RAW - HDR

I've been playing around with Photomatix for the past couple of days.
You can feed it a RAW file and it creates a pseudo-HDR, which you can
then tone map. I've found it SO much easier than PhotoShop to get close
to the images I want, and the scene as it originally registered to my
eyes. (Of course, you have to take care not to overdo it, or your
pictures will look like the cover of an Asia album.) I can't believe I
didn't do this years ago.

http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/3387690

"Cynicor" wrote:
I've been playing around with Photomatix for the past couple of days. You
can feed it a RAW file and it creates a pseudo-HDR, which you can then
tone map. I've found it SO much easier than PhotoShop to get close to the
images I want, and the scene as it originally registered to my eyes. (Of
course, you have to take care not to overdo it, or your pictures will look
like the cover of an Asia album.) I can't believe I didn't do this years
ago.

http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/3387690

If those are all from _single_ raw files, I'm impressed.

There's a disturbing halo effect at the edge between the sky and subject in
some (e.g. #6, 10), and seeing the before and after in some of them makes
the after seem to be taken with multiple light sources (e.g. #15). (Hey, I'm
human; gotta bitch about something.)

Still, if those are from _single_ raw files, impressive is the operative
term here. You're nailing the Velvia landscape look without having to wait
for the light (e.g. #4, 8, 12). Nice.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

David J. Littleboy wrote:
"Cynicor" wrote:
I've been playing around with Photomatix for the past couple of days. You
can feed it a RAW file and it creates a pseudo-HDR, which you can then
tone map. I've found it SO much easier than PhotoShop to get close to the
images I want, and the scene as it originally registered to my eyes. (Of
course, you have to take care not to overdo it, or your pictures will look
like the cover of an Asia album.) I can't believe I didn't do this years
ago.

http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/3387690

If those are all from _single_ raw files, I'm impressed.

Most of them are. The second Glasgow Necropolis is a three-JPG stack,
and #15 (without a before image) looks sort of crappy because of the
lighting. (And it's the other three-JPG stack.) I was playing around
with them a bit.

There's a disturbing halo effect at the edge between the sky and subject in
some (e.g. #6, 10), and seeing the before and after in some of them makes
the after seem to be taken with multiple light sources (e.g. #15). (Hey, I'm
human; gotta bitch about something.)

I noticed the halo effect - it looks like a selection that's been
excessively feathered. I haven't played around with the conversion
settings too much.

Still, if those are from _single_ raw files, impressive is the operative
term here. You're nailing the Velvia landscape look without having to wait
for the light (e.g. #4, 8, 12). Nice.

An almost fully functional version (it puts in watermarks) is available
from their site. Try it out with a slightly underexposed RAW file. I've
been wasting a lot of time over the past two days looking for older RAW
files that seem dull, to see what it does with them. (If they're too
dark or plain, sometimes you get a lot of speckled color noise.)

Cynicor wrote:

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Cynicor" wrote:

I've been playing around with Photomatix for the past couple of days.
You can feed it a RAW file and it creates a pseudo-HDR, which you can
then tone map. I've found it SO much easier than PhotoShop to get
close to the images I want, and the scene as it originally registered
to my eyes. (Of course, you have to take care not to overdo it, or
your pictures will look like the cover of an Asia album.) I can't
believe I didn't do this years ago.

http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/3387690

If those are all from _single_ raw files, I'm impressed.

Most of them are. The second Glasgow Necropolis is a three-JPG stack,
and #15 (without a before image) looks sort of crappy because of the
lighting. (And it's the other three-JPG stack.) I was playing around
with them a bit.

There's a disturbing halo effect at the edge between the sky and
subject in some (e.g. #6, 10), and seeing the before and after in some
of them makes the after seem to be taken with multiple light sources
(e.g. #15). (Hey, I'm human; gotta bitch about something.)

I noticed the halo effect - it looks like a selection that's been
excessively feathered. I haven't played around with the conversion
settings too much.

Still, if those are from _single_ raw files, impressive is the
operative term here. You're nailing the Velvia landscape look without
having to wait for the light (e.g. #4, 8, 12). Nice.

An almost fully functional version (it puts in watermarks) is available
from their site. Try it out with a slightly underexposed RAW file. I've
been wasting a lot of time over the past two days looking for older RAW
files that seem dull, to see what it does with them. (If they're too
dark or plain, sometimes you get a lot of speckled color noise.)

Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix
Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but
still it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can
click for a full pixel crop.

--
Paul Furman Photography
http://edgehill.net
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com

"Paul Furman" wrote:

Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix
Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but still
it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can click
for a full pixel crop.

Interesting: it's still doing the halo thing.

Perhaps you could try very low levels of the effect.

David J. Littleboy
Tokyo, Japan

Paul Furman wrote:

Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix

Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but
still it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can
click for a full pixel crop.

I redid the original with default settings and made another HDR with
maxed out contrast. There's no way to get that with a regular raw
conversion, that's for sure. I'm not crazy about the gray sky effect so
I reduced that in the sliders for the contrasty version and darkened the
shadows to mask the noise... they mention in the tutorial it's better to
overexpose to avoid noise and the highlights can usually be recovered. I
had shot this underexposed a bit to avoid blowing the sky out. That's
why they describe it as a 'pseudo HDR' if you use a single raw file.

Also, I should mention it crashed a few times and is quite slow but I
guess it's doing a lot of processing.

