Why the hostility to the "overcooked" images ?

[reaper7534]

I think this looks fantastic....granted I don't have the eye that some of you do, but this is very pleasing to me. To me, this photo is initially boring.....nothing different than everything else out there, after HDR, outstanding.

 

[robbins.photo]

You also stated that HDR done either "right" or "wrong" can, and I quote, "make a boring photo look great."

Oh, but if that were actually true, that slapping an HDR process onto a boring shot would make said boring shot, "great".

I'm not actually hostile toward HDR images. I just think that 90% of them look clownish, but hey, whatever people want to do. "There is no accounting for taste" is an old, old saying goes back to ancient times. If people like HDR, then that's cool.

I say if folks really want stuff to look like a black light poster more power too them. Same thing if they want to glue shag carpet to the dashboard of their car.. lol

I think one issue might be that for those of us who really dont care for overcooked images that well done hdr to us is something you wouldn't know is hdr unless someone said upfront its hdr.

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[Braineack]

I think this looks fantastic....granted I don't have the eye that some of you do, but this is very pleasing to me. To me, this photo is initially boring.....nothing different than everything else out there, after HDR, outstanding.

where did all that orange on the water come from?

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[reaper7534]

You also stated that HDR done either "right" or "wrong" can, and I quote, "make a boring photo look great."

Oh, but if that were actually true, that slapping an HDR process onto a boring shot would make said boring shot, "great".

I'm not actually hostile toward HDR images. I just think that 90% of them look clownish, but hey, whatever people want to do. "There is no accounting for taste" is an old, old saying goes back to ancient times. If people like HDR, then that's cool.

We can play with words all day..... don't confuse Can with Will. No, you can't take a photo that wasn't properly framed and no sharpness and make it great. The basic fundamentals have to be there to work with, HDR can't magically make a bad photo great and I know that.

 

[reaper7534]

I think this looks fantastic....granted I don't have the eye that some of you do, but this is very pleasing to me. To me, this photo is initially boring.....nothing different than everything else out there, after HDR, outstanding.

where did all that orange on the water come from?

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Reflection from the sun, orange building behind him, artificial ? Who knows, only the photographer does. Regardless, does it take a way from he picture. If people want to argue why a picture has this and that, we should all just remove Adobe from our computers and shoot JPEG.

Edit: It's obvious when I look at it, he bumped up the orange to bring out the rooftops which brought the orange in the water out. Does that make it bad ?

 

[IzzieK]

What Robbins said ^^^ I agree with him. Not hostile, just not my preference, just like milky water. Can't have milk. I am allergic to it. Does this make me bad?

 

[limr]

Yes, the orange makes it look bad.

 

[reaper7534]

Yes, the orange makes it look bad.

to each their own I suppose, I prefer it to the muddy brown water look.

 

[astroNikon]

I'm personally a fan of the slightly overdone look. I think it gives it great character along with a surreal look to it. If every photo is supposed to look the same way and supposed to follow the "rules", then they'd all look the same.

I think done either the " right way " or " wrong way " can make a boring photo look great.

THis overcooked HDR shot has far too much character: https://static.squarespace.com/stat...1271181560273/1000w/New tractor HDR final.jpg

In fact, it has so much character that it looks like crap. This is a boring photo. There's no way a simple technique can make a boring photo as you call it, "great", because photography doesn't work that way.

Derrel,

If you look at my post above, I " agreed " that in those instances, they are indeed overdone, even referring to that exact picture.

I even think that one is totally overdone.

I think last year someone posted HDR photos, in particular of a couple airplanes and conversely had the non-HDR images. I thought the HDR images would have made a kewl poster. Whereas the regular one would have made a nice photo.

So I think it can go either way. But some can be overcooked like the above example ... IMHO

 

[limr]

Yes, the orange makes it look bad.

to each their own I suppose, I prefer it to the muddy brown water look.

