HDR photo of Abbaye De St Hilaire in France

[Don Chesnut]

This is a photo of Abbaye De St Hilaire in France. I did this as a HDR photo to get the dark walkway and the Abbaye in the sunlight in the same capture. Comments will be appreciated.

[JPS]

Hi Don,
I too have been working to produce a decent HDR picture; but have had limited success.
You obviously have. I think this picture is great, keep posting any others you do; I for one would love to see them. Well done
In the mean time, I'll keep trying!!

[Mark von Kanel]

Nice image Don how did you process it?

mark

[rpcrowe]

I have just set up my 27-inch Samsung Monitor and this image looks spectacular with almost 3-D quality...

[Dave Humphries]

Hi Don,

It is pretty good, but I do detect some haloing, in the sky and I am suspicious of some of the pale edges on the gable end wall. You can probably tell I'm a sceptic of the need for HDR in many cases (sorry)

The light under the walkway looks very natural in relative tones and even the colour looks good, well done.

Welcome to the CiC forums from ....

[FrankMi]

Nice job, Don. Could you comment on the shooting steps, what software you used for the HDR processing and what post tonemapping techniques you had to apply to get the image to this point? Nosey bodies (like me ) are interested in your workflow.

If you have the postprocessing skills, clearing up the mild halos Dave mentions should be fairly easy.

[Don Chesnut]

I used a 5 shot bracket. Photomatix pro was used to merge them together. I use Nik software-Viveza and Color Efex Pro 4 first most of the time. Topaz Adjust and Detail are used sometimes. The Nikon D3100 does not have a bracketing feature on it so I have to manually bracket the photos using a 1 stop exposure compensation. I've been trying to do HDR since April of this year and since April, I have gotten better but still have a long way to go. Thanks for your comments. They are appreciated.

[FrankMi]

I used a 5 shot bracket. Photomatix pro was used to merge them together. I use Nik software-Viveza and Color Efex Pro 4 first most of the time. Topaz Adjust and Detail are used sometimes. The Nikon D3100 does not have a bracketing feature on it so I have to manually bracket the photos using a 1 stop exposure compensation. I've been trying to do HDR since April of this year and since April, I have gotten better but still have a long way to go. Thanks for your comments. They are appreciated.

Thank you for the feedback! I use a D3100 as well and usually find that +2EV, normal, and -2EV are sufficient. Do you feel you are getting enough out of Topaz Adjust and Detail to make it worth while? I haven't tried it yet but I know others use it. I'm just not sure where in the workflow I would say to myself, 'I gotta go to Topaz to get X'.

[Shadowman]

This is a photo of Abbaye De St Hilaire in France. I did this as a HDR photo to get the dark walkway and the Abbaye in the sunlight in the same capture. Comments will be appreciated.

Nice image. Have you or anyone else tried processing a photo in HDR that was captured with a fisheye lens? I was reading an issue of Digital Photo and there were quite a few images taken with the fisheye lens. The HDR image of a cityscape had, like your image, very subtle tonemapping.

[Viana]

This is a photo of Abbaye De St Hilaire in France. I did this as a HDR photo to get the dark walkway and the Abbaye in the sunlight in the same capture. Comments will be appreciate

I know this is not always possible, but I would have waited until the sun made arched shadows of the passage on the paving. That to me would have been the ideal photo-op.

