Pseudo-HDR Example

[Colin Southern]

Hello Collin,

I'm curious, what do you do under your standard "Photoshop 30 Second Makeover" ™?
I'm not new to photoshop, but there's always something to learn about it.

Cheers

Hi "Fallacy",

Depends on which PC I'm on as to the specifics (eg RAW converter or just a few layers), but usually just the basics.

- Levels

- Saturation

- Sharpening

- Cropping

- I think PP is a good example of the 80/20 rule in that you get 80% of the way there in the first 20% of the work ... even to the point where I'm often not bothering too much about the other 20/80 (often just doesn't seem worth the effort for the return). Occasionally I'll need to get a bit more creative with, say, a graduated fill & blend to correct some brightness falloff, but not often. The other thing I'm a big fan of is a good old fashioned dodge / burn / sponge (real "hands on" stuff).

[Keith]

I am just starting to play around with HDR after getting a tripod at last.
I have also been playing with a couple of photo's using pseudo HDR.
My view for what its worth is that, photography, like art, is only pleasing if you personally find it pleasing.
Personal taste being what it is, even some normaly enchanced photo's can still look somewhat flat.
I look at some really hard pushed HDR and love it.
I also find some photo's that have had just a small HDR treatment to give that slightly pushed but very acceptable look (and you would never know its HDR unless you were told)really nice too.

I am using whatever info I can glean from results being posted on CiC, fascinating stuff!

[bmgonzal]

For all of you out there that are still wondering how to Pseudo HDR, I've posted a tutorial on my blog. Check it out and I'd appreciate any comments

http://briangonzalez.org/2009/12/13/...om-photomatix/

[Colin Southern]

Hi Brian,

Welcome to CiC - great to have you with us

I had a quick read of your tutorial - three things came to mind ...

First up, it's nice to see people making the distinction between psudo-HDR and HDR (or HDRI) - you wouldn't believe how hard I sometimes have to work to get that through to people!

You mention that bracketing is 3 shots, but it can be any number. Most cameras will do 3 by default - mine can do 2, 3, 5, or 7 - but one can also do as many as needed manually.

The last thing that came to mind though was with the photo that you used - to be honest, I think it would have looked better with just regular post-processing.

The big "problem" with psudo HDR is that the images don't contain any info over and above what's in a single RAW shot. Traditionally the process can make it easier to get at the info, but with powerful controls like "fill light" and highlight recovery now available in Adobe Camera RAW, I really don't see any advantages in the psudo RAW approach anymore ... in most cases it just seems like many additional steps to achieve the same (or worse) result.

[arith]

Hi Brian,

Welcome to CiC - great to have you with us

I had a quick read of your tutorial - three things came to mind ...

First up, it's nice to see people making the distinction between psudo-HDR and HDR (or HDRI) - you wouldn't believe how hard I sometimes have to work to get that through to people!

You mention that bracketing is 3 shots, but it can be any number. Most cameras will do 3 by default - mine can do 2, 3, 5, or 7 - but one can also do as many as needed manually.

The last thing that came to mind though was with the photo that you used - to be honest, I think it would have looked better with just regular post-processing.

The big "problem" with psudo HDR is that the images don't contain any info over and above what's in a single RAW shot. Traditionally the process can make it easier to get at the info, but with powerful controls like "fill light" and highlight recovery now available in Adobe Camera RAW, I really don't see any advantages in the psudo RAW approach anymore ... in most cases it just seems like many additional steps to achieve the same (or worse) result.

Yes I agree it is a lot of steps to achieve not much more, white will still be white if it is in RAW; but I think noise is reduced in shadows but in any case I get the option of lowering highlights a lot and increasing lowlights even more than any software I've got.

I've tried other ways to raise lowlights but just got a lot of noise; you still get noise but I think not as much.