HDR One - Online Photography Magazine

Facebook Friday – Week 36

2013-05-16T20:23:41Z

Welcome to week 36 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

These images were chosen not simply because they were well processed. Factors such as composition, use of light and colour, and simply the ability to make a person stop in their tracks and concentrate on the image, whatever that trait may be, are also important.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

1. The Carousel by Phototherapy318

2. Honfleur by Jack Torcello

3. Fox Hole by Franciscus Tan

4. Angers, pont de Verdun at blue hour by Jérôme Pouille

5. Hart Plaza Fountain by David Ely

Learning HDR by analyzing bad HDR

2013-05-16T20:05:04Z

In terms of HDR, we all start on a weak footing, even if we are not aware of it. HDR is not a simple technique, not if you’re looking to create good quality, clean images. The process is undoubtedly a long one to master to any degree. Some people pick it up relatively quickly, while others never seem to progress, which can be a real cause for frustration.

In all honesty, while I’m still teaching myself new techniques in digital editing and deepening my understanding of photography daily, my HDRs of the past were truly awful compared to the work I produce today. As photographers, we never stop learning, or at least that’s what I hope. I still look at my images and think about ways that I can improve upon them. I imagine that will always be the case.

For us to develop our skill-sets and photographic eye, it is essential that we know where we are today with our abilities and where we want to be. Of equal importance, we must believe that we can get to our desired level and have the motivation to take us there.

I sometimes look at my past images and wonder what it was I enjoyed about them. My understanding of photography, digital editing & HDR and light were so limited that I was convinced what I was producing was pretty good. Since then, I’ve been my own worst critic. I sometimes examine my older images and try to breakdown where they were falling down. By the same token, I try to extract the strong points of my more successful images, and images I particularly enjoy from other photographers.

I truly believe that opening your eyes to your biggest failings in HDR is the most important move you can make to progression. In that vein, I’d like to present to you one of my first HDR images that I processed 2 years ago. At the time I enjoyed it. Now I find it difficult to find a positive word about it. I’ve number and labeled below some of the many faults that exist with this image.

List of faults by letter:

A – There’s a massive amount of noise in the sky. Through noise removal software or cleaner HDR processing, this is no longer an issue. It’s often better to apply noise removal selectively. Applying noise across the entire image pulls details and sharpness out of the final shot.

B – The street lights and other areas are over/poorly-exposed. In awe of the fact that I had created such a ‘cool’ image, I had no understanding of covering the full dynamic range of a given scene. Remember to check your shots in camera to make sure the brights and darks are fully covered in your brackets. It’s okay if your final photo has blown-out areas or dark areas low in details, as long as it’s managed correctly (Like the side lights in the image below).

C – This is a general point about contrast. The histogram was a mystery to me. I would apply general contrast adjustments and assume it was fine. The image above is completely flat. It doesn’t have a single shadow or a natural distribution of light. Now, I apply contrast and lighting adjustments selectively, looking at each part of an image and trying to understand how the lighting in that area affects the mood of the entire image.

D – Not removing ghosts correctly. Here, I probably left the blurry human trail thinking that it was such a small issue no one would notice it. However, every aspect of an image is important to some level. In terms of ghost removal, it’s important to control your image and make micro adjustments through manual ghost removal or masking in Photoshop. Ghosts, or movement of people, can have a positive impact images of course. Knowing when to keep them and how to remove them is the hard part.

E – The colouring in this photo is truly terrible. There’s a huge degree of pink colour bleeding in the road and on the trees, not to mention the general mess of colours in almost every other part of the photo. It is absolutely vital that you establish a white-point, or even more effectively, a 50% grey point. I would also suggest that you selectively control the colour of individual elements of the image. Stronger colours doesn’t equal a good image. However, contrasting gentle colours with a few stronger primary colours has a far greater impact.

F – There’s a very typical side-effect of HDR processing at work here. You can see that the top edges of the building and trees have a darker shade than the rest of that particular object. There’s no logical reason for this. Textures, colours, & light distribution should be fairly even on objects unless there’s an obvious reason otherwise, or you wish to create a vignette of sorts.

The truth is, I’ve only mentioned a few week aspects of the processing involved here. I’ve said nothing of the poor composition or general use of what is clearly unfavourable light. Yet, I’m aware of these failings and have looked for ways to overcome them.

In one of my recent images which proved to be quite popular (see below), I’ve already began to pull it apart, to figure what works and what doesn’t work.

I feel at times like I’m playing a game with no end. In fact, it’s a game I don’t want to end. If I ever think that I’ve reached ‘artistic maturity’ in photography then I would have clearly lost the reason why I took it up in the first place – as a form of self expression. The more impacting my processing becomes, the more accurately I can express myself. And since we, as human beings, change throughout our lifetime, so will our methods of expressing ourselves. I digress…

Become your own worst critic, in a productive way. Don’t get down because others are producing better work than you at the moment. Work hard, watch tutorials, enjoy the learning process and remember that the only way is forward if you remain positive and motivated.

