My first HDR attempt C&C please

chris82 · Apr 20, 2009

Hello everyone,This is another shot of the belfast castle.Its a HDR attemt.I know its not very good as it is my first try but could someone give me some addvice on HDR editing. Thanks again

chris82 · Apr 20, 2009

Nobody have any thoughts on this then? Any advice would be great.

LaFoto · Apr 20, 2009

I'm not sure the process was really required for this photo on a day like the one you had when you took it.
Can you see the halo around the castle, from where the bottom is so much brighter and the sky is now this dirty blackish-blue? You should try to avoid that, but since I don't know what you're working with, I can't tell you what to do to avoid it. Plus whenever I play with my Photomatix trial version (and I really only ever "play" with HDR but don't do anything serious about it), I just move the sliders this way and that way (during the tonemapping process) until I feel the pic us about right. Sometimes I later do some more to it in PS then...

Plus I feel the two persons on the bench in their bright clothing got quite a bit blown by the process. Not in awe. In being too bright

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chris82 · Apr 20, 2009

Sods law! We pray for good weather to go do some photography and now I have the good weather but I want to do HDR lol.Im using photomatix aswell lafoto and I also just push the sliders this way and that to no avail. I sure would appreciate some tips form more experianced HDR photographers.

polymoog · Apr 20, 2009

I was thinking about this the other day, since I have also just posted my first (fake) HRD (3 exposures from 1 RAW) and I realised that HDR usually works best with really dramatic skies and lighting, eg when it is cloudy and you can then bring out a lot of texture in the clouds. This also provides a nice contrast for the colours in the foreground objects. Having said that I have also seen some pretty nice night HDR scenes. Did you use 3 RAW or 1 RAW with 3 exposures?

Mine was also taken on a sunny day with blue, almost cloudless skies and apart from bringing out the cloud detail a bit, I'm not sure the processing added much ;-)

I do like you shot

, though I also agree with LaFoto's critique. I think it's one of those things where you can work on a bunch of different pictures before you get anything you like, I did 4 and only ended up (sort of) liking 1 ...