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11/19/2011 05:07:21 AM · #1
Ok. I'm a noob when it comes to HDR. Never tried it. I just took a few pictures with bracketing on my camera. So they're -0.3EV, o, +3EV. I have all of them in RAW. How do I convert them to single HDR jpeg? I use CS3 and Lightroom. I process RAW's but they're all individual shots obviously. How do I combine three RAW's for the HDR? I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for online (maybe I didn't search hard enough).

Any kinds of helpful links, or suggestions here would be awesome! Thanks.
11/19/2011 05:14:36 AM · #2
//dynamic-photo-hdr.en.softonic.com/
11/19/2011 05:44:30 AM · #3
//www.niksoftware.com/hdrefexpro/usa/entry.php for Lightroom and CS3. 15 day fully functional free trial available. See the HDR Efex Pro training videos, too.
11/19/2011 03:46:17 PM · #4
Photomatix and Oloneo are also viable options.
Photomatix (www.hdrsoft.com) is great in that it will quite effectively remove ghosting caused by moving objects in the scene(within reason)and it's very effective at automatically align images in case of handheld exposure.
For instance, this was taken handheld and alignment and deghosting were both very useful:



same for this one (bit cheesy result, but anyway):


Photomatix can be tweaked so to get more natural looking results:


Or a bit unreal:


Oloneo PhotoEngine (www.oloneo.com) is a new software with a pretty innovative interface, heavily inspired by lightroom to some extent. It focuses on raw developemnt, HDR, denoise and 'relight', the one allowing to put together photographs of the same scene lighted by different light sources and then mix the result up in a very convincing way (I think it's useful mostly for architectural photography but I guess it can be tweaked to different uses).
Alignment and deghosting are not nearly as effective as in photomatix, but aligned files can be imported from phtoomatix, if you like more Oloneo results.
It offers a 1 month fully functional trial.





That's a list of supposedely free software, but I did not try any of them

//www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-high-dynamic-range-hdr-software.htm#main-content

Have fun!

Message edited by author 2011-11-19 16:02:51.
11/19/2011 09:29:54 PM · #5
Wow! 4 different softwares. Thanks a lot mcaldo, hahn23 and tfarrell23
11/19/2011 10:02:42 PM · #6
I personally prefer Photomatix over the rest, but it's personal taste. BTW...if that wasn't a typo and your three exposures are correct as written you really won't benefit much by using a -.3 ev along with the 0 ev exposure since they aren't that much different.

It always depends on the scene and the particular dynamic range you have in front of you, but a good general starting place for a 3 exposure HDR would be -2ev, 0ev, and +2 ev. You could do a 1 stop difference if there isn't a huge dynamic range between the shadows and highlights, but the 2 stop difference works well for the average scene. If you have a crazy difference in dynamic range and are still only doing a 3 exposure HDR you might want to go to -3 ev, 0 ev, and +3 in order to give yourself a better change at pulling down the highlights and opening up the deep shadows. Be-careful of noise when doing so...especially with so few exposures.

Personally, I always shoot a minimum of 5 exposures for the average HDR scene. -2, -1, 0, 1, and 2. Again, if the dynamic range is pretty extreme I will then shoot a minimum of 7 exposures -3, -2, -1, 0, 1, 2, 3 and often 9 exposures depending on whether or not I'm still clipping highlights on my darker exposures or still have blocked shadows in my brighter exposures. If I am then I will usually set my camera to take a couple more exposures at either -4 and -5 ev or +4 or 5 ev.
Just check your luminance histogram on your camera after you shoot the exposures to make sure you got the crucial shots that open up the shadow detail and pull back the highlights. You may or may not need all the middle exposures in the end, but if you do you have them.

If your HDR software includes noise reduction as an option in the HDR process...use it. Especially on the darker exposures because noise will become an issue when layering the shots. Sometimes I open my RAW files in Adobe Camera RAW and bring them straight into Photoshop without editing anything except possibly a white balance adjustment that gets applied to all exposures. Once the photos are in Photoshop I'll run Topaz Denoise on the exposures that need it or will benefit from it. Then I save them out as 16 bit Tiff files before bringing them all into PHotomatix. If you do it this way you can uncheck the noise option in Photomatix so you don't over do it and kill all detail. Once I made my adjustments in Photomatix and process it I'll bring the resulting Tiff file back into Photoshop and make any final processing adjustments etc. Making and HDR will soften the photo a bit and it will need to be sharpened up to the right amount before saving.

Have fun and there is a learning curve to it, but it's worth the time.