To speed up your HDR journey, I have two tutorials available – Photomatix & Photoshop tutorial and an Advanced Digital Blending tutorial.

I hope you’ve found this information useful. For more tips and HDR photos, feel free to join me on facebook or Google+.

Facebook Friday – Week 35

2013-05-10T15:41:35Z

Welcome to week 35 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

1. Crimson City by Mark Goodman

2. Nashville Tennessee at Sunset by Malcolm MacGregor Photography

3. Photo by Brook ward

4. Infrared HDR by Dan Wampler Photography

5. Photo by Cédric Fonce

An HDR Workflow

2013-05-05T21:27:51Z

Article by Darin Rogers

I won’t be discussing any particular topic with this post today, but rather I’ll be walking through the steps I took to process this image.

Of course, if you were to process this image yourself, you might do it differently than I do. Nothing wrong with that. The only ‘right’ way to process a particular image is the one that fits your vision. However, I think it can sometimes be helpful to see other’s workflow. Even if you’re familiar with HDR processing, or post-processing in general, by watching what someone else does it’s possible to pick up some useful tips or techniques that will help you achieve your vision.

The image I’m working with today is from a quick one-week trip I took recently to the Philippines. The church, Basilica de San Martin de Tours, is located in Taal, Calabarzon, near the Taal volcano south of Manila. It is said to be the largest church in the Philippines and SE Asia. I can only assume that’s true.

How I processed this image isn’t particularly difficult or complicated. I was primarily going for a natural look and attempting to bring out some of the detail in the ceiling; which makes sense, of course, since the ceiling, including its lines and details, is what the image is about.

I started out with a standard three-shot, +/- two-stop exposure. The first step was to reduce the chromatic aberrations that were apparent along the edge of the window sills in each image by clicking the tick box under Lens Corrections in Lightroom. It’s a good idea to do this prior to opening the images in Photomatix or other HDR processing software.

Once this was done, I exported the 3 images to Photomatix. The export settings I used are shown in the figure below. Because I wasn’t using a tripod, I checked the tick box for Align images in case there was any movement between shots. In truth, I usually leave this checked by default even if I do use a tripod.

You may wonder why I’ve checked the box for Reducing chromatic aberrations after I just did so in Lightroom. The reason is… well, I don’t know. I’ve never found the chromatic aberration tool in Photomatix to be all that useful. However, I leave it checked just in case it’s doing something I’m not aware of. But, as you’ll see later in this article, the chromatic aberration I just eliminated comes back once again.

Once imported into Photomatix, I adjusted various settings using the Exposure Fusion process. I use this process more often than Tone Mapping as I am able to get the results I’m looking for more consistently. As I was going for a natural look with this image I went pretty light with the Strength at -4.0. I felt that the over-exposed image needed to be de-emphasized in the blend which resulted in the Blending Point set at -2.0. I tend to make minimal adjustments with the Local Contrast since it’s similar to Clarity in Lightroom and Photoshop. A few tweaks to some of the other settings and it was ready to send back to Lightroom.

An image isn’t finished once you re-import it from Photomatix. In the interest of space I won’t go into every single adjustment I made and you can see my final adjustments in the screenshot of the history panel. I will make note of a couple items, though.

One of the first things I did was to do some minor straightening. I was traveling light this trip and I didn’t have my tripod with me for this shot so I was resting the camera on a flat railing. It was a fairly sturdy surface but I wasn’t able to take the care I should have in getting a properly aligned image. Even after straightening, it still wasn’t perfectly aligned. I could have tried to fix it more with the Transform tool under Lens Corrections but this would have required significant cropping and the pixel bending it would subject the image to would probably do more harm than good. I do tend to be rather anal when it comes to straight horizons and proper alignment but not so much that I’ll throw an otherwise good image just because it’s slightly off kilter.

Although I don’t show it here, you’ll also note that I had to remove chromatic aberrations once again. Even though I had checked Reduce chromatic aberrations in Photomatix, some fringing reappeared where I’d previously removed it and it was necessary to remove it again in Lightroom. In reality, no one would likely notice the slightly pink fringing that appeared along the bright edges of the windows, but if I know it’s there I have to do something about it. The windows are also rather bright areas that can be a bit of a distraction so I did some minor burning of the brightest areas to try and reduce their impact.

A bit of sharpening, a slight vignette to help keep the eye from straying out of the image, a minor white balance adjustment and, there you go. This image could have been done any number of ways and you may have done some things differently. However, I hope that in seeing how I did it you were able to pick up some useful tips or techniques.

Darin Rogers is a freelance photographer, writer, and part-time engineer. He is currently based in Darwin, Australia. You can see more of his work at www.darinrogers.net.

