"Faking" HDR Photos

[vedran]

Photomatrix costs $$$ and I just want to experiment with HDR...

you can download Photomatix for free, but the only problem is that it leaves a watermark until you have the full version.

[watkins]

I have a full Photomatix copy that I obtained from the internet.

[RITmusic2k]

I don't know how photomatrix does it, but if somebody told me to make an HDR image and I didn't know anything else about it, I'd bring each photo in as a separate layer in whatever version of Photoshop I had lying around, and manually erase away the unwanted parts of each layer until I had a composite with the characteristics I was looking for.

[six]

The tutorial with GIMP helped a lot. I have a good idea what to do now.

[watkins]

I don't know how photomatrix does it, but if somebody told me to make an HDR image and I didn't know anything else about it, I'd bring each photo in as a separate layer in whatever version of Photoshop I had lying around, and manually erase away the unwanted parts of each layer until I had a composite with the characteristics I was looking for.

Photomatix. No r.

It actually combines the images and merges them together, not cuts bits here and there.

[RITmusic2k]

Well that's no fun...

[vedran]

it doesn't do everything for you. you still have to adjust the strength, saturation, light smoothing, tones, gamma, black/white balance, and so forth to make the final image look good.

[permabanned]

you will definitely want to take multiple exposures. use a tripod and exposure bracketing and rock out.

splitting 1 picture into 3 works, ive done it that way in the past but i hate doing it that way because it never turns out nearly as good as doing them with multiple exposures



buggest thing with HDR is dont go over the top. you dont want shit looking videogamish and unreal. sure it looks dramatic that way and in some pictures thats the whole point, but a lot of times, things you would use HDR for doesnt call for a cartoonish shot. you want everything in the picture to look vibrant and sharp and clear, without any areas that are significantly darker or lighter than the others. if you start seeing halos around objects when your playing around with sliders in photomatix, your way overdoing it

for example

that to me is way overdone because theres a blatanly obvious halo around the top of the windmill.

this on the other hand

that looks much better because even tho its HDR, it doesnt look like somebody went tone map trigger happy on it. everything is clean and sharp and colors are vibrant but everything look real and normal, just like the way youd see it if you walked into that room yourself.

thats the big thing about HDR in my opinion. our eyes can adjust color balance and brightness and contrast on the fly as we shift our focus from one object to another. were not limited to a single brightness setting across our whole field of view like a camera is. IMO the point of HDR is to copy that effect and present us a picture that we would see with our eyes if we were there working the camera. not the overly tone mapped obnoxious colors and halos and discoloration that most of HDR is.

[RITmusic2k]

Wow, that's the best HDR photo I've ever (knowingly) seen.