24 True HDR ... can be brittle

This picture of some trees in Nockamixon Park seems to me to be dry and brittle. My goal was to get the image to closely represent what I "saw" when I took it. What I saw wasn't really what was there .. it was my impression of what was there. I used bracketing on my D80 with a 2EV bracket spacing and shot this handheld. I always set everything manually and generally use center-weighted metering but I use it like spot metering by metering the highlights and shadows separately. I've been shooting RAW (NEF) almost always and occasionally checking histograms in odd lighting situations. I've selected Adobe RGB color space since it seems to be the least compressed.

Sometimes you have to take some steps backward before you move forward ;D That let's you see the bigger picture ... then you can move forward and focus on the really interesting things ..xxx

I'm in the 'few steps backward' phase right now. Learning new tools and techniques. Seeing what they can do ... yada yada. Hopefully I'll be a better photographer in the end ;D

If anyone has fave HDR compositing tools ... please drop me a note with your recommendation!!! Photomatix seems to be the one I come back to. I tried compositing with Photoshop and realized that there was slight rotation in the images (they were handheld) and finding the rotation point was nearly impossible. :DDD What I don't like about Photomatix is that it doesn't seem to let you select the blend styles or percentages for each layer. It does however provide some nice tone mapping controls.

With Photomatix, the initial HDR compositing is performed on the source images and any special processing selections that were made such as 'remove chromatic aberrations' are done as one big batch process. The final composited image is then presented to you. At that point, you can select whether you want to perform tone mapping or not. The tonemapping module seems to be pretty powerful but not entirely intuitive. More on that later when I figure it out better :)

When Photomatix was done with this image ... it was much too heavy! You know what I mean, don't you!?! That over-processed look. I'll attach it when I convert it to JPEG. So I had to blend it back together with the original image that had a lighter, airier feel in PS.

Peace,
Glen

21 New workflow ideas from Mitchell

Thanks to Mitchell Kanashkevitch, I'm trying out a new workflow. I downloaded Capture One 4 Pro trial and made two variants of this. One +2 EV and one -2 EV. Then I used the Photomatix trial to merge the three. I also used the Photomatix Tone Correction to alter contrast and levels a little bit. Here's the result.



Now here's the original. Of course, Mitchell also does quite a bit of dodging and burning. That's next on my list of techniques to learn. What I was really interested to see is whether pseudo HDR using variants from the SAME image really had a notable effect. From what I can see ... it does! Now to try it out on some more images ... hehe ;DD

Steps in Workflow so far ...
1. Capture image
2. Import into Capture One (haven't tried direct import from the camera yet)
3. Mark with colors (green, yellow, etc)
4. Delete and clean up the ugly stuff
5. Open new session and pick a project photo
6. Make two variants (+EV and -EV)
7. Process and commit these to output
8. Import into Photomatix and create pseudo HDR
9. Tonemap
(8 alt. Import into CS3 and use layering to create HDR)
10. Dodge, burn, etc
11. Save back to project and to finished works
12. woohooo ... try next one

I'm really excited about all this!! Seems weird ... but being able to come just a teeeeeench closer to the kind of work that Mitchell does is totally exciting. Next big decision ... in 30 days ... buy Capture One or not ... LOL!

Peace out bean sprouts!
Glen