Facebook Friday – Week 34

2013-05-04T12:53:32Z

Welcome to week 34 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

1. Travel in Time in Color by Kris Kros

2. A castle somewhere in Italy by Frits Vrielink

3. End of the world by Wojciech Toman

4. Borobudur Temple | Magelang by Adri Syahfril Koto Piliang

5. Dynon Donk – Newport Railyards Australia by Vorka Imagery

Tips for capturing reflections

2013-05-02T19:02:58Z

Article by Wojciech Toman

One of my favourite compositional elements in photography are reflections. You can use them to make composition much more interesting, for example by adding symmetry to your photos. Reflections add a lot of depth and interest to the photos. They can make it much easier to tell the story.

Here are some tips to make reflections stand out in your photos:

First of all reflections are very common. They don’t appear only on water surfaces like lakes or rivers. You can find them in puddles, windows, cars bodies, door handles and even in human eyes. It means that if you want to capture reflections you just need to look around you. Possibilities are endless!
Second thing to be aware of is that reflections look different depending on the angle you look at a surface from. If it’s transparent (eg. glass) or semi-transparent (eg. water in rivers) there will be yet another phenomenon visible on the surface known as refractions (bending of light as it goes from one medium to another). So basically you won’t only see reflection but will also see-through the surface (eg. you will see stones on the bottom of the river). If you want to have more reflections and less refractions in your photo make sure to shoot the surface in which you want to reflect the scene at a low angle. The lower the angle, the more reflections (and less refractions) you will see. What I often do is to take a photo from the level of the surface which I use to create reflections. If possible I simply put my camera on this surface (don’t try this with water as your camera might not like moisture!). This way it looks almost like a mirror. It is especially useful if you want to create reflections in transparent or in semi-transparent surfaces like water surface or window glass.
Use wide-angle lens together with point 2 to make reflection appear larger than it really is. For instance in the image below the puddle was about 0.5 m in diameter but it looks as if it has around 50 m in diameter.
Use Circular Polarizing Filter to enhance reflections. It might sound strange as Circular Polarizing Filters are typically used to reduce reflections but it’s possible. Well, sort of. In some positions of Circular Polarizing Filter it doesn’t reduce reflections but only some of the surrounding light. This has the effect of reflections standing out more. So although you don’t directly increase reflections, you make them apparently stronger.
One of the best ways to use reflections is to create symmetry in the image. This works especially great with the scene that is already symmetrical.
If there are ripples in the water surface as you take photos, make sure to use neutral density filter (or Circular Polarizer as it also stops some light) so you can use longer exposures. With longer exposures the reflections won’t be as crisp and clear but you will avoid ugly and distracting ripples. I used neutral density filter (ND8) in the image below. Due to light wind water surface was full of very small waves. I decided to smooth them using long exposure.
One of the most amazing ways of capturing reflections in the city is by shooting during rain in the night or shortly afterwards. Wet streets and pavements reflect all the lights. This often results in very vibrant scenes with a lot of depth
Make sure that during post-processing you don’t make reflections too bright. Normally reflections are about 1 stop darker than the reflected scene and it is good to keep that in mind. If you make them as bright as the reflected scene the result will be unrealistic.
When you use deghosting in your HDR workflow make sure to apply deghosting both to the scene itself and its reflection. If you forget about fixing ghost artifacts in the reflection or fix them differently than in the scene, the result would look very strange. Similarly if you use clone tool (or healing tool) on the scene, remember to do the same with the reflection.
One of the easiest ways of boosting the reflections in post-processing is to increase Contrast and Blacks settings for them in Lightroom or in Adobe Camera RAW.

Article written by Wojciech Toman

Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/wojciech.toman

Blog – http://hdrphotographer.blogspot.com/

Facebook Friday – Week 33

2013-04-26T16:28:08Z

Welcome to week 33 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

Here are this week’s picks in no particular order:

1. Low Tide at Salthill by Oliver Pascual Almazan

2. Photo by Neon Nine Photography

3. The Cold Seat by Dave Tomek

4. Aghia Sofia in Turkey by Fanis Fousteris

5. The Old Jetty, Kingscote, Kangaroo Island by Dean Wiles

An Introduction to Luminance/Luminosity Masks in Digital Blending

2013-04-25T21:19:39Z

Article by Jimmy McIntyre

Introduction to luminance/luminosity masks

Luminance masks, otherwise known as luminosity masks, is a buzz term around the HDR community right now. A great number of photographers have mastered the use of luminance masks (LMs) as a way to ween themselves off their dependence on HDR software and give themselves more control over their imagery. By using LMs we in no way alter the quality of our original images, which is a welcome break from the artifacts that are sometimes left over from the HDR process.

