
This effectively gave me a -2: -1: 0: +1: +2 EV exposure bracket,
basically a 4 stop range. I could have adjusted that upward by going to
a 7, or 9 shot bracket.

The "Shillelagh" was shot at ISO 200 @ f/10.0.
1/640; 1/320; 1/160; 1/80; & 1/40.

I suppose if I upgraded my D300S to a D7200, or a D750 I wouldn't have
to bother fooling with HDR.

I wasn't going to mention that, but that was in the back of my mind.
After posting the chart
http://home.comcast.net/~NikonD70/Ch...#D70,D300,D750 it
occurred to me to wonder about HDR. More to the point, in the few
shots I have edited from the D750 I noticed that the histogram is
rarely clipped and always is very well positioned within the camera
range.

All food for thought.

I've been keeping Paintshop Pro for it's embedded Nik HDR but it
requires manual editing to cope with ghosting and at the best of times
produces rather surreal images. See
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31088803/_DSC5447_8_9_50_51_Detail_Original.jpg


That is the sort of thing that gives HDR a bad reputation. ;-)

I made an interior to exterior test where there was strong light/shadow
contrast, and complications of moving traffic & pedestrians in the
background.
https://db.tt/Fdo8S4De

I am liking HDR Express more, and more, much prefering thse test
results to what I have managed from NIK HDR Efex Pro 2.

I suggest you give the trial version a try. I have used the stand-alone
once, all the other tests have been using the LR plug-in.

It is worth taking a look at the videos;
http://www.unifiedcolor.com/products/hdr-express-3

HDR express sounds just what I need and I will be interested in
hearing whether or not you go ahead and buy it.

I have pretty much decided to pull the trigger and buy this one.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 18:27:26 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

HDR express sounds just what I need and I will be interested in
hearing whether or not you go ahead and buy it.

I have pretty much decided to pull the trigger and buy this one.

The price is right. I might buy it just on your review of it here.

On 2015-03-05 03:14:16 +0000, Bill W said:

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 18:27:26 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

HDR express sounds just what I need and I will be interested in
hearing whether or not you go ahead and buy it.

I have pretty much decided to pull the trigger and buy this one.

The price is right. I might buy it just on your review of it here.

I tried one more challenging test; a 5 shot exposure bracket set which
had to deal with moving waves. I think it did pretty well.

One of the interesting things with using the HDR Express 3 LR plug-in
is all rendering done in the plug-in on unadjusted RAW, or DNG files is
32-bit. All other adjustments are made once the TIFF has been saved
back to LR, or PS.

Anyway, here is that wave-ghost test.
https://db.tt/abF05aN4

--
Regards,

Savageduck

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 21:23:54 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-03-05 03:14:16 +0000, Bill W said:

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 18:27:26 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

HDR express sounds just what I need and I will be interested in
hearing whether or not you go ahead and buy it.

I have pretty much decided to pull the trigger and buy this one.

The price is right. I might buy it just on your review of it here.

I tried one more challenging test; a 5 shot exposure bracket set which
had to deal with moving waves. I think it did pretty well.

One of the interesting things with using the HDR Express 3 LR plug-in
is all rendering done in the plug-in on unadjusted RAW, or DNG files is
32-bit. All other adjustments are made once the TIFF has been saved
back to LR, or PS.

Anyway, here is that wave-ghost test.
https://db.tt/abF05aN4

I'm reluctant to say that that one has peculiar HDR appearance.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 2015-03-05 07:54:02 +0000, Eric Stevens said:

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 21:23:54 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

On 2015-03-05 03:14:16 +0000, Bill W said:

On Wed, 4 Mar 2015 18:27:26 -0800, Savageduck
wrote:

HDR express sounds just what I need and I will be interested in
hearing whether or not you go ahead and buy it.

I have pretty much decided to pull the trigger and buy this one.

The price is right. I might buy it just on your review of it here.

I tried one more challenging test; a 5 shot exposure bracket set which
had to deal with moving waves. I think it did pretty well.

One of the interesting things with using the HDR Express 3 LR plug-in
is all rendering done in the plug-in on unadjusted RAW, or DNG files is
32-bit. All other adjustments are made once the TIFF has been saved
back to LR, or PS.

Anyway, here is that wave-ghost test.
https://db.tt/abF05aN4

I'm reluctant to say

No you aren't. If you truly were reluctant to say, you wouldn't have.

that that one has peculiar HDR appearance.

Perhaps. That is what it is after all.


--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , Savageduck wrote:

On 2015-03-04 19:25:52 +0000, Savageduck said:

Savageduck:
In the April edition of Photoshop User magazine, which was focused
on an editorial theme I am not particularly intrested in, wedding
photography, I found in the "Product Review" section, a review on
Unified Color's "HDR Express 3". HDR Express 3 is a trimmed
version of their top of the line "HDR Expose 3" and the review
was enough to bait me into visiting their web site.

