Single picture HDR

Joel_W · Dec 27, 2011

I was photographing some geese after a morning sunrise shoot, and thought that some of the pictures of this swan should have turned out better. The white feathers were basically blown out, the Brownish ones hardly showed up, and the water, with the sun's reflection just never came close to what I wanted. Bracketing for HDR with a moving subject didn't seem like a prudent thing to do, so I experimented with a few of the pictures as single image HDR. I really like the final results of this picture. CC's more then welcome.

DSCN1954copy_tonemapped by jaw101, on Flickr

vipgraphx · Dec 27, 2011

Interesting picture. My .02 is that the water is very busy. You can tell the fall colors in the water, nice!

Joel_W · Dec 27, 2011

vipgraphx said:
Interesting picture. My .02 is that the water is very busy. You can tell the fall colors in the water, nice!

Thanks for the input. And yes the water is a little more busy then I wanted. But when I tone it down, the swan starts to become washed out.

Right now I'm using Photomatrix Essentials 3. Just might have to spring for the pro version, as I'm getting hooked on HDR images, but in a realistic way.

480sparky · Dec 27, 2011

Joel_W said:
Thanks for the input. And yes the water is a little more busy then I wanted. But when I tone it down, the swan starts to become washed out.
............

Select everything except the bird, then tone it down.

mjhoward · Dec 27, 2011

A single image 'HDR' is not HDR. You've just tone-mapped a single exposure. An HDR photo requires more than one exposure to capture Dynamic Range that lies outside the range provided by a single exposure.

Majeed Badizadegan · Dec 28, 2011

mjhoward said:
A single image 'HDR' is not HDR. You've just tone-mapped a single exposure. An HDR photo requires more than one exposure to capture Dynamic Range that lies outside the range provided by a single exposure.

This

Joel_W · Dec 28, 2011

As I posted earlier, I'm not using Photomatrix Pro, but their more basic program Essentials 3, which doesn't offer those advanced options. I went with that version because I wasn't sure I wanted to become that involved in HDR imagining. Now that I can see I am, and really enjoy it, I need to upgrade to the professional version in order to have more control.