Photomatix help with a 'spiritual looking' photo

Don1462 · Sep 2, 2012

Hi
A few days ago I took some shots and merged them together using Photomatix 4. The idea was to make the final result look something like you would see in religious books or christian tv programs. This is not so much to do with religious beliefs but simply because that was the kind of image the scene in front of me reminded me of. I am not really sure what the various sliders in the program are supposed to do, I just move them around 'till I think it looks good. Some time the results are better and sometimes not so much. For this HDR I took nine shots: -2, -1,0, -1,0,+1, 0,+1,+2 and merged them. Can someone please give me pointers on how to achieve the look I'm looking for. Many thanks.

The Barbarian · Sep 2, 2012

The sky needs to be a bit more dramatic. More saturation in reds and yellows (only in the sky) and some opening up in the foreground.

A wide angle shot would better play up the great rays you got in your image.

Don1462 · Sep 2, 2012

Thanks for your reply. Yes, that's the kind of look I'm looking for, more dramatic sky with the foreground looking darker. Can you please give some pointers on which sliders i need to adjust and how many images did you merge to get that? Any special technique used?

The Barbarian · Sep 2, 2012

I was walking the dog one morning, when that sunrise happened. I had only a small point-and-shoot with me, so I made several exposures covering the sky and then stitched them together. To increase the dynamic range, I used Martin Sykes' AutoHDR on the panorama. You can get it free, here:
AutoHDR - One-click HDR Imaging from single photos

It works very well, and it's quite flexible. You can go to the advanced settings to remove the small watermark, if you like. It works on just one image, as I had to do in that case.

I used that on my edit of your shot, but of course, it doesn't work as well on smaller files. Get it and see what it can do for you. Also, consider trying Microsoft ICE (a free image compositing program) to get a wider shot of the sky. These might help you with making images of inspirational sunrises.

Edit:
I have Photomatix, but I'm not entirely happy with it. I use Luminance, which for me is more flexible, albeit harder to use. It is worth looking at, if you want really fine control over your HDRs.

Don1462 · Sep 2, 2012

I'll give those a try. I like what you have done with my photo. Did it take long to do? was the whole process automated or you manually tweaked some settings?
I am really getting fond of your edit. Thanks once again.

The Barbarian · Sep 2, 2012

I'll give those a try. I like what you have done with my photo. Did it take long to do? was the whole process automated or you manually tweaked some settings?
I am really getting fond of your edit. Thanks once again.

I dropped it in AutoHDR, and used the default settings. Then I selected the sky and increased the red and yellow, and then upped the saturation just a touch.

Not much. It was pretty good to start. But I do think a wide view would give you a lot more impact.

Don1462 · Sep 2, 2012

But I do think a wide view would give you a lot more impact.

by that do you mean shooting the image again using wider angle lens?

The Barbarian · Sep 3, 2012

Yes, or possibly taking a series of shots and stitching them together in a program like Microsoft's ICE.
Microsoft Research Image Composite Editor (ICE)

Don1462 · Sep 3, 2012

I downloaded and tried AutoHDR last night. Small program downloaded pretty fast, no installation, great. I then tried to make an HDR using all 9 bracketed shots that I had taken, all raw files, the program gave an error and crashed. I think it doesn't work with cn2 files. I converted them to jpeg and this time it worked. I played with some of the settings and I quite like the architecture preset. I couldn't save the final result as a tiff file, so I saved as jpeg with 0 % compression. The results are quite good but for some reason the files are extremely small. Here are a few of them:

Don1462 · Sep 3, 2012

the bold setting (3rd one from the top) is also quite good, but I think some of the white clouds on the left of the pic might have overdone.

Don1462 · Sep 3, 2012

I did a few tries with different settings in Photomatix pro (detail enhancer, exposure fusion etc) and this is one of them. I then added some adjustment layers in photoshop, increased contrast, increased level for red channel as well as rgb. I think the foreground is a bit too plain. I am not sure if i should darken it so it be less distracting or may be just do a photo composite with a foreground from another photo. Anyone's got any thoughts on that?

The Barbarian · Sep 4, 2012

In AutoHDR, you can click on the "more options" button, and set for larger files. Also, you can get more saturation, by raising the "colour" setting a bit.

Don1462 · Sep 5, 2012

I downloaded the other program you mentioned Luminace. I'll give that one a try tomorrow. I am still not too sure about the foreground of my photo, I don't think it looks 'heavenly' enough.