Just got the upgrade for HDR Efex 2, and while the interface is different enough (and the presets different too) that in some cases it can be difficult to replicate an HDR Efex 1 shot, overall, the conversion seem to be much faster as well as much more realistic.
Take this shot, for example. I took this last November, and it's a handheld 3 shot HDR on a windy day. The source images didn't line up. The best I could really do with this file with Lightroom 3 and HDR Efex 1 was the following, and it took about 45 minutes of cloning to get rid of ghosted edges on the dock and horizon as well:
I reprocessed it today in HDR Efex 2 and Lightroom 4.1 (which helped get a little more highlight data), with a more realistic look and the automatic ghost removal, which uses a reference image to eliminate ghosts. Does a wonderful job! No cloning at all needed, more realistic tone mapping and, to my eye at least, a much more pleasing result!
I had the same experience you had, took an old image that I didn't get much out of and it came out smiling in version 2. It was a worthwhile upgrade even though there is always time spent learning the new sliders and settings.
dadagallery wrote:
I had the same experience you had, took an old image that I didn't get much out of and it came out smiling in version 2. It was a worthwhile upgrade even though there is always time spent learning the new sliders and settings.
I agree! I participated in many of the Nik webinars that demostrated in "real time" HDR Efx 2.
They are well worth it and many are now online tutorials.
Dan
Cool. I don't do HDR much and rather manual blend, but this seems like an improvement from the original. When I was looking into what was the best HDR software from my personal research SNS-HDR seems to have the highest praise for natural HDR, but many people also like Oloneo, Photomatix and HDR EFX.
I just picked it up as well, but when feeding it RAW images I seem to be getting a lot of noise.
Are there any good tutorials for using this? I didn't get to use the first one.
Bsmooth wrote:
I just picked it up as well, but when feeding it RAW images I seem to be getting a lot of noise.
Are there any good tutorials for using this? I didn't get to use the first one.
Did you see my remarks above on webinars/tutorials by Nik??
Go to Nik's website for a ton of help.
Thery are excellant. I have not had the noise problem you speak of but if so, have you tried Niks Dfine2.0?
It is an excellant non destructive NR software.
Good luck!
Dan
pr4photos wrote:
Have tried the demo and it crashes both Lightroom and PS, so not impressed at the moment
I had the same experience with it crashing Photoshop CS6 when HDR Efex Pro 2 would exit. Sometimes it would crash PS when it started. Made it pretty much unusable.
However, now that I have converted from Windows 7 to an iMac running OS-X Mountain Lion, HDR Efex Pro 2 works fine in both PS and LR.
upgraded last night on a mbp using aperture, no issues. Only issues is Nik seems to have pulled the 1.3 download I would need to properly uninstall it (1.3 to trash can still ahs aperture mention it as a plugin). I have the installer on a HDD somewhere, will jsut dig it up when motivated.
Interface is different. Top of the list thing I noticed was you see your shot selections before the HDR process (my 1.3 did not do this out of the box, not sure if a feature you could turn on). Nifty little change before you waste time with an incorrect import. have not had that problem yet but probably would have in time I wager.
Happy with the upgrade so far. But HDR is relatively new to me to give a 1 v 1 review as did not dig deep into 1.3 tbh. Cheap upgrade all tings considered...just pressed the I believe button for newer is better.
