2 HDR's

[mike3767]

Heres my first 2 HDR's. I have yet to buy the program but wanted your thoughts on the pics

 

[mortovismo]

If YOU like them thats what matters. But if you are looking to make them a little more natural looking the first thing you should is set the smoothing setting to MAX/HIGH. Beyond that its a matter of playing with the luminosity, micro smoothing, well everything actually. Try every imaginable combination. I have Photomatix also and I found finding my way around it alot of fun....and theres more to learn.

 

[lyonsroar]

I'll give C&C here rather than on facebook...

Both of these are going on overcooked IMO. You've got a lot of halo'ing around the bus.

Also keep this in mind: HDR cannot make a BLEH photo into a WOW photo. The rules of composition still apply. I know these are your first ones so you're just trying to figure out the software, just don't fall into the trap of photographing something boring because"it'll look great in HDR" because it usually doesn't...

The graffiti on the first picture is fantastic, I'd have gotten close to that and concentrated on that aspect.

 

[Provo]

halos halos noise noise

 

[SlickSalmon]

Your photos suffer from the two characteristics most often seen in images posted by people new to HDR and Photomatix. First, they are highly processed, to the point that they cross the line between photography and photoillustration. This kind of processing results in noise, halos and over-saturated colors. Second, they haven't had the benefit of any post-processing to correct brightness and contrast. HDR images often have a certain ‘look’ to them, but it’s useful to remember that the purpose of HDR is to capture in a single digital image the entire dynamic range of a scene. HDR technique is beneficial because of the limited sensitivity of digital photographic sensors. It works particularly well on scenes with broad shadow areas and on subjects with a lot of edges (architecture, peeling paint, old cars, etc.). As a tool, Photomatix performs HDR processing beautifully, but it's tonemapping controls are assertive. It's very easy to go over-the-top. The farther over-the-top you go, the more post-processing is required to correct the problems introduced by the tonemapping. My recommendation is to go ahead and use Photomatix's “Tone Mapping, Details Enhancer” combo, because it's powerful, but to go easy on the "Strength" slider. Halos between solid objects and the sky are inevitable and get worse the more "Strength" you apply. Use the "Highlights Smoothness" slider to minimize them. Thereafter, you'll need to use Photoshop or some other post-processing software to correct the contrast and to apply some sharpening. I hope that was helpful.

 

[tyler_h]

Convert them to grayscale and have a look at the tonal difference in the image... yes HDR is used to compress a large dynamic range into the colour space available but as mentioned above; its taken far too far here.

An idea to try get your processing towards natural; on a sunny day take a few bracketed shots in your room looking out the window - this should give you a massive dynamic range to work with. From here you can try and replicate what you can see as the dynamic range of the human eye and apply it to the image without getting gaudy looking images.