Dave
11/19/2011 10:17:07 PM · #7
Oh. Oops. Well it was a typo. But anyways, my actual exposures are +0.7, 0, -0.7. I guess they won't make much difference either.
Thanks a lot DCNUTTER
11/19/2011 10:37:09 PM · #8
Here's your HDR rule-of-thumb, folks:

Your DARKEST exposure should be the one that renders the bright areas the way you want to see them in the final image. Your BRIGHTEST exposure should be the one that renders the dark areas the way you want to see them in the final image. Your third exposure should be in the middle between the two. If there is more than two stops between your dark frame and your bright frame, then you need more than one interim frame. The interim frames should split the difference between the dark frame and the bright frame.

You should never use a frame that is darker than what you want the highlights to look like, nor one that is brighter than what you want the shadows to look like; this approach is guaranteed to generate muddy images as you try to tone-map contrast back in.

I believe, personally, that +2, O, -2 is spreading it too thin. On the other extreme, in my own work I haven't noticed any real improvement from working with increments smaller than one stop. So I usually work with something between 1-stop and .66 stop increments, depending on what it takes to produce even steps across the range of exposures.

Why .66? Because I have my EV adjustment increments set to 1/3 stop per click, so when I bracket (which I do manually) I use 2 clicks or 3 clicks per exposure, depending on how contrasty the scene is.

Hope this is useful to some...

R.
11/20/2011 06:29:57 AM · #9
Originally posted by Bear_Music:


Why .66? Because I have my EV adjustment increments set to 1/3 stop per click, so when I bracket (which I do manually) I use 2 clicks or 3 clicks per exposure, depending on how contrasty the scene is.

Great advice, Robert. I'd like to add, for romil and others just getting into it, that when bracketing manually it's the shutter speed you'll be tweaking. Aperture must remain the same.
11/20/2011 06:45:08 AM · #10
Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Here's your HDR rule-of-thumb, folks:

I believe, personally, that +2, O, -2 is spreading it too thin. On the other extreme, in my own work I haven't noticed any real improvement from working with increments smaller than one stop. So I usually work with something between 1-stop and .66 stop increments, depending on what it takes to produce even steps across the range of exposures.

R.


How is it too thin? And is it the steps that give you a better range or the number of exposures that give you a better range?
11/20/2011 06:46:00 AM · #11
Originally posted by bohemka:

Originally posted by Bear_Music:


Why .66? Because I have my EV adjustment increments set to 1/3 stop per click, so when I bracket (which I do manually) I use 2 clicks or 3 clicks per exposure, depending on how contrasty the scene is.

Great advice, Robert. I'd like to add, for romil and others just getting into it, that when bracketing manually it's the shutter speed you'll be tweaking. Aperture must remain the same.


Yes of course. Thanks.
11/20/2011 08:11:59 AM · #12
Originally posted by romil:

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

Here's your HDR rule-of-thumb, folks:

I believe, personally, that +2, O, -2 is spreading it too thin. On the other extreme, in my own work I haven't noticed any real improvement from working with increments smaller than one stop. So I usually work with something between 1-stop and .66 stop increments, depending on what it takes to produce even steps across the range of exposures.

R.


How is it too thin? And is it the steps that give you a better range or the number of exposures that give you a better range?


"Too thin" in the sense that the gaps between exposures are too large and the resultant composite may not be optimized.

R.
11/20/2011 08:25:40 AM · #13
Originally posted by Bear_Music:

So I usually work with something between 1-stop and .66 stop increments, depending on what it takes to produce even steps across the range of exposures.

How many exposures do you normally work with then? Just the 3 or 5 or 7?
I tend to do 5... just because it's more than 3...

Message edited by author 2011-11-20 08:26:06.
11/20/2011 10:23:34 AM · #14
Originally posted by NiallOTuama:

Originally posted by Bear_Music:

So I usually work with something between 1-stop and .66 stop increments, depending on what it takes to produce even steps across the range of exposures.

How many exposures do you normally work with then? Just the 3 or 5 or 7?
I tend to do 5... just because it's more than 3...


Sometimes only 2, actually... 3 would be normal, I rarely encounter scenes that need more. But what I shoot doesn't, as a rule, require a lot of tonal range compression; frequently the opposite, in fact... As in, using HDR techniques to ADD contrast and pop to flat scenes. But, in any case, I'll use whatever I need to make it work, assuming I had sufficient foresight to SHOOT enough of 'em in the first place :-)

R.
11/20/2011 10:25:17 AM · #15
The number of images required depends on the dynamic range of the scene and of course how you want the light and dark areas to appear. As a starting point I shoot enough frames to have a frame where none of the highlights are blown and none of the shadows are blocked up. Taking more at the time of the shoot gives you the maximum number of frames to work with. You don't have to use them all in processing if you don't need them.
11/20/2011 11:32:41 AM · #16
Originally posted by cpanaioti:

The number of images required depends on the dynamic range of the scene and of course how you want the light and dark areas to appear...