While LMs are indeed a fantastic way to digitally blend exposures, they are far from perfect and on occasions are unusable. As with any other technique, learning when and where to use LMs is vital. In my opinion, there’s great reward to be had by combining LMs with previously tone mapped images.

For example, in the image below I was left with too much noise in the sky after processing the brackets in Photomatix, and the bridge had slight haloing. However, I wanted to keep the soft effect of the water from the tone mapped image. For the final image, the top half is the result of LM digital blending while the bottom half is tone mapped.

What are LMs?

Luminance masks are of particular interest to us as HDR photographers because they allow us to make specific selections based on luminosity, or in other words, the brightness of a pixel.

For a working example, try this-

1. Open Photoshop and import any image.

2. Go the Layers Palette to the bottom right and click on Channels, which contains your colour channels. You’ll see 4 channels, RGB, Red, Green and Blue.

3. Click on any of the black and white channels, so that the other channels are deselected. Now, while hovering the cursor over the thumbnail of that channel hold down ctrl and press the left mouse button. You’ll see marching ants appear.

4. Now go back to your Layers palette and and click on the background layer so that the main image returns to colour format (You may have to double click on the background layer and press ‘Okay’ if a dialogue box appears).

5. Now open a Curves adjustment layer. You’ll see that the marching ants have disappeared and the Curves layer now has a mask exactly the same as the channel you selected earlier. To view the mask press alt and left mouse button on the mask.

6. Press ctrl and left mouse button again to return and this time make some contrast changes to the Curves layer. If your image has particularly dark areas, they will not be affected at all. This selection is targeting only bright pixels according to the chosen channel. The darker the pixel the darker the area on the mask.The darker the area on the mask, the smaller the adjustment effect.

What does this mean to HDR and digital blending?

Rather than explaining it, why don’t we go through a short step-by-step tutorial using the full Luminance Masks actions that are included in my advanced HDR course. You can download the actions for free on my HDR blog (half way down the page).

Import the actions by extracting them from the zip file and double clicking on the file. Or you can go the the Actions panel in Photoshop, click on the top right menu and choose Load Actions (See image below).

As you can see in the image above, you will now be given a new option called JM Luminance Masks. If you click on the arrow next to that you’ll see another option become available called Generate Luminance Masks. Click on that and then the Play button at the bottom of that panel (The triangle button next to the circle).

Once Photoshop has finished working, go back onto the Channels panel as you did earlier. This time you’ll see a lot more channels – 18 new channels, to be exact. Scroll through them to see how each is different. Starting with Brights 1 and scrolling down to Brights 6, you’ll see that they become progressively darker, which means that they are make more and more specific selections based on brighter luminosity values.

The Darks channels are exactly the same, but this time they are inverted so that they select only the darker pixels. The Midtones are something entirely different and beyond the scope of this article.

I’m working with the two exposures below. The goal is to recover lost information in the blown out sky around the tree of the 0 exposure. I’ll do this by making a selection of the Brights 3 and masking in some of the -2 exposure which is almost perfectly exposed in that area.

0 exposure

-2 exposure

The Brights 3 selection

In the image above, you can see that Brights 3 is targeting mainly the blown out area around the tree, without affection any of the correctly exposed areas.

Firstly, in the Layers palette I will place the -2 exposure on top of the 0 exposure and apply a black layer mask to make it invisible. Then in the Channels palette I’ll go to the Brights 3 channel and left click on the thumbnail while pressing ctrl. The marching ants will appear. Press ctrl and H to hide them.

Now I’ll return to my Layers palette and choose a large brush with an opacity of around 50%. Make sure the colour is set to white. With the layer mask selected I will simply run the brush once around the area I want to recover. This will bring through enough of the darker exposure so that we end up with an evenly exposed sky.

And that’s it!

How it looks in Photoshop

After that I will continue to use LMs but this time to make fine contrast adjustments and specific changes to the image.

So what does it all mean?

Well, ultimately, armed with knowledge of luminance masks we can make images, just like this, in a matter of minutes and with no extra noise or softening of pixels. However, I don’t want anyone to come away from this article with too much confidence. Mastering LMs is a challenge worth taking on. Working on more complex images you really get an understanding of how tricky the whole process can be. And, if you’re anything like me, you’ll get a strange satisfaction or sense of achievement from working with complex luminance masks in your workflow – not to mention the awesome benefits it will bring to your imagery.

I hope you’ve found this information useful. For more tips and HDR photos, feel free to join me on facebook or Google+.

And you can learn how to master luminance masks through my complete Digital Blending HDR tutorial.

7 Tips for better HDR photos

2013-04-24T18:38:05Z

Article by Ben Fewtrell

1. Shoot with HDR in mind. Whilst I am a HUGE fan of HDR, there is a time and a place for it. There are certain times of day and some subjects that just don’t work that well in HDR. I usually look at a scene and make a decision as I stand there, usually based on the contrast between light and dark and make a decision before I hit the shutter button whether or not I am going to create a HDR image.

