new (to me) hdr process

[Beth Carter]

i'm sure some of you probably know of this technique, but i don't follow hdr stuff too closely so it's new to me. it uses cs6 to process 32 bit hdr photos and then imports them back into lightroom so you can process them much like you would any other raw file. here's my first (very quick) go at it, not perfect by any means, but my it's best attempt at creating an hdr file to date using any piece of software. and it's actually better than anything i could achieve with the original files by hand. never quite got the hang of hdr before...



and the video tutorial.

 

[Brian Moore]

We've had some discussion on RPF regarding the relative merits of HDR and I think the general consensus was that it is very easily overdone. This one you've posted isn't one of those, Beth. Its very nicely subdued HDR.

 

[Pete Askew]

I agree with Brian, nice and subtle. Could you have got to this end point from a single exposure in LR though?

 

[Hamish Gill]

Im with Pete...
In this image at least it looks as though a similar image could have been gotten from the second shot down.
My experience of hdr techniques is that they often cause more problems than they fix ... fringing seems to always be emphasised and I can never get on with that sort of flat grey look you get in highlights ...
For me, LR4 gives me more than enough adjustment under probably 99% of situations ... the other 1% I probably just give up ... ...

 

[Lesley Jones]

Agreed - it's a lovely subtle example of HDR (and a nice photograph to boot)! I'm not a huge fan of the extreme forms, but I have had Photomatix for some time. Every now and then I set up the tripod and give it a go and every time I give up and either blend by hand, or as Pete says, extract everything from a single exposure. I have seen some very nice work along the lines of what you have done here, but I seem to be incapable of doing it myself

 

[Beth Carter]

i think it could be more subtle than i've done here, i actually desaturated the colors for this and it still looks overdone. there's a small area in the clouds that's completely blown out around the treeline in the second, and the shadows brighten up well enough, but have a lot of noise.

originally the plan was to use the middle exposure and the dark one to fill in the clouds by hand, the shadows was a just in case thing. this was the only place i tried hdr and it wasn't very well thought out at the time. i may try it properly this weekend. it's not a technique i would use all the time, but would be useful when a gnd doesn't do the trick.

 

[David Mitchell]

I do like the merits of HDR - now its possible to be able to bracket exposures and then get all the detail for the whole photo, it can easily be over done though. I might have a go with it - but will have to manually under and over expose as my camera doesn't have a bracket mode lol

Personally I can see the benefits of doing HDR for certain things, however im happy with a single exposure and its up to the person behind the camera if they want more detail in the shadows or more detail in the hilights.