Yep. This image:



was done with only two exposures, which were a whopping 4 stops apart. The first was exposed to get the sky the way I wanted it, and the second was exposed to created detail in the foreground. The merge was entirely manual, in Ps. Granted, this is a very special case, but since I'm not at all into HDR as a "look", much of the HDR work that I do can be done this way.
11/20/2011 12:48:38 PM · #17
I use Photomatix light to merge my exposures. I first convert them to 16 bit TIFF's, in order to get the other settings (such as white balance) to my liking before the merge. I then polish the results in PaintShop Pro and Topaz Adjust.
11/20/2011 01:26:20 PM · #18
I discovered I had missed some important updates of PhotoMatix Pro v4.1.2 (standalone) and the PhotoMatix HDR Plugin for Aperture v2.0.1. These were important updates improving performance for the Mac Lion OSX 10.7.2 operating system. Thanks to this DPChallenge event, I rediscovered the very capable PhotoMatix processing, which is sometimes superior to NikSoftware's HDR Efex Pro v1.201. Some results are so natural, they don't take on the old stereotyped "HDR-look". I think my goal for my challenge entry will be to receive three or more comments from voters who say my image does not look like "HDR". I don't expect to score above 5.5000 because of the natural look which will not be what voters expect.
11/20/2011 01:31:36 PM · #19
Originally posted by hahn23:

I discovered I had missed some important updates of PhotoMatix Pro v4.1.2 (standalone) and the PhotoMatix HDR Plugin for Aperture v2.0.1. These were important updates improving performance for the Mac Lion OSX 10.7.2 operating system. Thanks to this DPChallenge event, I rediscovered the very capable PhotoMatix processing, which is sometimes superior to NikSoftware's HDR Efex Pro v1.201. Some results are so natural, they don't take on the old stereotyped "HDR-look". I think my goal for my challenge entry will be to receive three or more comments from voters who say my image does not look like "HDR". I don't expect to score above 5.5000 because of the natural look which will not be what voters expect.


Thanks to this challenge I also discovered these updates today.
11/20/2011 02:05:43 PM · #20
Originally posted by hahn23:

I think my goal for my challenge entry will be to receive three or more comments from voters who say my image does not look like "HDR". I don't expect to score above 5.5000 because of the natural look which will not be what voters expect.

That was my approach to the last HDR challenge and it performed in the high 5's. An awful lot of people expect HDR to be an obvious overcooked appearance. A lot of others want to see a well done natural looking usage. No matter how you approach it, you'll get dinged.
11/20/2011 02:46:49 PM · #21
I shot a true HDR, 7 exposures, and cooked it down so it all looks perfectly lit. I was quite pleased, but if you don't know how tricky the lighting is that the HDR smoothed out it looks uninteresting. So I cooked up another single image with tone mapping and enough spice to get that "HDR look". I wish I could enter both and see what happens, but I'm pretty sure I know which one would get the better score.
11/20/2011 03:44:56 PM · #22
Originally posted by BrennanOB:

I shot a true HDR, 7 exposures, and cooked it down so it all looks perfectly lit. I was quite pleased, but if you don't know how tricky the lighting is that the HDR smoothed out it looks uninteresting. So I cooked up another single image with tone mapping and enough spice to get that "HDR look". I wish I could enter both and see what happens, but I'm pretty sure I know which one would get the better score.


I'm in the same position.

R.
11/20/2011 04:10:20 PM · #23
Having looked at past HDR challenges, it's been interesting to see what people favour, the sharp well exposed look versus the obvious HDR ranges. This is all new to me, so I've had fun learning about it and look forward to expanding my skills on this, so I challenged myself to submit an entry.
11/20/2011 05:13:12 PM · #24
Originally posted by Yo_Spiff:

...An awful lot of people expect HDR to be an obvious overcooked appearance. A lot of others want to see a well done natural looking usage. No matter how you approach it, you'll get dinged.


That's 'cause there's so little difference between "well done" and "overcooked." ;-)

FWIW, I prefer a rare capture. :-)
11/20/2011 07:24:16 PM · #25
Anyone want to help me decide on an entry???
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