HDR Church Shootout

KongKurs · Jul 5, 2012

Hi everyone!

Thought I wanted to share one of my recent photos from a danish church, mainly because I need inspiration from you guys, having seen some very neat HDR photos in here..

Here's my take on it; I've run it through HDR Efex Pro, but I cannot seem to get the neat painterly effect that I'm looking for. It's just not HDR'ish enough!
Is it because it's only taken with 3 exposures? Or because of the lighting in the church? OR (most probably) because I'm doing something wrong?

Anyways, I'm really looking forward to seeing what you can get out of it!

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/28572597/HDR church.zip

Compaq · Jul 5, 2012

Cool! Once I'm off work, I'll give it a try!

vipgraphx · Jul 5, 2012

Here are three that I did.

cross processed

textured and effects

Bynx · Jul 5, 2012

More than 3 are needed. Really bright windows and lots of shadowy nooks and grannys in the church. (joke intended).

Compaq · Jul 5, 2012

One clean version and one more detailed version

Bynx · Jul 5, 2012

Anders when you pulled the top out to reduce the distortion you have to stretch the height to make up for this. The whole thing looks too square now.
As much as I didnt like the shot I tried a go at it.

KongKurs · Jul 6, 2012

Thanks for the inputs!
I'd really like to hear how you process HDR's?

I've used a lot of Photomatix earlier, but recently started using HDR Efex Pro - I'm not sure which I like the best...

vipgraphx:
Your first is really getting close to what I was striving for. How did you process it?
Maybe it's the tonemapping my photo needs, but if I turn up the "tonemapping" adjuster in HDR Efex Pro, it just looks wrong, dark and too contrasty..

Bynx:
Sorry that you didn't like the shot.
I'm sure you're right about the number of exposures, but lately when shooting I've only bracketed 3 photos if I feel the HDR-element could be interesting, but since my take on it almost looks like a "normal" exposed photo, I've been wondering why to do HDR at all. But I can see that maybe I'm doing something wrong.

I'd really like to hear what software you all use, since I've hit a bit of a wall with HDR..

Compaq · Jul 6, 2012

Photomatix: get as much detail as possible: flat low contrast image. I do stuff differently depending on wherher I want something clean or something slightly more cooked.

Load into photoshop. Hue/saturation, curves/levels, apply detail filter, crop/distortin and all that jazz.

Thanks bynx, so true. Why didn't I see that??

KongKurs · Jul 6, 2012

Compaq said:
Photomatix: get as much detail as possible: flat low contrast image. I do stuff differently depending on wherher I want something clean or something slightly more cooked.

Load into photoshop. Hue/saturation, curves/levels, apply detail filter, crop/distortin and all that jazz.

Yes, that's what I did earlier, maybe I should give it a spin again.
I just thought that HDR Efex Pro almost beat Photomatix these days, leaving it a bit outdated, but I guess that's not so.

Have anyone of you tried Topaz Adjust? It seems to have a very strong tonemapping module...?

Compaq · Jul 6, 2012

I use topaz plugins, but not adjust 4. I use detail for detail (duh!) and denoise for, well, you know. I'm not sure if those presets really is "tonemapping" oer definition. I think maybe that term is savef for specific algorithms. I wouldn't use it anyway, if I were you.
I haven't used efex, but I'm pretty sure photomatix isn't outdated, on the contrary.

Bynx · Jul 6, 2012

In my opinion Photomatix is still king for its ease of use and its quality output. The idea of doing HDR is to do an exposure for each different light source. So a bright window needs a short exposure than a mid tone light source which wont be as long as the shadows. But the brightest spot will probably be a lot more than 1 fstop from your midtones and a lot more than 2fstops from your shadow areas. In the case of the church I'd say 7 shots might cover it.

nos33 · Jul 6, 2012

Here is my take on it.

Photomatix, Photoshop, Topaz Adjust, Topaz Denoise, Minor touchups

Bynx · Jul 6, 2012

Nos33 why did you blow out the whole center strip of floor? There was detail there? Also your shadow areas are black. Your method clearly doesnt work.