To cut to the chase, I have dowloaded the 30 day trial. It
installs as a stand-alone, and PS, & LR plug-ins. I have run a
few tests of some old 5 exposure bracket sets, and I am
impressed. I deliberately picked sets which had major ghosting
issues due to movement of people in the background. This was an
issue neither NIK HDR Efex Pro 2, nor PS HDR Pro have not been
able to solve completely. HDR Express dealt with the ghost
movement & image alignment easily.

Then for those not favoring the surreal look of much HDR rendering
this seems to aim at producing realistically rendered images, and
does so quite succesfully.

They have a fair number of video tutorials available and I think
this is going to be my future go-to HDR tool

Just as another image processing tool to play with, give the trial
a test. http://www.unifiedcolor.com/products/hdr-express-3

Here is the result for my set with the ghosting problem, shared
with Adobe CC & DB sharing; http://adobe.ly/18kdrTj
https://db.tt/SveGaRIl

...and here is another 5 exposure HDR with a ghosting issue, namely
the folks walking on the pier, and birds. https://db.tt/y2GSamf5

This one looks less "realistic" than the other one, though. How does it work with
single-exposure HDR?

--
Sandman

On 2015-03-05 09:53:02 +0000, Sandman said:

In article ,
Savageduck wrote:

On 2015-03-04 19:25:52 +0000, Savageduck said:

Savageduck:
In the April edition of Photoshop User magazine, which was focused
on an editorial theme I am not particularly intrested in, wedding
photography, I found in the "Product Review" section, a review on
Unified Color's "HDR Express 3". HDR Express 3 is a trimmed
version of their top of the line "HDR Expose 3" and the review
was enough to bait me into visiting their web site.

To cut to the chase, I have dowloaded the 30 day trial. It
installs as a stand-alone, and PS, & LR plug-ins. I have run a
few tests of some old 5 exposure bracket sets, and I am
impressed. I deliberately picked sets which had major ghosting
issues due to movement of people in the background. This was an
issue neither NIK HDR Efex Pro 2, nor PS HDR Pro have not been
able to solve completely. HDR Express dealt with the ghost
movement & image alignment easily.

Then for those not favoring the surreal look of much HDR rendering
this seems to aim at producing realistically rendered images, and
does so quite succesfully.

They have a fair number of video tutorials available and I think
this is going to be my future go-to HDR tool

Just as another image processing tool to play with, give the trial
a test. http://www.unifiedcolor.com/products/hdr-express-3

Here is the result for my set with the ghosting problem, shared
with Adobe CC & DB sharing; http://adobe.ly/18kdrTj
https://db.tt/SveGaRIl

...and here is another 5 exposure HDR with a ghosting issue, namely
the folks walking on the pier, and birds. https://db.tt/y2GSamf5

This one looks less "realistic" than the other one, though.

Well, that's what can happen with different subjects, under different
light, in very different weather conditions.

How does it work with single-exposure HDR?

As you know there isn't really "single-exposure HDR" just tone mapping
of that single exposure. With single exposure tone mapping, it seems to
do a reasonable job. Again it takes a different approach to NIK HDR
Efex Pro in that it takes the RAW file, or unmolested DNG, and mades
all adjustments, & tone mapping in 32-bit mode and saves a 16-bit TIFF
back to LR.

Here is a DB folder with the unmolested DNG I worked on and the tone
mapped result:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uenn27hu1srt7yn/AABsY2MQJriy_0b3agEQPb7Xa?dl=0
or
http://tinyurl.com/mrsajcx


--
Regards,

Savageduck

On 2015-03-05 14:25:46 +0000, Savageduck said:

On 2015-03-05 09:53:02 +0000, Sandman said:

In article ,
Savageduck wrote:

On 2015-03-04 19:25:52 +0000, Savageduck said:

Savageduck:
In the April edition of Photoshop User magazine, which was focused
on an editorial theme I am not particularly intrested in, wedding
photography, I found in the "Product Review" section, a review on
Unified Color's "HDR Express 3". HDR Express 3 is a trimmed
version of their top of the line "HDR Expose 3" and the review
was enough to bait me into visiting their web site.

To cut to the chase, I have dowloaded the 30 day trial. It
installs as a stand-alone, and PS, & LR plug-ins. I have run a
few tests of some old 5 exposure bracket sets, and I am
impressed. I deliberately picked sets which had major ghosting
issues due to movement of people in the background. This was an
issue neither NIK HDR Efex Pro 2, nor PS HDR Pro have not been
able to solve completely. HDR Express dealt with the ghost
movement & image alignment easily.

Then for those not favoring the surreal look of much HDR rendering
this seems to aim at producing realistically rendered images, and
does so quite succesfully.