[conkerwood]

Hi Don
Let me say at the outset that I am a big fan of HDR and probably 50% of the pics I take are either exposure fusion or HDR. Firstly you have done a good job taking 5 shots without the benefit of bracketing, you must have a good tripod and a steady hand. I use a canon 40D which brackets 3 and though I have used up to 9 shots I think the results are very effective with just three exposures. I have added a couple of pics at the end of this so you can see how well 3 shots work. As to your pic this is an excellent subject, nothing moves, no flapping flags etc and there is a strong contrast in light. The area under cover is well illuminated with nice detail without being over the top. And you have avoided the mistake of over illuminating the darker areas with the resultant loss of contrast with the naturally bright areas. You also seem to have avoided any of the chromatic abberation which plagues HDR where strong light meets strong dark. ( Have a look at the trees on the right of my first pic and you will see some minor chromatic issues there. I have reduced them by desaturating particular colours in PS but its not perfect) You do have halo problems in the sky in fact the sky hasn't quite worked and almost looks like you have already attempted some cloning. It is easily fixable in PS but I would recommend having a stock of a dozen or so preprocessed skies that you can layer in. That way you beat the haloing and you are able to tone down the sometimes overly angry skies that tone mapping can produce using Photomatix. You also have some halo problems with the two front pillars caused by that strong patch of green but that's an easy fix in PS with a little cloning. You have some blowout between the second pillars and on the edge of the third pillar, but this is minor and doesn't detract from the pic. So far as the HDR technical side is concerned I think you should be well pleased with this. I also use Topaz Adjust for tweeking and Topaz De-noise which is very effective, in my opinion, at eliminating the additional noise that HDR often generates. But probably the most frequent final touch after tone mapping, for me, is unsharp mask in PS as the tone mapping can tend to soften pics, though strangely, this does not seem to be as big an issue for exposure fusion in Photomatix. My only other comment is about the POV you have chosen and the composition. The eye is led straight to the red door at the end but that door is almost dead centre of the pic. The eye is then grabbed by the brighter section on the right and dragged away so there is a tension, its almost as if there were two pictures vying for eye so we never come to rest on the intended point of interest. Could I ask you to consider, as an experiment, a crop to completely remove the right hand section up to the edge of the pillar and a little off the bottom so that the door ends up moving towards the primary GR intersection. Its just a thought and its your pic but it may give a better balance and a more stable composition. I hope this all makes sense and is of some use. I look forward to seeing a lot more of your HDR work.

Peter

[Don Chesnut]

After Photomatix Pro I follow this work flow: Define for noise, Viveza, then either Color Efex Pro 4 or Topaz Adjust (it depends on what I'm trying to eo with the photo) sometimes a little of both-I use the opacity slider a lot, to sharpen either Topaz Detail or Nik Softener Pro. I like having lots of choices and sometimes with all these plugins, there are too many choices. The ones I use on every photo are Viveza, Color Efex Pro 4, and will probably use Topaz Adjust 5 now that they have made some very nice changes to that program. Thanks for the comments.

[FrankMi]

After Photomatix Pro I follow this work flow: Define for noise, Viveza, then either Color Efex Pro 4 or Topaz Adjust (it depends on what I'm trying to eo with the photo) sometimes a little of both-I use the opacity slider a lot, to sharpen either Topaz Detail or Nik Softener Pro. I like having lots of choices and sometimes with all these plugins, there are too many choices. The ones I use on every photo are Viveza, Color Efex Pro 4, and will probably use Topaz Adjust 5 now that they have made some very nice changes to that program. Thanks for the comments.

Thanks, Don. I have learned that sometimes when I buy software, it sits unused and forgotten for long periods of time if it isn't part of my normal workflow. I'll look into Topaz and Nic. I think I could use some noise reduction software but I'm not sure is I need additional sharpening software as CD5 seems to do a pretty good job with that.

[raghunath]

Great HDR shot Don! Did you you Photmatix or the HDR Pro option in Photoshop?
Also, do you prefer the grungy look? I think it gives too much edge glow especially at the edge of the sky.
Great shot though!

[Don Chesnut]

I use Photomatix Pro along with the Nik and Topaz plug-ins I installed into Photoshop Elements. There are a few instances I like the grungy loook but most of the time I try to just enhance the images. Since I have been doing HDR since April of this year, I still have a lot to learn and appreciate all the comments and feedback. It helps me to see where I can improve my processing. Thanks to everyone.