HDR Set of St. Phiilips Church (Picture Heavy)

[vipgraphx]

I went out the other day as I finally had time to go and take pictures. I have been looking for new places around where I live and I came across this church. Its an older church with lots of beautiful architecture.

I developed a new work flow through trial and error and thought I would share it with you. I processed these bracketed photos which were about 9 each except for any outside shots. All inside shots were 9. What I did was processed them 3 times before I went to post. I created three presets One very light tonemapped and moved the micro smoothing all the way to the right. This made the walls smooth and helped with the blown out lights. The next I moved the micro smoothing to about 2 which gave it more grunge. Next I brought down the strength slider and upped the black to get a more darker feel especially in the shadows. Once I was done I brought the three processed photos from photomatix into along with all 9 original exposures. Next I blended those three processed photos first using masks. Then I used nearly all 9 of the original photos and masked those into the processed photo. I then flatten. NExt I duplicated the layer and used topaz adjust specify and placed that layer on the bottom. I then got the top layer and lightly masked in textures into the wood parts of the photos. Then flattened. Next I used Nik color effex and added a warmth filter along with pro contrast. I then duplicated layer and used a high pass sharpening and flattened image.

Results are as follows.

Walk in for the Tour


on the other sidejpg by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


St_Phillips_Church by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


the walk by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


pipe organs by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


church isle 2 by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


church isle 3 by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


church isle by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


alter by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


pipe organ 2b by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


sitting in the pue by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


lonely piano by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


figurine by VIPGraphX, on Flickr




gate cropped by VIPGraphX, on Flickr


st phillips by VIPGraphX, on Flickr

 

[MLeeK]

I am NOT an HDR fan, but those are absolutely GORGEOUS

 

[MLeeK]

I'd love to see you record your steps and processing for a tutorial. There are tons of screen capture softwares you can download for free!!!

 

[Steve5D]

Could you number them? It would make it a lot easier to comment on them.

In the first one, what's the red and blue (and maybe even green) atop the wall on the right side of the gate?

The one with the piano is exceptional...

 

[JRE313]

yea do a tutorial!!!

 

[RichardH]

I think you did a fantastic job on these. I am looking more and more at HDR and I like the looks of it. Now if I can get my D90 set up to do the exposures, I am going to try some.

Good job.

Richard

 

[pgriz]

Very nice images. I'll echo others: would love to see your workflow and get an idea of the processing.

However, in a number of them, there are faint circular whitish spots in the image. Are these "dust" or retouching efforts? As well, in the organ shot, there appears to be a purplish flare in mid-field. Was that an artifact of processing?

 

[JRE313]

VIP
I think I understand your new workflow and I will try to Mimic this on a church that I did in Brazil. I will process it and post it later today.
Hope you will enjoy!! I will add my own twist to it though

 

[unpopular]

Ok VIP. These are WAY over the top good. If these are indicative of your current quality, you've FAR, FAR, FAR surpassed about anyone I can think of in HDR, including the well-respected "experts". I think there is some minor composition details to hammer out still, but my god, man, your technique is just fantastic.

 

[CaboWabo]

As I said in the other wait till you get a load of the pipe organ just killer stuff !!!!!!

 

[Designer]

A truly exceptional set! Congratulations!

 

[PlanetStarbucks]

You know why I love photography? It's because everytime I think I know about some technique someone comes along and blows it all away. In the words of the immortal Ali G: "Respek"

 

[Demers18]

That really is a fantastic set! Nice work!

I really like how you were able to keep the look realistic.
I've been playing around with HDR lately and I only hope that I can produce images with type of execution.

 

[HughGuessWho]

The figurine is amazing. I don't think you could take a digital image that could look any more life like.

 

[Trever1t]

A good church really is perfect for HDR, there's just so much detail and the process seems to give it all a life of it's own. I concur with all the above, there are very very well down, my hat's off to you!