Then there are times I am not sure, so I will shoot several exposures just in case. Sometimes it is easier to stretch one RAW file than it is to work with several exposures to get the look I am after. For me, if I am shooting directly into the sun I will usually use HDR to make sure I get the entire dynamic range. The more HDR you shoot the more you will get a feel for when you should (or shouldn’t) use HDR, keeping in mind that it is free to shoot your bracketed exposures and choose later whether to use them all or not.

Avoid using HDR when shooting people as it does nasty things to skin tones.

2. Use a Tripod. I guess it goes without saying that this does not just apply to HDR, but when shooting HDR it certainly helps if you have all your bracketed shots aligned by using a tripod. Yes, pretty much every HDR software has the ability to ‘align’ your images for you, but this takes extra time and sometimes it doesn’t work 100%.

Another great benefit of using a tripod is that for your +2ev exposure, your camera will want to use a slower shutter speed making it harder to maintain a sharp image.

And finally, I also find that using a tripod makes me take my time and think more about my composition resulting is a better image.

3. Use Photoshop. One of the reasons HDR is controversial is the fact that some of it just looks horrible. HDR software does a great job and gets your image 75% of the way to looking great, but you will need to use something like photoshop to clean it up.

Typically HDR will make whites look grey, your nice blue skies will become dirty and you may end up with halos around areas of high contrast. It may seem daunting to use Photoshop, you just need to understand how to use layer masks to get much better results than just HDR software on it’s own.

Be patient and take your time and you will be surprised how easy it is to use Photoshop or similar to make the needed corrections to your images. Once again this doesn’t just apply to HDR, being able to use layer masks will help you in a lot of other circumstances too!

4. Take several ‘sets’ of exposure. If you’re in a situation where things are moving in your frame (waves, cars, people etc) take several sets of your bracketed shots.

This allows you to choose what images to use later if you want the moving subjects to be in a certain position. It can also be a great way to capture the changing light, you can then go through them and pick your favorites to process.

5. Use high ISO to freeze motion. One of the tricks I use If I am in a situation where things are moving in my frame (waves, cars, people etc), to make sure I get a sharp image of the moving subjects, after I have shot my bracketed exposures, I will increase my ISO and this will speed up my shutter, then take a single exposure (properly exposed) allowing me to catch the movement where I want it and without blur.

Doing this allows me to use layer masking to replace ghosted parts of my image with these sharper images, being careful only to mask in the areas I need as they will be noisier due to the high ISO settings.

6. Use low ISO to reduce noise. I would rather decrease my depth of field than increase noise, in particular, with HDR processing in mind. In some situations you would increase ISO, but if you’re shooting on a tripod, my mantra is ‘Go Low on the ISO’. This will reduce the amount of noise in your final image. Even if your camera is excellent at higher ISO settings you will find that HDR is going to bring out the noise more than you imagined!

7. HDR won’t fix a bad Photo. Remember that you still need to make a great photo, shoot at a time of day when the light is more appealing and make sure you take your time and compose your shot to draw the viewer in.

Ben Fewtrell is based in Sydney, Australia and has been a keen photographer since the 1990’s. He fell in love with HDR in early 2012 and now processes 95% of his images this way. His main interest is landscape photography and most mornings you will find Ben with his Nikon D800 on the coast of Sydney waiting for the sun to rise… you can find him at www.facebook.com/on3legs or follow his blog www.on3legs.com

Ben also has a free HDR ebook available: http://onthreelegs.com/learn/free-ebooks/

My Battle with HDR

2013-04-22T09:40:48Z

Article by Blake Rudis

I used to be an avid believer that an HDR image was not an HDR image unless it was multiple exposures with least+/-2EVs and processed extensively. It really frustrated me when I saw someone say, “My Single Exposure HDR…” I was pretty young in my HDR career but it was around the time I started Everyday HDR. I remember telling my wife how pathetic I thought it was when someone said they actually created a Single Exposure HDR image. Geez, how petty was I?

The truth is I knew nothing about HDR then. I really had a conflict with myself about what it meant to be HDR. Spelling it out, HDR, High Dynamic Range, it really is nothing more than a photograph with a heightened dynamic range, a greater dynamic range of lights and darks in an image. I then started to question whether any image could be HDR as long as something was done to increase the ratio of dark to light in a photograph.

In all reality, simple adjustments that we continually do in our workflow could generate an HDR image even on a single exposure without the use of traditional tone mapping. The best example would be any adjustment to the Shadows or Highlights and/or the Whites or Blacks adjustments in Adobe Camera Raw or Lightroom. Increasing the shadows and decreasing the highlights is the act of increasing the dynamic range in the image, therefore you have a Higher Dynamic Range.

I have learned a lot in the last several years of my HDR journey. Here are a couple of idiosyncrasies that I have debunked overtime.