--
Paul Furman Photography
http://edgehill.net
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Paul Furman" wrote:

Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix
Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but still
it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can click
for a full pixel crop.

Interesting: it's still doing the halo thing.

Perhaps you could try very low levels of the effect.

Yes it does do a soft edged mask. If I overlay the hdr version in PS &
set that layer to mode 'difference' the halo is real clear. There's a
setting with 5 options for 'Light Smoothing' which dramatically effects
how much actually happens but yes it does look better with that adjusted
to minimize the halo. Hmmm, but then the sky blows out also... so it's a
tradeoff. When I do this manually, I do a similar soft edged mask.

--
Paul Furman Photography
http://edgehill.net
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com

On Sep 11, 2:10 am, Paul Furman wrote:
I redid the original with default settings and made another HDR with
maxed out contrast. There's no way to get that with a regular raw
conversion, that's for sure.

If I am using only one RAW file I prefer to import the file using two
(or more) different settings and then do layer masking to get the end
result I want. If I have multiple images shot specifically for HDR
processing I'll go to Photoshop's "Merge to HDR" command. That
command does not work properly with just one image since there really
isn't enough dynamic range in the pic to start with. Similarly, I
would expect Photomatix to do a better job with multiple images rather
than just one.
So if you are shooting landscapes from a tripod it makes sense to take
multiple bracketed shots.

Here's one I did last night showing the difference between a straight
JPG conversion (the underexposed image on the left) and the result
that can be achieved by doing multiple conversions of the same file
and using layer masking:

http://www.pbase.com/bret/image/85432710/original

Note that when underexposing at high ISOs you will introduce a great
deal of noise to the pic. By using different conversion settings for
different parts of the photo you can reduce the noise a great deal
especially in the areas where it would do the most harm (the
background).

I'm cross-posting this from rec.photo.digital to
rec.photo.digital.slr-systems for some more thoughts about it. Also, I
put another test up which shows the halo problem:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/San-Francisco/neighborhoods/9-3-07-sailing/Photomatix
The first one is achived with curves in photoshop and actually works
better in this case, the third is HDR with max smoothing but still blows
out the sky around the dark crane (big halo) and the second is a default
raw conversion.

I think it would be useful for batch processing with a light touch, or
certain types of scenes where the halo isn't intrusive.

Paul Furman wrote:

Cynicor wrote:

David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Cynicor" wrote:

I've been playing around with Photomatix for the past couple of
days. You can feed it a RAW file and it creates a pseudo-HDR, which
you can then tone map. I've found it SO much easier than PhotoShop
to get close to the images I want, and the scene as it originally
registered to my eyes. (Of course, you have to take care not to
overdo it, or your pictures will look like the cover of an Asia
album.) I can't believe I didn't do this years ago.

http://trupin.smugmug.com/gallery/3387690


If those are all from _single_ raw files, I'm impressed.


Most of them are. The second Glasgow Necropolis is a three-JPG stack,
and #15 (without a before image) looks sort of crappy because of the
lighting. (And it's the other three-JPG stack.) I was playing around
with them a bit.

There's a disturbing halo effect at the edge between the sky and
subject in some (e.g. #6, 10), and seeing the before and after in
some of them makes the after seem to be taken with multiple light
sources (e.g. #15). (Hey, I'm human; gotta bitch about something.)


I noticed the halo effect - it looks like a selection that's been
excessively feathered. I haven't played around with the conversion
settings too much.

Still, if those are from _single_ raw files, impressive is the
operative term here. You're nailing the Velvia landscape look without
having to wait for the light (e.g. #4, 8, 12). Nice.


An almost fully functional version (it puts in watermarks) is
available from their site. Try it out with a slightly underexposed RAW
file. I've been wasting a lot of time over the past two days looking
for older RAW files that seem dull, to see what it does with them. (If
they're too dark or plain, sometimes you get a lot of speckled color
noise.)


Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix

Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but
still it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can
click for a full pixel crop.

I redid the original with default settings and made another HDR with maxed out contrast. There's no way to get that with a regular raw conversion, that's for sure. I'm not crazy about the gray sky effect so I reduced that in the sliders for the contrasty version and darkened the shadows to mask the noise... they mention in the tutorial it's better to overexpose to avoid noise and the highlights can usually be recovered. I had shot this underexposed a bit to avoid blowing the sky out. That's why they describe it as a 'pseudo HDR' if you use a single raw file.

Also, I should mention it crashed a few times and is quite slow but I guess it's doing a lot of processing.




David J. Littleboy wrote:

"Paul Furman" wrote:

Pretty nice, I did a quick test from a raw file:
http://edgehill.net/California/Bay-Area/Oakland/9-9-07-wildcat-cyn/Photomatix
Actually that one I converted initially with extra black shadows but still it is impressive. I didn't mess with the settings at all. You can click for a full pixel crop.


Interesting: it's still doing the halo thing.

Perhaps you could try very low levels of the effect.


Yes it does do a soft edged mask. If I overlay the hdr version in PS & set that layer to mode 'difference' the halo is real clear. There's a setting with 5 options for 'Light Smoothing' which dramatically effects how much actually happens but yes it does look better with that adjusted to minimize the halo. Hmmm, but then the sky blows out also... so it's a tradeoff. When I do this manually, I do a similar soft edged mask.




--
Paul Furman Photography
http://edgehill.net
Bay Natives Nursery
http://www.baynatives.com