A few cemetery HDR Shots (C&C Welcome)

inaka · Feb 21, 2011

Took some shots today at a cemetery near my place.
I went for the heavily processed artistic look as you can probably tell.

Here goes:

1.

Prescott Tomb by InakaMike, on Flickr

2.

Wolfe & Delger by InakaMike, on Flickr

3.

Summit View by InakaMike, on Flickr

4.

Rising Cross by InakaMike, on Flickr

5.

Prescott Reversed by InakaMike, on Flickr

Full set is here on Flickr

C&C is welcomed, thanks.

NielsSw · Feb 21, 2011

very impressive! :thumbup:

the only thing i saw was on #2 there is some white glow around the tree..i think that is the effect you don't want on hdr? (but im just started with it so i could be wrong)

SlickSalmon · Feb 21, 2011

I like them all, but 1, 4, & 5 really catch my eye because of the depth. It's interesting that the haloing we otherwise work so hard to minimize in HDR works so well in images like these. I once saw a series of HDR images of gothic churches that were heavily processed like these, and the resulting halos looked like etherial back-lighing.

JohnS. · Feb 21, 2011

Absolutely beautiful :thumbup:.

inaka · Feb 21, 2011

Thanks for the comments!

coyo · Feb 21, 2011

I'm a big fan of cemeteries and like the compositions of your shots,but you might want to work on the halos. What was the mood you wanted to convey?

inaka · Feb 21, 2011

coyo said:
I'm a big fan of cemeteries and like the compositions of your shots,but you might want to work on the halos. What was the mood you wanted to convey?

Thanks. I was going for a moody, majestic look to the shots. The clouds were really powerful that day so they had quite a bit of impact on that "majestic" look. I didn't mind any haloing that would appear around certain objects like tombs or the cross, as this was a rare case where it could work even better.

However, I do see a halo effect around the tree in shot #2 as others have mentioned.

How does one correct this to remove haloing around the tree in shot #2? I use Photomatix and then cleanup in Aperture/Photoshop.
Is the halo reduction done before it gets processed at all in Photomatix during the pre-process stage, or after?

Any info is appreciated as I'm new to HDR. Thanks.

tyler_h · Feb 21, 2011

My eyes :|

But if that's the look you want sure...
As for the halos; they are introduced by pushing HDR too far - if you tone down the HDR processing the halos will disappear.

Alternatively, it may work if you mask to select that area and then add another mask on top of that so only the lighter values are selected (I use CS5... not sure what differences are where for different versions) and this should have the bright sky (your halo) selected. You could probably just bring down the brightness with a Brightness/Contrast layer and see if that is effective in removing or at least reducing the undesirable halos.

SlickSalmon · Feb 21, 2011

There are a handful of ways of dealing with halos. We could probably have a whole thread on just this topic alone. The easiest is to go easy on the "Strength" slider in Photomatix and use the "Highlights Smoothness" slider to remove the halos that remain. However, that method would have negated the very effect you were going after, and it can't be used on one area of the image vs another. Another way is to use Layer Masks in Photoshop. You put your main photo into one layer and a less altered version into another and use a layer mask and the brush tool to 'paint' one image with the other. You can also clone stamp halos out, either directly or in combination with a layer mask. The possibilities are endless. I half expect Photoshop to come up with a "remove HDR halos" tool one of these days.

inaka · Feb 21, 2011

Excellent info. I really appreciate the detailed replies on this.
This is the exact reason I posted these here to hopefully learn more and process them different if need be. Thanks for the info!