1. If I didn’t state it well enough above, Single Exposure HDR images are acceptable. Completely 100% acceptable! Quite frankly, there is enough dynamic range packed into one Raw file to put down a small elephant. Shooting in JPEG may be another story. However, a Raw file contains a serious amount of useful information that gets tossed aside in traditional post processing. Exploit those Raw files!

2. The more you tone map it the worse it gets! It is true, there is such thing as over processing. When I am tone mapping, I like to think about the place I was in and really go back to what it looked like in my head while I was there. That usually means keeping my yellow and green saturation at ease and trying hard to avoid electric fluorescent blue skies.

To do this, I avoid over tone mapping my HDR images by ensuring they are not too dark, not too light and not too saturated (or stylized). I will take care of the rest in post processing in Photoshop. As long as you save your tone mapped file as a 16 BIT TIFF, you will have plenty of information to draw from come post processing time.

3. You can always blend the best of both worlds! Try not to get stuck on one tone mapping setting when working an image. If you really like what is going on with your foreground with one setting but it is destroying your sky with cloud noise, you can always process it twice. Process it once for the foreground, once for the sky, and blend them in Photoshop later.

I used to get so hell bent on trying to make my tone mapping perfect in one shot. There is no need! Check out this video tutorial for more help on this one.

4. This one may be a given, you must post process your HDR images after tone mapping! Think of your tone mapped HDR images as digital negatives, they must be taken into some sort of digital darkroom for post processing. I never strive to make the perfect HDR image in tone mapping software. They are not designed for that. You can get a great baseline, but the final product will look so much better with a bit of attention in your favorite post processing software. 75 pages of my recent HDR eBook, Exploring HDR, were written on post processing alone! It is that important!

5. Finally, this one piggybacks #4, Dodge and Burn your photographs. Really get into those HDR images and Burn those shadows that may have been destroyed in the tone mapping process. Dodge those areas that you want to highlight.

One of the biggest mistakes I make with my HDR images before publishing is forgetting to Dodge and Burn. I forget so often that I have 3 sticky notes above my monitor, they read, “DODGE”, “&” , “BURN”. I wrote a whole piece on this one last month for HDR One and I cannot stress it enough!

I have learned a lot, more than I can capture in one article. These are my top five!

What are some things you have found along your HDR journey? I would love to hear them!

For more information on HDR techniques, visit Blake’s blog EverydayHDR.com.

Or see Blake’s HDR book – Exploring HDR

Facebook Friday – Week 32

2013-04-19T12:33:05Z

Welcome to week 32 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

Here are this week’s picks in no particular order:

1. 1938 Dodge Fire Truck, Old Gippstown, Gippsland, Australia by Vorka Imagery

2. Stone Free! by John Shannon

3. Alley in Chicago by Robert Martinez

4. Clouds rolling in on this old Country Australian battler by Nathanial Boersma

5. Side church entrance by Jerome 中島 Obille 功司

Oloneo Photography Contest

2013-04-18T20:38:12Z

We are delighted to announce our latest photography contest, sponsored by the outstanding Oloneo. In this contest, while there can be only one winner and runner-up, everyone will come away with a bonus discount of 30% on Jimmy McIntyre’s courses, The Art of HDR & The Art of Digital Blending (The discount alos applies if you buy both via our Bundle option).

The winner and runner-up will have their facebook/website/flickr/google+ page published on HDR One for you to gain extra exposure to our 1000s of readers.

The winner will also get the full license for Oloneo’s PhotoEngine, worth $150. The runner-up will receive the superb HDRengine worth $59.

What Oloneo says about its software:

PhotoEngine

Oloneo PhotoEngine™ is the only HDR imaging, RAW processing and dynamic relighting application offering professional photographers full control over light and exposure in real-time.

Based on a 32-bit floating-point per channel (96-bit / pixel), ultra-wide gamut, full resolution and non-destructive image-editing engine, Oloneo PhotoEngine’s color model handles a range of colors that largely surpasses what printers or screens are capable of displaying today.

HDRengine

Designed for the HDR photography enthusiasts and novices, Oloneo HDRengine™ is an accessible, high performance HDR application to easily create realistic or artistic, professional looking HDR photos.

Fast to learn and master, Oloneo HDRengine comes with ready-to-use contents to jump start the photographer’s creative process.

Please note, there is no Mac version of Oloneo’s software.

–How to enter —

1.Simply upload an HDR photo to one of your preferred internet sites on your account (facebook, flickr, blog, google+, 500px).

2. Entitle your image ‘HDR One & Oloneo Photo Contest’.

3. Leave a link to your uploaded image in the comments box at the bottom of this page. If you cannot leave a comment for whatever reason, please feel free to email me here with your link.

4. Your photos must be uploaded on or after the 18th of April 2013. Images uploaded prior to this date will not be accepted.

