HDR

[poilu]

this is the kind of pic we have to get used
photoshop cs5 new HDR
contax 85:2.8 on 5DII

[Esox lucius]

Yes, while moderate HDR has useful applications (some posted on this forum as well) most of looks like crap computer game graphics. Sad really.

[PaulC]

Revolting mush. And what's that huge pale halo doing around the tower?

But will anybody really do this to a photo? It looks like something out of an old camera phone.

[Orio]

That is really awful!

How can you have the new CS5? It is not released yet!

[poilu]

[Rolf]

Seems that Adobe has to do some work on this issue. I use CS3 on my IMAC and HDR works with standard values not to bad.

[Attila]

Need to practice, more and more , HDR can be beautiful and awful both.

[Karhallarn]

I always hated the HDR feature in Photoshop!

I use Photomatix, which does a much nicer job!

[Orio]

I'm afraid that all HDRs look bad to me. I don't see "better" ones, just different degrees of awful

[Karhallarn]

Yeah, one must like the style but in this style Photoshop is the least stylish!

[Orio]

[Karhallarn]

Styles are subjektive!

I like it, you don't that's it!

[Rolf]

I like it too.

The problem is that most of the people overplay with this technology.

[Attila]

Stunning Rolf! Congrats!

[Karhallarn]

@Rolf: Absolutely!

This picture is awesome!

[tobbsman]

I think a moderate use of HDR can create stunning results (Like Rolfs' example shows).

Cheers
Tobias

[Sven]

Rolf HDR is one of the best I have seen.
It's very easy to overdo HDR and get halos, artefacts and that computer game look. "Shadows and highlights" in PS can also produce a HDRish effect if used a bit to extensive.
I still think HDR can be useful now and then. Personally I prefer to do the alignment in PS and tone mapping in Photomatix.

[Rolf]

If you like here 2 additional samples.





Unfortunately the last one loses a lot of detail here due to the compression. You have to see this pic at 2 x 1 meter, it is so sharp and clear that you can see larger screws.

BTW all shots with TSE 24

[Attila]

Another two perfect shoots!

[poilu]

the new HDR tone in CS5 work on a single image to produce a pseudo HDR effects
my sample show overuse of such tools that could became a fashion
this pseudo HDR have nothing to do with Rolf samples who use a sequence of pics to get a result who could not be done without HDR

see this tutorial

[Rolf]

You have right poilu.

Maybe that I misunderstood your first post here. I tought that your first sample is the follower of the old HDR program within CS3/4.

There are several plug-ins for older CS versions available with this "new" effect.

[Sven]

Rolf: your photos are excellent.

Pseudo HDR on a singe RAW file has also been available in Photomatix for quite a while. Not very useful in my opinion, but sometimes it can be handy to bring out more details from the shadows or for creating effects.

Normally I think of HDR as multiple exposures. This function on a single shot could never achieve the same thing as long as the RAW file has a more limited dynamic range.

[kds315*]

Well, HDR does not fit my puristic approach.
But it can be fine for others and Rolf has shown
an excellent example.

[Orio]

Well, I don't know to what extent HDR was used in Rolf's photos, and with what software, but they are clearly the best HDR examples I ever saw, so far. They look very natural.

Maybe terminology clarification is in order here. I personally tend to refer, as HDR, to software that does automation assembling. I don't consider HDR the layers work in Photoshop or the selective work on exposure levels that is possible to do for instance, in Lightroom. These for me are manual editing similar in concept to dodging-burning in chemical darkroom.
For me HDR is when you feed a software with 5 or 7 different exposures and the software mixes them up.

[Arkku]

Theoretically even a graduated ND filter is “HDR” in the sense that it compresses a higher dynamic range into that captured by the sensor (and displayed by a computer screen). Likewise taking two shots at different exposures and blending them manually in Photoshop or similar would be a way of doing HDR.

Personally I would welcome software that could do this automatically while maintaining a natural appearance (without having to excessively tweak the parameters)—who cares how the end result is accomplished if that's what one wants to get. Some scenes naturally have higher dynamic range that can be (currently) captured in one shot.


Then there are the tone mapping algorithms, e.g. as found in Photomatix, which can, in theory, be used to do sensible HDR but often end up being exploited for the surreal/plastic/awful/overprocessed/etc images that typically come up when one searches for “HDR”. The funny thing is that much of the “HDR effect” is due to flaws in the algorithms; there are some better ones with fewer (or different) flaws, as can be seen e.g. by experimenting with the options in the (free) qtfpsgui software, but the most excessive options remain the most popular… Probably because people are not using “HDR” for high dynamic range but to add a cheap effect to otherwise boring shots.