Night Skies in HDR

[jpticar]

Hey everyone. I've recently been working on hdr images and I'd like to get some feedback on this night shot. I feel like I may have over-saturated it a bit, but my main concern in the crazy stuff happening in the sky. Anyone have any post processing tips on how to fix the sky? I've got aperture 3 and CS4. Thanks!

Oh yea, I left the picture massive so that you could get a close up of the sky.

 

[manaheim]

Honestly looks like you did a pretty darn nice job and the sky is actually pretty cool. That said, I think I would have done more water and less sky in this photo if you could pull it off.

I assume the sky was kinda cloudy?

 

[HikinMike]

I would have cropped most of the sky because there's really nothing to see. The focus is the reflection....at least for me.

 

[Garbz]

You mean the posterisation?

Apply a gaussian blur to the edges of the posterisation, and then add some noise, that's right ADD some noise. Or better yet play around with the film grain plugin since that will look much better.

Other than that there's only a few things I can ask to avoid this in the first place:
1. Did you keep your workflow in 16bit?
2. Did you use photoshop:
2.a. In photoshop did you take the 16bit file and use save for web and devices?
2.b. In photoshop did you convert to 8bit and then save as jpeg?
2.b.i. Did you merge all the layers first?
2.b.ii. Did you just take your 16bit file with layers and all, convert to 8bit and then save as a JPEG?

If you answered yes to 2.b.ii then you may as well not have edited in 16bit in the first place. Stupid little photoshop caveat that a lot of people don't realise.

 

[JG_Coleman]

Did the sky come out better in any of your original, bracketed shots? If so, you could pull that bracketed shot and your HDR back into Photoshop as layers, erasing the sky in the HDR and letting the sky from one of your original bracketed shots show through, instead.

 

[jpticar]

Honestly looks like you did a pretty darn nice job and the sky is actually pretty cool. That said, I think I would have done more water and less sky in this photo if you could pull it off.

I assume the sky was kinda cloudy?

Very true, should have been more water and less sky. The sky actually wasn't too cloudy, it just appears it may have been due to that effect.

I would have cropped most of the sky because there's really nothing to see. The focus is the reflection....at least for me.

Yea, the picture definitely draws my eyes to the water as well. As soon as I get some more time to work on it I will post it up again.

You mean the posterisation?

Apply a gaussian blur to the edges of the posterisation, and then add some noise, that's right ADD some noise. Or better yet play around with the film grain plugin since that will look much better.

Other than that there's only a few things I can ask to avoid this in the first place:
1. Did you keep your workflow in 16bit?
2. Did you use photoshop:
2.a. In photoshop did you take the 16bit file and use save for web and devices?
2.b. In photoshop did you convert to 8bit and then save as jpeg?
2.b.i. Did you merge all the layers first?
2.b.ii. Did you just take your 16bit file with layers and all, convert to 8bit and then save as a JPEG?

If you answered yes to 2.b.ii then you may as well not have edited in 16bit in the first place. Stupid little photoshop caveat that a lot of people don't realise.

Yes, posterization it is. To create the HDR I used photomatix (forgot to put that in the original post) and then put it into photoshop in 16 bit tiff to use surface blur on the sky and to resharpen the overall image a bit. Would a gaussian blur have been better than surface blur, or did I just not apply enough of a blur?

Did the sky come out better in any of your original, bracketed shots? If so, you could pull that bracketed shot and your HDR back into Photoshop as layers, erasing the sky in the HDR and letting the sky from one of your original bracketed shots show through, instead.

Yup, sky came out gorgeous in the bracketed shots. Forgot about this fix, I'll give it a go too asap.



Thanks for the advice guys.

 

[DanFinePhotography]

i think its amazing and a very good high quality HDR image. Also agree with lose some of the sky for an even more powerful image

 

[Garbz]

You can apply a localised blur to the bits where it's posterising. Don't blur the entire image just to clean up one spot.

 

[gardy90]

that same scene would make an awesome panorama shot if you could pull off that plus the HDR, i love the reflection in the water too, i think thats what makes this shot

 

[CNCO]

I love the light reflections on the water. Very nice.

 

[Robin Usagani]

Can you post the first bracket (0 exp)?

 

[tsblo]

If it were me I would lose some of the sky and crop that into a faux panoramic. I think thats a great shot of a city skyline.