**Please note: We have to view the image that you have uploaded so please upload your photo to a site that can be viewed publicly.

–Contest Rules–

1. You must be the person who took the image.

2. All images must be High Dynamic Range (HDR).

3. Entries must be submitted by the 18th of May 2013.

4. Entrants can enter only one photo.

–How the Contest Will be Judged–

The winners will be chosen by Jimmy McIntyre and announced a week after the contest closes.

–Reclaiming your 30% bonus–

Once you have left your entry in the comments box below, you will receive an email to the email address you used in the comments section. This email will contain a unique code that must be used within 4 days of receipt.

Making The Most of Exposure Settings With HDR

2013-04-16T21:21:10Z

Article by Chris Sutton

How many of you forget about the exposure settings on your camera?

Many a time I’ve forgotten to use this function when the lighting conditions were either too bright or just that little bit too dark. But have you ever used it to give you more exposures than just the 3 or 5 bracketed shots your camera allows?

First off the camera I used for this exercise was a Nikon D80, not a high end DSLR and a few years old now. So as long as your camera can shoot brackets and has a exposure compensator facility then you shouldn’t have any problems recreating this method yourself. The picture is of a vase of flowers still blooming from Mothers day and using the natural light from a window to light the subject.

A tripod is a must here as I’m going to be taking 9 shots and as I have to change the EV settings between each set of 3 bracketed shots, there was no way this could be hand held.

The method I used was to take 3 bracketed shots as normal with my EV settings at 00. Then while holding EV button, I turned the main control dial to adjust the setting to -1.0. I then fired off another set of 3 bracketed shots. Then did the same by changing the setting to +1.0. and shot another 3 off giving me the 9 shots I wanted. At this point I’m beginning to wonder if there is a limit to how many shots Photomatix can load up in one process. The D80 EV compensator settings can go to -5.0 and +5.0 using 0.5 increments, giving me a possibility of shooting 63 different exposures using this method. The mind boggles at this point and beginning to wonder if I tried to do that many exposures my computer would just point and laugh at me and say “you’re having a laugh mate.” So for now, I’m sticking with the 9 exposures. Without any pre-processing I loaded all 9 raw shots into Photomatix. Wow, the resulting image that loaded was not what I was expecting and I did very little work with the sliders as the image was just about how I would have wanted. The detail from the 9 images was far greater than I expected. Straight away my mind was racing ahead of me. “If that’s what I was going to get with 9

images, what would it look like with 12 or more? Time to get back on track…….

After saving the image as a jpg the final processing was done in Photoshop using Color Efex filters.

Here are the before and after pics. The before shot being straight from the camera and the middle of the 3 bracketed shots with settings on the EV set to 00.

This wasn’t an exercise about creating a good hdr image or good composition etc (as can be seen with all the clutter in the background). This was purely to show that even if you are restricted with how many bracketed shots your camera can take, you still have more options available if you know all the tools your camera has to offer and how best you can use them to take full advantage of the facility they offer. All I’m itching to do now is to take this to another level and hone my editing skills more. I hope this gives a little bit of an eye opener to those who are still fairly new to this great art of ours.

Chris Sutton

You can see more of my work on my facebook page. https://www.facebook.com/pages/CJS-Photography/276282655819984

A Couple of Basics – Gaussian Blur and High Pass Sharpening

2013-04-15T21:26:27Z

Article by Jim Denham

With the sophistication of editing software these days, it’s easy to get caught up in the latest techniques and plug-ins. One of my Christmas gifts was onOne’s Perfect Photo Suite 7 upgrade and for my birthday, the Nik Software bundle from Google. These are some amazing and powerful tools that help keep photo editing fun and efficient and I really enjoy them. Sometimes, however, it’s good to go back to some of the basics I learned early on in my photographic journey and see just how impactful they can still be in producing strong images.

Two of the first techniques I learned in editing images were the Gaussian Blur and High Pass Sharpening. These are not complicated filters and can usually be found on any basic piece of editing software, like GIMP or Photoshop Elements. Let’s grab a photo and see how to apply these filters and changes that can be achieved with them.

So, we’ve got a tone mapped image (below). It’s a great fall scene just outside the parking lot at work – most people at work have a hard time believing that, but it’s true. You have to be on the lookout for shots like these, even in the most unobvious places! It was blended using 7 exposures, from -5 EV to +1 EV in Photomatix. Starting in Aperture (my workspace), the first step is to export the image to Photoshop Elements!

To be honest, this image looks pretty good right out of Photomatix, but I want to apply a bit more contrast, saturation and richness to it to make it more bold. Here’s how. First thing’s first, duplicate the layer in PSE so that we do not effect the original. Then it’s up to the ‘Filter’ menu, ‘Blur’ then ‘Gaussian Blur’.

