HDR Photo's

[Horus]

Brian thanks for the clarifications they do explain the object of HDR pictures quite well.

However, if as you are saying the idea is probably to work with just one picture in RAW, why do they keep referring to bracketing the shots to be used, as that results in several pictures?
I am not saying you are wrong, just trying to get to the bottom of it by asking stupid questions

I can easily see why taking just one picture and doing several tweaks and then saving each of the tweaks as a seperate picture, then finally merging everything at the end would give such a result, but I am sure that you could achieve the same thing using layers in PSP and modifying each one before a final merge, must give it a try to find out
Maybe the HDR merge feature is just a shorter way of achieving the same result?

I think that your logic and explanation of your tomb picture is exactly what you are meant to achieve for this HDR technique, it is exactly how you are meant to do it that is still not clear to me.

[Grandad]

The guy who wrote this article says there is little point shooting in jpeg and that he uses RAW. He also says that he auto brackets, so he must have a camera that allows that.

http://dannorcott.co.uk/hdr-tutorial/?g ... 4wodOHdqbg

Mine doesn't allow this and I would either have to shoot jpeg or shoot RAW and manually adjust a stop or two for each shot.

I don't fully understand this but I DO like some of the results and will try on the next nice sunny day. I think that good light will help the result.

[Bearded Brian]

Had a play with the HDR Darkroom software. Imported just the one RAW picture and just pushed the blue a little bit and saved - could have tweaked it other ways to get a realistic picture but nearly bed time.

[Bearded Brian]

Been playing again
picture 1 = the original picture taken in RAW
Picture 2 = edited in PS elements 6 to bring out the sky
picture 3 = edited to bring out the hills and lake
picture 4 = 2 and 3 merged
picture 5 = 2,3 and 4 merged with HDR Darkroom
picture 6 = 1 in HDR Darkroom



Getting to picture 4 was time consuming although not too difficult - the worst part was finding were I had saved the pictures lol.














Pictures 5 and 6 took seconds - these I haven't tweaked they are as produced by HDR darkroom.

Wasn't trying to achive any particular picture just seeing how things worked.

[Grandad]

I like '5' Brian but wonder if the colour could be pushed a bit more in '3' to make the image 'glow', kind of psychodelic?

I have still not tried any of this stuff yet but will when there is an opportunity with some decent light.

[LivinginLuxor]

I think I agree with Keefy - the examples shown look totally artificial. Until this thread started, I hate to admit it, but I'd never heard of HDR photos - don't think Photoshop CS4 has this!

[Bearded Brian]

May be a little too red in the trees

[Grandad]

What are you on Brian.......I want some

[Grandad]

Like Stan I had never heard of HDR and I quite understand his views on the technique.

I find it an interesting method of manipulating an image to produce a picture which is extreme or abstract but will stand alone as 'a picture', it has ceased to be 'a photograph'.

I DO like Brians last offering and think it would make a good poster print.

[Kiya]

Grandad I just did this using PSE7, choose your photo from Organiser, open Edititor then Enhance-Adgust Colour-Adjust Colour Curves.
I think Brian has done different from me.

[Bearded Brian]

Thanks Grandad

Wish I knew what I was on too - but can't make up my mind if I need more or less of it.

Must admit I had heard of HDR 2 or 3 years ago but that was more for correcting 'real' pictures rather than creating 'Art'. Was one reason I got my DSLR so I could take RAW pictures but I hadn't read the small print on the software - there was only one (the most expensive one of course) that supported panasonic RAW so forgot about HDR until topic was started.

[Bearded Brian]

Kiya your picture is strangely soothing. Mine was edited using pse6 and gradients. Think some of your sky pictures would suit the 'surreal' HDR approach.

[Horus]

Your pictures are certainly showing the HDR effect Brian a good result with number 3

Like Grandad says, I recon you need pictures with lots of good shadows and bright light to do anything with them to get the right result.

Here is one that I tried, the first picture BG1 is a Jpeg as taken by me with no tweaks to it.

BG1


The second BG5 is an HDR of two pictures done in PSP with the original picture (BG1) having the exposure altered in Picasa to be as dark as possible, then saved as a JPEG file. Next I altered the same original (BG1) again in Picasa so that the colour was really saturated, this was also saved as a JPEG file. Finally the two files were merged in PSP to give the image BG5

BG5


Edit: Great efforts from Brian & Kiya
Like you Stan, I had never heard of it either my jury is still out on this one

[Kiya]

Not sure about the HDR, for a start I wouldn't know where to begin

Horus I prefer your original BG1 without tweaks its more vibrant.

Brian I use PSE6 at college there is only some little differences in PSE7 that I use at home.

[Bearded Brian]

Kiya just had a play with one of your pictures - I created 3 layers one for the sky, one for the sea and one for the land - merged sky and sea and rubbed out the sky from the sea picture then merged this with the land and then rubbed out the sky and sea [ok didn't quite rub out enough of the sea near the land]

[Kiya]

Oh I say thats coulourful have to give it a go , last nights 1 I did was a bit rushed.

[bigken]

A lot of interesting stuff and photos , first change i've had to have a hour playing around and here's one - 3 photos +2, 0, -2



the original photo

[Kiya]

I think I prefer the original

[Grandad]

Nice one Ken It has added depth to the picture and you have not gone too far and made it surreal.....(although I like surreal for an extreme effect)

When I have found some time I have been playing with my new obsession, panoramas in PSE7. I am still marvelling how the programme matches up a series of images ( I have done up to 15 now although it is impractically narrow and long) One lesson I learned the hard way is to resize the images before creating the pano. One set I used took ages but that was explained with the final image of 500mb.

Your stately home type image seems to work well in HDR so will try one this evening........