Playing Around

eccs19 · Dec 5, 2008

I read that Photomatix will make a "Tone Mapping" version of a single RAW file. I guess a cheating way to make a HDR. I decided to give it a shot, just for fun. It turned out better than I was expecting. Not the best shot in the world, but I got an idea of how the Tone Mapping works.

Ron Evers · Dec 5, 2008

I do not know what "Tone Mapping" is but in my opinion you have too much sky.

Harmony · Dec 5, 2008

Hmmm. I can definitely see the halo effect that comes from tone mapping, but all the colours seem very washed out to me - it might be my (uncalibrated) monitor though...

kwik · Dec 5, 2008

meh.....sorry.

LaFoto · Dec 6, 2008

No, Harmony: not the monitor. The colours are pretty washed out.
When you have a RAW file, you should save it (TIFF, 16bitmode, no exif data!) in at least three different exposure versions, then have Photomatix create a HDR file for you out of those three LDR pics, and THEN do the tonemapping.
Often enough, after all that's been done, further work in Photoshop is necessary...

eccs19 · Dec 6, 2008

Thanks for the c&c and tips. I know that the picture was not great to start with, but wanted to see what would happen when I tried it out, and it did make an improvement from the original. Just for fun I may try out LaFoto's suggestion, just to see what difference I can get, but the original was overexposed to start with.

LaFoto · Dec 6, 2008

If it was overexposed, you could still save a -3 exposure out of the RAW converter, a -2 one, a -1 exposure ... and see what you can do with those three?

eccs19 · Dec 6, 2008

Played around a bit more, and tried LaFoto's advice. I also cropped lightly different. Funny thing is that I think it even looks sharper, but I didn't do any sharpening.