A Gaussian Blur dialog box will pop up allowing you to select the amount of blur, in pixels, you’d like to apply to the image. A rule of thumb here is to apply enough blur that the ability to make out the elements of the image is only slightly possible. Usually this comes to between 20-25 pixels depending on what your image has in it. Once you have the settings you desire, click ‘OK’.

That’s it! Not so much, huh? Now all we have is a blurred image and it’s not much good to us, that is, until we hit it with a blending mode. Just above the Layers Panel is a pull down list of Blending Modes, ranging from Normal, which doesn’t apply any effect, to Luminosity, which can add a bit of contrast to the image. You can experiment with all of these modes and see what works for you, but in this application, I tend to stay in the range of Overlay to Hard Light. Let’s grab Overlay and see what it does.

What the Overlay Blending Mode produces is a heavily saturated, heavy constrast image, which is too far over the top for what I’m looking for. From here there are two options, 1) adjust the Opacity slider to the right of the Blending Mode pull down to lesson the effect, or 2) select a slightly weaker mode like Soft Light that will yield a more toned down version. The image has all of the properties I want using the Overlay mode, it’s just a bit too far, so I’ll choose to move the opacity down to a more acceptable level. I like what I see at 50%. There’s a great deal of flexibility here, so suit yourself on what works best for your taste and image.

What we have now is an image that has strong contrast, glow, saturation and richness. It’s just a bit too soft, though. Here’s where the High Pass Sharpening comes in. On your Mac, press Shift – Option – Command – E (I believe that would be Shift – Alt – Control – E on a PC) to create a composite layer from the adjustments you’ve already made. Then click on the ‘Enhance’, ‘Adjust Color’ and ‘Adjust Hue/Saturation’. Once there, move the Saturation slider all the way to the left to remove all color from the image. I don’t know if this is absolutely necessary, but it helps me to see where the sharpening is taking place better than in color.

To apply the High Pass filter, go back up to the ‘Filter’ menu, go down to ‘Other’ and click on ‘High Pass’. You should see a dialog box similar to that of the Gaussian Blur with a window of the image and the high pass setting in pixels. Unlike the Gaussian Blur settings, I like to keep this one to a maximum of 5 pixels, otherwise it can show some slight halo effect where the sharpening is placed. You can see the adjustment both in the dialog box window and also in the actual PSE working area, which I use to see exactly where the sharpening is applied. There should be no detail in the areas with smooth edges, like the sky in this case, but you should be able to see that the trees are being affected.

This step may take some trial and error to get the amount of sharpening you’re looking for, but once you’ve got what you like, click ‘OK’. Once again, we need to go back to the Blending Modes to finish this off, otherwise you have a slightly sharpening grey skeleton of an picture, which looks kind of cool if you like stuff like that, but doesn’t make for much of an image in my book. In most cases, I will use either the Soft Light or Hard Light modes with the High Pass filter. The harder the light, the higher degree of sharpening, so play around and see what you like in your image. For this one, I’m going to go with Soft Light to keep a bit of the glow away from the edges!

Just like with the Gaussian Blur, we can adjust opacity if the effect is too much for our liking, or, for both effects, they can be masked in using layer masks to selectively apply them to parts of the image rather than the whole. For this image, I may have wanted to keep the sky a bit more edgy and could have masked out some or all of the blur effect, or only masked in the sharpening in selective parts of the trees. Once again, it’s to your taste.

From here, we import back to Aperture or Lightroom where finishing touches can be applied and the image exported accordingly. There you have it!

Now, could you get this same effect from one of the plug-in modules like Perfect Photo Suite or the NIK Collection? Likely. But it only takes a few clicks here to make a couple of quick high impact adjustments that are totally flexible in application. That’s not to say stop using the plug-ins – I’m sure not going to – but it’s always good to have a couple of basic tools at hand you can apply quickly and selectively to get an image where you want it!

Jim Denham

Jim loves all things photography, but the obsession with the medium started with HDR and it continues to be a main tool in his processing belt. Jim’s portfolio consists of images both from his hometown area of Minnesota’s Twin Cities, as well as images from many towns around the US.

website: http://www.jimdenhamphotography.com/

Smugmug Galleries: http://jimdenhamphoto.smugmug.com/

Facebook Friday – Week 31

2013-04-12T22:08:24Z

Welcome to week 31 of Facebook Friday. These shots are the editor’s choice from the awesome selection of photos uploaded to our HDR facebook page.

If you’d like to feature in facebook friday, simply upload your HDR shots to our facebook page.

Here are this week’s picks in no particular order:

1. Docklands, Melbourne by Dave Tomek

2. Royal Palace in Madrid by Wojciech Toman

3. Misty morning by Boris Frković

4. limo parked at Griffith Observatory by Jerome 中島 Obille 功司

5. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia by Oliver Smallster Smalley