dmacmillan Offline Upload & Sell: On
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RustyBug wrote:
Imo, the term HDR is not relegated to whether it was a multi-image or single image technique, but rather an unnatural, false looking, lightening of the shadow tonal values, etc..
While too often your definition of HDR applies to images that result from tone mapping of single or multiple images, there's plenty of realistic HDR work being done.
I recently did some landscapes and shot multiple images at different exposures. Some of these images did exceed the dynamic range that could be captured with a single exposure. I decided to use HDR tools to combine images. I found getting the HDR look very easy, but getting a natural look was much harder. Here are the tools I tried and my observations:
PS6 - I used the HDR tools in PS6. It did render a natural looking image, but did not extend the dynamic range that much. Not enough of the darker of the three exposures was mixed in, rendering the sky brighter than my goal. I may have to futz around with it more, but I didn't get what I was after.
NIK HDR Pro - It produced the cartoonish results we often equate to HDR. There was not enough ability to tame it to give a realistic look.
Oloneo - I had great hopes for this software. The user interface is great and I was able to make adjustments to render a very natural looking image. There were two deal killers though. It's ghost reduction is severely lacking. I set my camera for auto bracketing, but because of the late dusk time of day, some exposures were over 1 second. Even firing off the three frames as fast as possible, there was some cloud movement. Oloneo did a poor job of fixing the ghosts. It also exaggerate the chromatic aberration of my 17-40.
Photomatrix - I evaluated it when it was in its infancy and hadn't revisited it. I tried it again and got the best results overall using it. I still wish I had more control of individual images, though and I wish the interface was better. However, it completely eliminated both CA and ghosts. It's the one I'll end up buying.
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