Feedback on First HDR

[kareem_ajani]

I was googling HDR and came across this site, and hope to learn a lot while I am here. Already I've seen some really great and inspiring work. This is my first HDR image attempt, I ask for advice on how to better my final image and what I need to work on and look out for



Kareem Ajani
www.kareemajani.com

[McQ]

Hi Kareem, welcome to the forums!

Great looking first HDR. It's got a good dreamlike tonality to it. There's something about a blue/gold color combination in photos that is always very pleasing to the eye. I presume that this is entirely due to the huge white balance difference between the outdoor light and inside, and not a result of editing...?

Did you use Photoshop to generate this image? Knowing a lot more about how it was made can help us with advice on how to improve the HDR.

[Colin Southern]

I agree, excellent start.

I'm not sure if this would improve it or not (or if you've already done this or not), but with any image (HDR or conventional), as one of the workflow steps I like to simply brush over selected areas with the burn / dodge / sponge tools (with the appropriate options set).

I find that on most occasions I can improve the local contrast in areas of the image - my gut feeling is that it might be possible to squeeze just a touch more contrast out of some of the slightly flat areas in your example here.

[kareem_ajani]

Hi Kareem, welcome to the forums!

Great looking first HDR. It's got a good dreamlike tonality to it. There's something about a blue/gold color combination in photos that is always very pleasing to the eye. I presume that this entirely due to the huge white balance difference between the outdoor light and inside, and not a result of editing...?

Did you use Photoshop to generate this image? Knowing a lot more about how it was made can help us with advice on how to improve the HDR.

Thanks McQ, I hope to only get better with each image. I believe you're right about the white balance, because I didn't separate the two with layers (windows to outside and interior), but it did kind of add a little effect so it didn't really bother me much personally.

I used both Photomatix and PS CS3, when I came onto this site.. I stumbled upon one of F-Art's pieces and he even displayed some settings that he used for Photomatix, so I used those as a basis, and just altered the white and black points and used a higher luminance.

I saved my settings, so my settings were:
Strength: 100
Color Saturation: 50
Light Smoothing: Very High (Highest)
Luminosity: +10

Tone
White Point: 3.21%
Black Point: 4.86%
Gamma: 1.00

Color
Saturation Highlights: -2
Saturation Shadows: +1

Micro
Microcontrast: +9
Micro-smoothing: 0

S/H
All options set at: 0

Haven't tried these settings on another image yet, was going to do that later today and see how it comes out. And after I did all that, I loaded up the TIFF file in Photoshop, and applied a Color Boosting later at 30% (Overlay) and Sharpened the Image.

[kareem_ajani]

I agree, excellent start.

I'm not sure if this would improve it or not (or if you've already done this or not), but with any image (HDR or conventional), as one of the workflow steps I like to simply brush over selected areas with the burn / dodge / sponge tools (with the appropriate options set).

I find that on most occasions I can improve the local contrast in areas of the image - my gut feeling is that it might be possible to squeeze just a touch more contrast out of some of the slightly flat areas in your example here.

Thanks Colin. I have yet to master the dodge/burn tools.. care to share any of your settings/options for those tools to give me a little head-start?

[Colin Southern]

Thanks Colin. I have yet to master the dodge/burn tools.. care to share any of your settings/options for those tools to give me a little head-start?

You're welcome

Ultimately it depends on the image, but common settings I use are ...

For the Burn tool: Relatively soft brush - set for shadows or midtones (depending on tone of image)- set to around 3 to 5%. Great for enhancing local contrast.

For the Dodge tool: Relatively soft brush - can be set to shadows - midtone - or highlights - just depends on what needs opening up. Again, set to modest amount (with all of these several applications is better than 1 bigger one)

For the sponge tool: Relatively soft brush - can be set to saturate or desaturate problem areas as required.

In a nutshell I find it useful simply for tweaking LOCAL problem areas that global layers and adjustments can't get right - kinda like "hand corrections" if that makes sense.