They have a fair number of video tutorials available and I think
this is going to be my future go-to HDR tool

Just as another image processing tool to play with, give the trial
a test. http://www.unifiedcolor.com/products/hdr-express-3

Here is the result for my set with the ghosting problem, shared
with Adobe CC & DB sharing; http://adobe.ly/18kdrTj
https://db.tt/SveGaRIl

...and here is another 5 exposure HDR with a ghosting issue, namely
the folks walking on the pier, and birds. https://db.tt/y2GSamf5

This one looks less "realistic" than the other one, though.

Well, that's what can happen with different subjects, under different
light, in very different weather conditions.

How does it work with single-exposure HDR?

As you know there isn't really "single-exposure HDR" just tone mapping
of that single exposure. With single exposure tone mapping, it seems to
do a reasonable job. Again it takes a different approach to NIK HDR
Efex Pro in that it takes the RAW file, or unmolested DNG, and mades
all adjustments, & tone mapping in 32-bit mode and saves a 16-bit TIFF
back to LR.

Here is a DB folder with the unmolested DNG I worked on and the tone
mapped result:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uenn27hu1srt7yn/AABsY2MQJriy_0b3agEQPb7Xa?dl=0
or
http://tinyurl.com/mrsajcx

....and just to finish off this trial run, here is another -2; -1; 0;
+1; +2 EV 5 shot bracket HDR with a mid exposure comparison.
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/1295663/FileChute/screenshot_18.jpg
https://db.tt/O4Y2crfS


--
Regards,

Savageduck

In article , Savageduck wrote:

Sandman:
How does it work with single-exposure HDR?

As you know there isn't really "single-exposure HDR" just tone
mapping of that single exposure.

That's not true, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and a 14 bit RAW file has
more dynamic range than what a JPG or your screen can display, so using the high
dynamic range of a RAW file to compress it down to a lower dynamic range is
possible with a single exposure. It's just that if you're using more images, you
get an even larger dynamic range.

With single exposure tone mapping, it seems to do a reasonable job.
Again it takes a different approach to NIK HDR Efex Pro in that it
takes the RAW file, or unmolested DNG, and mades all adjustments, &
tone mapping in 32-bit mode and saves a 16-bit TIFF back to LR.

Why wouldn't NIK HDR Efex Pro do that as well? Photomatix most certainly does.
Seems odd that not all HDR apps would.

Here is a DB folder with the unmolested DNG I worked on and the tone
mapped result:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uenn27hu1srt7yn/AABsY2MQJriy_0b3agEQPb7Xa?dl=0
or http://tinyurl.com/mrsajcx

Just saw one image there, but it looked nice. Still very HDR:ish but even so.

--
Sandman

On 2015-03-05 16:51:39 +0000, Sandman said:

In article ,
Savageduck wrote:

Sandman:
How does it work with single-exposure HDR?

As you know there isn't really "single-exposure HDR" just tone
mapping of that single exposure.

That's not true, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and a 14 bit RAW file has
more dynamic range than what a JPG or your screen can display, so using
the high
dynamic range of a RAW file to compress it down to a lower dynamic range is
possible with a single exposure. It's just that if you're using more
images, you
get an even larger dynamic range.

With single exposure tone mapping, it seems to do a reasonable job.
Again it takes a different approach to NIK HDR Efex Pro in that it
takes the RAW file, or unmolested DNG, and mades all adjustments, &
tone mapping in 32-bit mode and saves a 16-bit TIFF back to LR.

Why wouldn't NIK HDR Efex Pro do that as well?

Beats me, but I suspect that it is because NIK does most of its plug-in
adjustments to 16-bit TIFFs or PSDs, and has yet to update to a 32-bit
process for its entire collection.

Photomatix most certainly does.

Photomatix does a merge to 32-bit since LR included 32-bit RAW
processing. For both Photomatix & HDR Express 3 the 32-bit tone mapping
only works for RAW or unadjusted DNG files from LR. If any adjustments
are made in LR or ACR then they will default to 16-bit TIFF.
....and results are not going to be particularly great if you try tone
mapping, or HDR processing on 8-bit JPEGs.

Seems odd that not all HDR apps would.

Ultimately they all should. That makes sense especially with new
sensors and the latent DR they provide for single image tone mapping.

Here is a DB folder with the unmolested DNG I worked on and the tone
mapped result:
https://www.dropbox.com/sh/uenn27hu1srt7yn/AABsY2MQJriy_0b3agEQPb7Xa?dl=0
or http://tinyurl.com/mrsajcx

Just saw one image there, but it looked nice.

Yup! one JPEG and the DNG it originates from.
....but just for you I have added a JPEG of the unmolested original to
the folder.

Still very HDR:ish but even so.

So? For all the images I have processed with HDR Express 3, I have
managed to avoid typical HDR halo and/or glow, and it seems to handle
ghosting and alignment issues quite well particularly with bracket sets
NIK HDR Efex couldn't handle.
I haven't use Photomatix for several years as the results it gave me
always seemed to be over cooked.


--
Regards,

Savageduck