I've adjusted my work flow and method, what do you think of the results?

[Compaq]

Earlier, I haven't focused on bringing out as much detail in the entire picture as possible in photomatix, but rather gotten the contrast I liked and so on. However, I've started to do it the other way around, which should give me better results. HDR is all about the details, I can adjust contrast and all that stuff later on anyway.

So, what I've done with this is as follows:

- load four images into PM
- Trying to get as much detail as possible in the shots = low contrast and a pretty narrow histogram around the middle
- safe as -tif (16bit) and open in Camera Raw for contrast adjustments and stuff

I really like the result. It's natural, sharp and with rich colours. I'm trying to minimize my time in photoshop, and rather spend as much time as possible in ACR, most of what I want can be done there anyway, and more easily than with PS's equivalent methods (IMO).


Alléen 1 by Anders Myhre Brakestad, on Flickr

I thank you for your feedback!
Anders

 

[SCraig]

I love the detail and saturation. I feel like I could almost count the pieces of crushed stone in the driveway. One nit-pick is that it isn't straight. The contrast of the red in the small outbuilding and the white corner framing really makes me notice that to.

 

[Compaq]

Thanks...and it seems you're right about the tilt. Thanks for noticing!

Here's another one, same procedure as the last one.


Vegen 2 by Anders Myhre Brakestad, on Flickr

 

[SCraig]

Very nice. It almost looks over-sharpened but looking closer it's just fine detail. There's some strange "Noise" in the sky but it's only visible in the larger image. It shouldn't be noise since it was shot at ISO 100, but it sure looks like it. Still, I like it a lot.

 

[Compaq]

Photomatix introduces some weird noise at times, not sure why.

Yup, they're very sharp, and minimal post sharpening has been done. Maybe ACR is better for editing than PS? Perspective in #1 was corrected in ACR, but it's still very sharp!

 

[SCraig]

There are some things that ACR does better than Photoshop, there are some things that Photoshop does better than ACR. There are some things that other software does better than either one IMO. As long as you can get the job done the way you want to then does it really matter?

I do agree that in many cases ACR is all that's necessary. Sometimes more is necessary which is where Photoshop is the answer. That's why you have them both

 

[Compaq]

Indeed!

 

[Ilovemycam]

V. Nice. Why does it have to go from Tif back to RAW though? Is there a benefit to do that versus working with the Tif?

 

[fjrabon]

Photomatix introduces some weird noise at times, not sure why.

Yup, they're very sharp, and minimal post sharpening has been done. Maybe ACR is better for editing than PS? Perspective in #1 was corrected in ACR, but it's still very sharp!

The 'weird photomatix noise' is essentially it going back and forth between the component exposures and how much it blends them. The more anti-haloing you have it set for, the more the 'weird noise' happens, because haloing does allow those issues to be smoothed over.

Overall though I think your work flow is good here.

 

[Compaq]

V. Nice. Why does it have to go from Tif back to RAW though? Is there a benefit to do that versus working with the Tif?

I'm not going from TIFF to RAW, you can actually load both TIFFs and JPEGs to Adobe RAW Converter.

Photomatix introduces some weird noise at times, not sure why.

Yup, they're very sharp, and minimal post sharpening has been done. Maybe ACR is better for editing than PS? Perspective in #1 was corrected in ACR, but it's still very sharp!

The 'weird photomatix noise' is essentially it going back and forth between the component exposures and how much it blends them. The more anti-haloing you have it set for, the more the 'weird noise' happens, because haloing does allow those issues to be smoothed over.

Overall though I think your work flow is good here.

Thanks for the info!

 

[Steve5D]

These are very, very nice!