Anyone Else Play With HDR photography?

[Chadeaux]

High Dynamic Resolution (HDR) photography can give some spectacular results. It involves taking several pics at different exposures and then doing an HDR merge.

The original photo (only the normal exposure shown here, not the darker or lighter versions)



and this is the HDR version after the merge ...

 

Amazon Forum Fav 👍

Family Maps of Hinds County, Mississippi, Deluxe Edition - Grab it through Amazon!

[gollum]

HAHAHAHAHAHA Your thread is right on top of another:



...and I read it as "Anyone Else Play With Old Swingers?" HAHAHA

Mike

 

[Chadeaux]

Was a nice day yesterday at Lucas Pond in Crossett, Arkansas.

 

[Frankn]

I have the automatic version on my Sony Nex6. It takes an image biased for the light areas and an image biased for the shadows and merges them to produce a high dynamic range image. Haven't had a chance to really play with it yet. That camera has so many things you can adjust. I read the manual from cover to cover. By the time I got to the end, I had forgotten the beginning. It's one of those mirrorless interchangeable lens small cameras. You might say, it's to variable! Frank

 

[Chadeaux]

Same with mine Frankn ... took me a while to figure out how to make the thing do what I want.

I use either three or five bracketed shots for HDR.

I have found another process to bring out the best in photos I already have. I use paintshop pro x8, but this will work with almost any photo editor.

Open the pic, make two duplicate layers.

On the top layer apply a very small amount of gausian blur or high pass sharpen. Then set the blend mode to soft light and hide the layer.

On the middle layer, I use the channel mixer but you could just "convert to greyscale" and then adjust contrast. When you're satisfied, set opacity to somewhere between 10 and 30 percent, "to taste" as they would say.

Now, make the top layer visible again and go to the bottom layer and make adjustments until you get the effect you like. Things like vibrancy etc. can do some interesting stuff.

 

[Frankn]

Same with mine Frankn ... took me a while to figure out how to make the thing do what I want.

I use either three or five bracketed shots for HDR.

I have found another process to bring out the best in photos I already have. I use paintshop pro x8, but this will work with almost any photo editor.

Open the pic, make two duplicate layers.

On the top layer apply a very small amount of gausian blur or high pass sharpen. Then set the blend mode to soft light and hide the layer.

On the middle layer, I use the channel mixer but you could just "convert to greyscale" and then adjust contrast. When you're satisfied, set opacity to somewhere between 10 and 30 percent, "to taste" as they would say.

Now, make the top layer visible again and go to the bottom layer and make adjustments until you get the effect you like. Things like vibrancy etc. can do some interesting stuff.

That sounds good, but on the old images, I tend to take the easy route in Elements. I open the image and select edit. I select adjust lighting. I adjust levels first pulling in the two end sliders to match the curve above. I then adjust the middle slider (for best presentation). Next I adjust the shadows to bring out max detail in them. I then adjust highlights to kill any glare in them. Next is brightness and contrast which balance ( against each other). I wind up with an image near HDR. Hay, it's fast.

I use the magic extractor to pull out something from a layer to add to another image. Gracie never saw this goose.
Frank

 

[celtic fox]

nice pics

 

[A2coins]

V pics

 

[Hawks88]

The best program I’ve used is photomatix.

 

[Red_desert]

I have software that can work in layers, never thought of merging the same image of different exposures. I do use digital airbrushing to paint together multiple photos and recreating into one finished picture.

 

[Red_desert]

To show you how it can look, this is for a future painting project. Barack Obama Hawaiian volcano portrait.