Lucifer Falls, Enfield Glen State Park, N.Y.

[Yooper]

This is my first attempt at an HDR panorama, as well as my first posting for c&c. I would appreciate any comments and critique that anyone would care to share.



Canon 5D MkII, Canon 24-105L, 35mm
f/22, (1/4, 1, 4) sec., ISO 50

3,3-shot HDR panorama (9 images) using HDR Efex Pro, photomerge in CS5

[Steve S]

A very nice composition paul, but is lacking a little zip.

I adjusted the levels---added a little saturation with lab mode---added some contrast---sharpened




Nice job, just needed a little post processing to bring it alive.

[steve40]

A very nice composition paul, but is lacking a little zip.

That was my exact! response. At least its not over processed though, that is; it does not have the cartoonist look of some of the HDR attempts I've seen.

[steve40]

Here is another take; I used PSE, and a plugin called Contrast Master. The setting was Dynamic Contrast, and then I added just a touch of black-point adjustment. No color boost, or sharpning.

[Yooper]

Thanks, Steve. I had actually decreased the Vibrance in Lightroom before I output it, as wanted it to look realistic, as opposed to an over-saturated HDR image; I guess I went too far. I went back and re-edited it, adjusting the vibrance, clarity, and brightness sliders, and tweaked the tone curve and contrast slightly. Hopefully this looks better. (I also cropped it slightly on the left edge to get rid of the tree trunk on the left edge that I didn't notice until after I posted originally.) Thank you for taking the time to do your edit; it helped me see the possibilities. I could also see that my initial posted image was very flat.

Paul

[Yooper]

That was my exact! response. At least its not over processed though, that is; it does not have the cartoonist look of some of the HDR attempts I've seen.

Thank you, also, Steve, and thank you for taking the time to edit my image. There is a fine line between realistic looking images and over processed when it comes to HDR, and I'm just starting to learn how to find that line. I guess I'm a little too gun-shy. Your input helps a lot.

[MiniChris]

Thought I would toss in my two-cents worth...alight curves adjustment, reset black point and desaturated the water's solor bottom left and desaturated the foliage to try to get all the attention to the falls. Lots of stuff going on in htis photo which makes it somewhat difficult to direct the viewer's attention.

[Yooper]

Thought I would toss in my two-cents worth...alight curves adjustment, reset black point and desaturated the water's solor bottom left and desaturated the foliage to try to get all the attention to the falls. Lots of stuff going on in htis photo which makes it somewhat difficult to direct the viewer's attention.

Thank you, Chris, for taking the time to edit my image and show me the possibilities you see to improve it; I posted it so I could learn how to improve my editing.

[steve40]

Thank you, also, Steve, and thank you for taking the time to edit my image. There is a fine line between realistic looking images and over processed when it comes to HDR, and I'm just starting to learn how to find that line. I guess I'm a little too gun-shy. Your input helps a lot.

Yooper: I would rather see a little gun-shy application of HDR, than some of the Dick Tracy comics look, most end up with. There is a fine line between enough, and too much, even a little bit. Of course a lot like the comic look, they have been led by programs like PhotoMatrix, to think this is what HDR is all about. When "High Dynamic Range," has nothing to do with a surrealistic nether world look.

PS: You have some really nice work, on your web-site.

[Steve S]

Paul, the edit looks better, but you added a color cast. It is in need of a white balance adjustment. If you look at your edit next to mine, you will see a yellow or maybe green color cast.

To fix this, take it back into cs5...............bring up the levels tool............blend mode normal...........adjust the black and white points of EACH (red, blue,green) channel individually, so they just touch the histogram. You can even clip the thin line on each side to bring up more contrast. When done, with each channel, click back on all channels and adjust the mid range to your liking.

[Yooper]

Yooper: I would rather see a little gun-shy application of HDR, than some of the Dick Tracy comics look, most end up with. There is a fine line between enough, and too much, even a little bit. Of course a lot like the comic look, they have been led by programs like PhotoMatrix, to think this is what HDR is all about. When "High Dynamic Range," has nothing to do with a surrealistic nether world look.

PS: You have some really nice work, on your web-site.

Thank you for the encouragement, Steve. I prefer realistic looking images, and am not a fan of the surrealistic images that some other people like, either, but I am glad there is room in photography for those people as well. For the natural landscape photographer, HDR processing allows one to properly capture a scene that exceeds the capabilities of the camera and create an image that represents what our eyes see, which, as you pointed out, is what HDR processing was developed for. This image was captured early afternoon on a sunny day, and it would have been a waste of time to try to get a single image that worked. Achieving realistic colors takes a lot of practice, though, and I'm just getting started. I can see that the image I re-posted is not quite right yet, and the proper color balance is somewhere between the two. I will keep working on it, and all the helpful comments here are greatly appreciated. I also really appreciate the encouragement about my website; thank you.

[Yooper]

Paul, the edit looks better, but you added a color cast. It is in need of a white balance adjustment. If you look at your edit next to mine, you will see a yellow or maybe green color cast.

To fix this, take it back into cs5...............bring up the levels tool............blend mode normal...........adjust the black and white points of EACH (red, blue,green) channel individually, so they just touch the histogram. You can even clip the thin line on each side to bring up more contrast. When done, with each channel, click back on all channels and adjust the mid range to your liking.

Thank you, Steve, and I did notice that when I posted the revised image. It looks to me like the oranges, and greens to a lesser extent, are over-saturated, and I have been working in Lightroom 3 to adjust those specific colors. While I have CS5, I typically do very little editing using it, preferring the non-destructive edits of Lightroom. I will have to try your suggestion and see if I can get better results that way. I also wonder if part of my problem with that image is how Lightroom is handling the conversion to sRGB; the original image in Lightroom looks better than the image I posted here on CiC. Thank you very much for taking the time to teach me how to better edit my images.