My first attempt at HDR

Psilonaught · 1 Apr 2006 at 14:27

used my lake District pictures as a source

AdWright · 1 Apr 2006 at 14:39

I like 3 and 4 a lot! I feel number one looks a little washed out though? Perhaps a quick curves adjustment would sort this?

cyKey · 1 Apr 2006 at 15:34

They're really good. I do feel that the first is a bit flat, tonal wise. The 2nd's sky just doesn't have as much impact as the rest of the shot which could be fixed with a bit of burning.

SDK^ · 1 Apr 2006 at 16:00

The 3rd photo looks the better one.

The others have very low contrast.
e.g. The first photo doesn't seem to contain a black or white point - it's all grey !!
Even the 3rd photo can be adjusted to maximise the contrast of the water, sky and hills.

Johnny|lucidcomposure · 1 Apr 2006 at 17:53

Number 2 is almost Really very good However, the forground is destroying it. Number 4 is by far the winner! A great shot!

Colin_da_Killer · 1 Apr 2006 at 21:38

Fstop11 said:
Number 2 is almost Really very good However, the forground is destroying it. Number 4 is by far the winner! A great shot!

What he said ^^^

#4 has a great atmosphere to it!

Mohain · 1 Apr 2006 at 23:05

Wow, pretty cool stuff

I think 2, 3 and 4 are great. No 1 has the potential to be a great shot, but as other have said it need a bit of a tweak. The sky on no. 5 doesn't look right to my (rheumy old) eyes.

Did you make the HDR shot up from bracketed shots of these scenes?

Good stuff

Mohain

Joe T · 1 Apr 2006 at 23:14

3 & 4 are the best of the bunch.

morgan · 2 Apr 2006 at 11:34

3 for me but i'ts killing me to see that the shadow on the stone n the foreground has just been cropped off... great shot and tone though

fearby · 2 Apr 2006 at 13:19

A short how-to for HDR with Photoshop.......

http://www.sns.ias.edu/~jns/wp/2006...ed-multiple-exposures-in-adobe-photoshop-cs2/

stuart38 · 2 Apr 2006 at 13:24

nice pics - one or two of them look a little overcooked but 3 and 4 in particular really do look nice.

Psilonaught · 2 Apr 2006 at 14:14

thanks for the feedback guys - I agree with pretty much everything said, and will have another play today.

I used photomatrix and using raw files you can set it to batch bracket from a single file, so you don't reallt have to do anything, it's all automatic :cool:

It's very tempting to overkill images, especially the sky, which if your not carefull can look too dark and kills the effect.

I also agree that some do look "overcooked" - TBH i prefer the first as it's more subtle and natural looking, wheras the saturation is a bit too high in some of the others I think.

UPDATE:
Have tweaked the first - looking better?

DizMatt · 2 Apr 2006 at 14:55

really like 3 and 4 too

is this the technique where you bracket shoot the scene and impose the sky from one on the landscape of another??
just reading and learning
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml
looks good

Psilonaught · 2 Apr 2006 at 14:59

DizMatt said:
really like 3 and 4 too

is this the technique where you bracket shoot the scene and impose the sky from one on the landscape of another??
just reading and learning
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml
looks good

yes pretty much - TBH i haven't tried using CS2 for HDR since Photomatix is so easy. If you take the image in RAW, it will auto-bracket it for you and do all the merging, then you can adjust the final look in Toning. It's very useful in images where the sky is burn-out due to tricky lighting on overcast days

FreeStream · 2 Apr 2006 at 16:56

They look incredible!!! Number 4 ***!

Pitty I cant afford Cs2, got Cs1, any alternatives???