Good work.

I've been practicing HDR photography lately since I haven't rented a macro lens yet. Here are a few from Mission Concepcion yesterday. They probably aren't straight since my head is crooked. :p
I liked them but to each their own, right?

:tup:

Spent most of yesterday and today in front of a TV :)

https://farm3.staticflickr.com/2910/...2f0ff042_b.jpg

I love nature photography until......

lol...

Badly HDR'd and probably crooked. I need a new laptop for editing as it didn't appear that saturated when I was editing. Shrug.


https://farm4.staticflickr.com/3912/...a1531545_z.jpg

Those of you who dabble with HDR, what software do you use? I bought Photomatix Essentials but it's way too basic to get the kind of pictures I want. I'm not so sure the Pro version would help me any more than their basic.

It really depends on the "kind" of look you want to achieve. I've used multiple programs over the last 7-8 years, and I don't use any of them now. Many leave artifacts behind that hinder image quality and also scream "HEY IVE BEEN HDR'ed!!" such as haloing and unrealistic colors.

If you shoot RAW, using Adobe Camera RAW gives you crazy levels of modification and also the glamorous Clarity slider, which IMO will render better results than any HDR program. Yes it can be time consuming to manually try and do what HDR programs do, but the payoff is better. As a professional photographer, I couldn't possible put out work that has Haloing, color issues, JPEG artifacting, noise, etc caused by HDR programs.

The industry secret to HDR = Dodge and Burn ;)

So yea, that's crazy. Jus' hangin' wit' duh bears. :eek: :icon14:

Or layering your own. (I have never really liked the auto HDR tools) Then use PS layering tools to bring in the detail for how you visualized the shot. Great shots usually have great amounts of work behind them.

I have not used CS6 HDR tools yet though.

I dont think anything changed in CS6, but IDK. You can layer your own exposures, but you still have a lot of work from there to achieve true dynamic range. FYI, if you look on youtube for tutorials, some are 30-40-50 minutes long and those are with pro's doing the work. One HDR shot could take 2-3-4 hours easy.

:iagree:

That's one reason I avoid HDR like the plague^ I'm a big fan of K.I.S.S. (keep it simple, stupid). Get as much as you can done in the camera and you avoid hours of work, per image, after. Sometimes that's just unavoidable, however. It's all in how you shoot and the subject. Guess the intended result is part of the equation as well. If you want it to look like a painting, HDR is the way to go. If you want it to look more realistic, you can usually get what you want in one RAW exposure.