Acheiving best results for larger prints

[shane1837]

Hi, I have been noticing that my image quality is fairly low and pixelated, especially reduced when using HDR imaging or simply tone mapping in Photomatix, even to the point where the pixelation is horrendous at only the size of my laptop, let alone printing out to poster size. Is this something that can be corrected ie: altering the intensity of the tonemapping , are the results due to my low range camera (nikon d7000) and how different would the quality be with something like the 800e or d4 professional range? Also, how much really does the lens ''quality'' affect the final image? I shoot always in raw.




The image above u can see the horrible pixelation in the clouds post tone mapping, at even a small res.

Thanks for any help
Shane

 

[Light Guru]

The image above u can see the horrible pixelation in the clouds post tone mapping, at even a small res.

That's from your processing, you will still get that even if you get a new camera and process the same way.

 

[KmH]

What I am seeing I would call posterization, not pixelation.

Your issue is likely related to bit depth.
Photo Editing Tutorials

I highly recommend the following books:
Real World Image Sharpening with Adobe Photoshop, Camera Raw, and Lightroom (2nd Edition)
The Digital Negative: Raw Image Processing in Lightroom, Camera Raw, and Photoshop
The Digital Print: Preparing Images in Lightroom and Photoshop for Printing

 

[Gavjenks]

The solution to this is pretty simple:

Load the DNGs (or raws if it supports yours and you prefer that) into photomatix. Not jpegs. The program is capable of using the full bit depth of your camera. If you load in jpegs, you throw out most of the data before it gets to photomatix, so it will stretch pixels and smash them together, leading to data gaps, posterization, etc.

Even if you shoot raw, if you convert THEN send to photomatix, you're defeating the purpose

If you're already using raw directly into the program, then I don't know what to tell you. I have zero issues with photomatix doing it that way. It could be an issue of your images being not lined up enough. Or if you take photos of steam, for example, the multiple HDR captures would not align, and could lead to various problems. When doing HDR be sure to shoot as still of a subject as possible ideally on a tripod.