Well, yes, isn't that the point? So you like it, others don't. So what? This is not a matter than can be settled by going back and forth about, "Well, this is why it's crap," followed by, "Well, this is why it's great." Folks can throw up as many examples as they want of either good or bad, but I'm still going to hate it and you're still going to really like it.

These discussions are as overcooked as the pictures are.

 

[Derrel]

I think this looks fantastic....granted I don't have the eye that some of you do, but this is very pleasing to me. To me, this photo is initially boring.....nothing different than everything else out there, after HDR, outstanding.

[/QUOTE]

So, you say you do not have the eye that others have. Fair enough. Here's what my "eye" and my brain say: "It looks clownish to me, with a heavy-handed, cheezy looking, oddly-shaped four-stop vignette on the sky, cartoon clouds, and for some reason, the dome on the building now looks like a red Idaho potato in color, and the water has an ORANGE cast to it. The water reflects blue, then green, then orange."

Yeah... "great photo!" Not.

What you admit you are liking is a type of digital image that has long been called "eye candy". It's a cheap thrill for the senses. Print a picture like that out and hang it in your living room or office for a full month. You'll look at it a lot, and soon come to realize it looks cartoonish. It's a matter of visual taste and experience. The ridiculous water, in three colors, is a pretty good starting place for one's disillusionment, but then your attention will turn to the bright sky tones to the immediate right of the building, and you'll soon learn to appreciate the ages old saying,"Light advances, dark recedes." The sky's color and its tonal values are totally whacked in this shot!

The last thing about this shot is what Andrew Molitor called, "The light from nowhere effect." You know, where there appears to be no definable point of origin for the lighting...the shadows have been lifted soooooo much that in many HDR pictures that are overcooked, all of the cues about size, and depth, and distance, have been removed, because the shadows have been "lifted" up to mid-tone brightness values. The light on the scene in many HDR shots seems to emanate from...everywhere! And yet, from nowhere! After a period of looking at this type of rendering, people start to accept that bright, sunny day scenes can have shadow areas that look like mid-tones, and then they start to think, "Hey--this looks pretty great!" Everything is equally visible! THe deep shadows are brightened up so much that I can see every detail in the shadows as if it were a mid-tone!

Imagine if you watched a color TV set that had a picture like that. Where the lighting on EVERY scene looked like San Diego on the 4th of July. Night scenes, dawn scenes, twilight--ALL brightened up to a nice, uniform, fake light level, with no shadows, no midtones, and dull highlights; now THAT is overcooked tone-mapping, in a nutshell. Most things perfectly equalized and normalized to "fit" the widest possible range of values into one, big, normalized tone-mapped shot, but then ridiculously out of character colors and tones in places like the sky, or the water.

So, that's part of the reasoning underlying *my* feelings about overcooked images that have been tone-mapped hard, and put on display wet. ;-)

 

[CAP]

Eeek some of those are quite treble.

Question?

How are those HDRs done ? Because i have HDR Settings and modes in 5D Mark III and my 1DX and they never look like that. Is that Photoshop tool?

I use CS5 and Portrait Professional, Some Light Room stuff. But i would be neat to do it with Photoshop, I am just not sure how. Any know a good guide on how to make images like http://cdn.picturecorrect.com/wp-co...would like to know how to create that effect.

 

[Designer]

where did all that orange on the water come from?

It was included with his "artistic license".

Obviously not a real reflection from anything, but the photog-artistse wanted to have orange in the photo to compliment the overlyblue and vignetted sky.

 

[Designer]

My opinion is that in SOME photographs, an over-cooked HDR effect COULD enhance the computer operator's "vision".

Furthermore, without being over-baked, HDR can work.

 

[reaper7534]

Points taken and they make great sense from a technical point of view and you may be right, let me hang it up for a couple of months and I may hate it, but initially it is pleasing to me. What is the opinion on the tone mapped hdr directly to he left of the processed one ?