First HDR - Thoughts?

manaheim · Apr 19, 2009

The client was complaining about how he tried and tried and tried to make this shot look nice with the blue sky and the nice visible interior, so I figrued... what better time than to distinguish myself by being able to give him what he could not get?

So I bought photomatix and this is my first crack at it.

Any thoughts from the HDR pros here?

invisible · Apr 19, 2009

I think you'll blow their mind, that entrance hall looks perfect. Just make sure to remove those four sensor dust spots (one is the biggest I've ever seen!) before sending this to them :lol:

invisible · Apr 19, 2009

manaheim said:
Sensor dust?!!? ACK! Where? I think maybe I see one of them, but I don't see 4??

First one I noticed is in the top right corner.

There's two along the main ceiling beam (I hope that's the correct word in English).

And the last one is the ginormous one: top left corner, right under the window, hair-shaped. It might not be sensor dust but a live worm, so be careful :lmao:

manaheim · Apr 20, 2009

I knew my yammering on about my sensor dust was gonna scare people away. Ok, I'm gonna delete my posts and see if anyone else will weigh in here.

chris82 · Apr 20, 2009

This is a great first try,I have my first hdr on here aswell and its not even close to this. I dont supose you could tell us the editing process you used in photomatix? I havent quite figured it out

LaFoto · Apr 20, 2009

Invisible, you don't know MY sensor dust bunnies. They are giganormous!

This is a fine example of well-done HDR, and I am sure your client will drop his jaw and not find it any more. This is sooo just what he had always hoped to get and never achieved!

manaheim · Apr 20, 2009

Thanks. Well, as I'm not yet *that* well versed in Photomax, I can probably only sort of describe it, but basically...

First off, my goal was to make it look real... not overly amped like some scene from another planet.

For me this was a key bit and it had a direct impact on everything I did with the image.

There were two options for processing in the app... one was for details and the other was for something else that I didn't try... all I know is the details one seemed WAY closer to what I was looking for than the other mode.

I got the color temp and saturation where I wanted it generally (the top sliders), and then I adjusted the white and black point so that I had ample contrast and a soft feel to the light. Finally I had to toy a bit with the saturation of the highlights and shadows to bring them in line.

One other key bit was that to get the color through the window the way I wanted it necessitated tossing that particular exposure more towards blue. This played hell with relfections on the cars in the parking lot, pieces of the windows, the wall light, etc. So, I wound up actually slicing the window out of that exposure using a color range select and pasting it onto a more normally colored version of the same shot and then using THAT as the low-end exposure.

manaheim · Apr 20, 2009

LaFoto said:
This is a fine example of well-done HDR, and I am sure your client will drop his jaw and not find it any more. This is sooo just what he had always hoped to get and never achieved!

Thanks, LaFoto! I hope you're right!

Given the economy, commercial real estate work has been VERY slow lately, so I wanted to send something that would get their attention and distinguish me as somoene they -really- need to call when they have these types of tough situations. If what you say is true, then it may well work.

polymoog · Apr 20, 2009

Nice work, this really illustrates one of the applications of HDR processing

manaheim · Apr 20, 2009

polymoog said:
Nice work, this really illustrates one of the applications of HDR processing

Thanks, poly!

j-digg · Apr 20, 2009

Not an HDR pro by any means, but this looks great. It looks the way a human eye would percieve it.. which I'm sure is exactly what they wanted. Others covered the sensor dust, but I was wondering if the image may be tilted slightly to the right or if its just the angles in the pic playin tricks on me.

manaheim · Apr 20, 2009

j-digg said:
Not an HDR pro by any means, but this looks great. It looks the way a human eye would percieve it.. which I'm sure is exactly what they wanted. Others covered the sensor dust, but I was wondering if the image may be tilted slightly to the right or if its just the angles in the pic playin tricks on me.

Thanks j-digg!

I think it is tilted slightly, actually. The graphic designer at the client said it was .5 degrees off.

You and he both have excellent eyes I guess.

Thanks again for the comments!