NON HDR, HDR style

RMThompson · May 24, 2007

Made from a single JPG:

Does it work? Too much?

EDIT:

Which do you like better, the one above or:

DSLR noob · May 24, 2007

I LOVE BOTH!!!!!!!! Perfect IMO

I like the lower one more.

Now. tell me how you did it.

LaFoto · May 25, 2007

The only difference is in colour temperature, isn't it?
That is what I see, and when I finally detected the difference, I started to feel like I prefer the second photo to the first, not so warm.
Though ... :scratch: ... come to think of it, I am not so fond of the amount of green in the two lower corners, plus the first has a little more detail where the people are. Tough choice.

Lovely scene!

RMThompson · May 25, 2007

I took one jpg of a sunset, and I split it into 3 pictures. One exposed properly, one too dark and one too blown out. Then I added them into Photomatix as if it was 3 seperate photos, it added what it assumed was the difference in exposure, and after some tone mapping, voila!

mr_baseball_08 · May 25, 2007

RMThompson said:
I took one jpg of a sunset, and I split it into 3 pictures. One exposed properly, one too dark and one too blown out. Then I added them into Photomatix as if it was 3 seperate photos, it added what it assumed was the difference in exposure, and after some tone mapping, voila!

I thought that is essentially what an HDR image is? Except for people typically use 5 - 7 exposures for a typical HDR.

I prefer the top image.. It's obviously over saturated, but it works well for the picture and I like it..

mmphoto · May 25, 2007

I don't get how it's non-HDR. photomatrix is HDR... right?

RMThompson · May 25, 2007

Well the difference here is I used the SAME jpg, sort of a no-no among HDR enthusiasts. You use 3 - 7 JPGS or a single RAW file at the very least.

The idea in HDR is to capture a range not normally available in one exposure, but you can see here that in reality, this is a normal exposed range, but by combining the photos, we get a deepr contrast from black to pure white, and saturated colors!

mmphoto · May 25, 2007

RMThompson said:
Well the difference here is I used the SAME jpg, sort of a no-no among HDR enthusiasts. You use 3 - 7 JPGS or a single RAW file at the very least.

hmmm.... i might try that later! what did you do, adjust levels and then submit the three at the different adjusted exposures?

RMThompson · May 25, 2007

mmphoto said:
hmmm.... i might try that later! what did you do, adjust levels and then submit the three at the different adjusted exposures?

Yep. I used Picasa 2 actually, because of the convienent "shadow" and "FIll Light" functions, kept one normal, added about 60 % in another and 60% fill light in a third, saved them seperate and opened them in Photomatix.

There I combined them, and adjust the output's levels, keeping saturation high, and used an 8bit output.

I am POSITIVE someone could do this with Photoshop without combining photos, levels and what not, but I find this to be easier, albeit a little unpredictable!