Glad you found the answer, Marli...and thanks for sharing it here. In CS3, I rearranged my RAW images and still didn't get that error message. Perhaps Adobe has fixed this problem in the new verison.
I've found that the most difficult aspect of HDR is not its technical aspects, but rather the aesthetic process of preserving believable tonal relationships. For instance, many unsuccessful HDRs 'squash' too much information into the midtones; others have skies that are inappropriately dark for the foreground or shadows that are inappropriately bright for the lighting.
So my strategy has always been to work hardest on getting a reasonably flat 32- to 16-bit transformation, with the bulk of my attention devoted to 1) establishing the whitepoint and blackpoint, 2) making sure there are no gross inconsistencies in lighting, and 3) getting the rudiments of the final tone curve in place using local adaptation.
But it's once I've converted to 16-bit that I devote attention to making believable tonal relationships, usually using curves, gradients, dodging and burning. This is exactly as Mahesh has illustrated with his initial example.
In this sense an HDR is much like a negative film. A negative can capture far more information than is printable -- just because a negative can capture information over 15 stops doesn't mean you can put that directly on paper. So darkroom processes are needed to compress that information into the range afforded by the output -- but at the same time it's critical to keep the relationships believable.
Chris Cox, the programmer of HDR in CS2, participated in a thread on another forum a couple years ago, in which he explains that it's mathematically not possible to introduce many of the editing features of 16-bit into 32-bit. He didn't elaborate much, but I have a feeling we're not going to be seeing levels and curves show up in CS3's 32-bit editing space.
thapamd wrote:
Yes, I think the HDR tool takes the RAW, unprocessed, image and does it's magic, no matter what presettings you may have applied.
I'm not sure that's the case. I think that any adjustments made in the raw converter are honored during HDR image creation. I often apply CA correction, color noise reduction, and sometimes even mild sharpening, and I can see the difference in the generated HDR file.
drisley wrote:
Curious, would the addition of a tone mapping plugin like photomatix make the last few steps easier in the process?
Not sure what "last few steps" or which "process" you're referring to, but HDR image generation and tone mapping (although often performed on the same image) are separate and distinct things. You can tone map a non-HDR image, and you can process an HDR without tone mapping. That said, I personally use Photomatix, but I use PS to create the HDR (for the reasons cited in my previous post) and then open the HDR for tone mapping in Photomatix. I generally get results that look better to my eye, as opposed to using Photomatix to generate the HDR.
Shotster, that is the same process I've been taught to use, photoshop for HDR, then use the photomatix tone mapping plugin.
I was just surprised at how much massaging had to be done afterward in the OP example with masks and curves to bring back the detail in the sky. I guess I assumed tone mapping would and conversion back to 16 or 8 bit would automatically do that.
Shotster wrote:
I'm not sure that's the case. I think that any adjustments made in the raw converter are honored during HDR image creation. I often apply CA correction, color noise reduction, and sometimes even mild sharpening, and I can see the difference in the generated HDR file.
After a little testing, I'm all but certain any WB adjustments made are honored when creating the HDR image. It would seem to make sense the parameters you mention would also.
My suspicion is that the exposure, brightness, contrast, etc settings are not....which would also tend to make some sense as that's where HDR *should* be taking control.
Thanks for the tutorial Mahesh. I just got back from a few weeks in India. I still have to process my Death Valley pics.
Will post some India pics as well.
Looking forward to the new trip already.
thapamd wrote:
You have to use unprocessed RAW files to create an HDR image. JPEG is not even an option.
Wrong. I'm sorry to have to contradict the moderator and an experienced poster who I respect, but this is wrong.
I never use Adobe to convert RAW files and I do HDR with TIFF 16 bit files all the time. I don't go through Bridge, I just use straight Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 2, also known as PS CS2.
I just created an HDR image out of three JPEGs, using PS CS2.
Monito wrote:
I never use Adobe to convert RAW files
Well, if you don't shoot raw, then you have no use for a raw converter. But that also means you're missing all the benefits of shooting and processing raw files.
and I do HDR with TIFF 16 bit files all the time.
That's not as bad as using JPEG, but still not as good as using raw.
I don't go through Bridge, I just use straight Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 2, also known as PS CS2.
You don't have to go through Bridge to process raw files. ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) is Adobe's raw converter, and it can be hosted by either Bridge or Photoshop.
I just created an HDR image out of three JPEGs, using PS CS2.
To quote an old army recruiting slogan, if you're creating HDR images from JPEGs, your images will quite simply never "be all that they can be". For one thing, you're throwing away a ton of data, and with it a lot of editing headroom and creative latitude. Plus, you're leaving much of the image processing to the camera.
That's not to say JPEG or TIFF couldn't be useful at times. (Hey, I use JPEG to photograph stuff I put on eBay.) I suppose it depends on what kind of photography you do and what your objectives are. But if you want full control over the appearance of the final image, raw is simply the only way to go.
Exactly. Mahesh is simply assuming that you are serious about the quality of your HDR images (and you should be), in which case using JPEG files is "not an option".
Monito wrote:
I never use Adobe to convert RAW files
Shotster wrote:
Well, if you don't shoot raw, then you have no use for a raw converter. But that also means you're missing all the benefits of shooting and processing raw files.
Obviously. However, I shoot Raw mode 99 percent of the time and convert the good ones to 16 bit TIFF by using Canon DPP.
Monito wrote:
and I do HDR with TIFF 16 bit files all the time. I don't go through Bridge, I just use straight Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 2, also known as PS CS2.
Shotster wrote:
You don't have to go through Bridge to process raw files. ACR (Adobe Camera Raw) is Adobe's raw converter, and it can be hosted by either Bridge or Photoshop.
I am well aware of that. I mentioned Bridge because the original poster mentioned Bridge, and since I don't use Bridge, I wrote the way I did just in case there was some special restriction on HDR via Bridge compared to HDR via straight PS CS2.
Monito wrote:
I just created an HDR image out of three JPEGs, using PS CS2.
Shotster wrote:
To quote an old army recruiting slogan, if you're creating HDR images from JPEGs, your images will quite simply never "be all that they can be". For one thing, you're throwing away a ton of data, and with it a lot of editing headroom and creative latitude. Plus, you're leaving much of the image processing to the camera.
That's not to say JPEG or TIFF couldn't be useful at times. (Hey, I use JPEG to photograph stuff I put on eBay.) I suppose it depends on what kind of photography you do and what your objectives are. But if you want full control over the appearance of the final image, raw is simply the only way to go....Show more →
Your point about Raw having higher quality than JPEG is valid. However, note that I only created the JPEG by way of illustration to test the assertion I was correcting that had been made in the original post. You quoted that I wrote that I used 16 bit TIFF all the time for HDR. I produce those from Raw files. I frequently write on FM about the advantages of Raw files.
16 bit TIFF is a perfect intermediate route for high quality photos. Every bit of information that is produced by a conversion of a Raw file is retained in the 16 bit TIFF. The internal Adobe format in the computer RAM while the image is being worked on or is in transit from conversion to stitching has no extra image pixels and no extra image pixel depth compared to a 16 bit TIFF.
Refraction wrote:
Exactly. Mahesh is simply assuming that you are serious about the quality of your HDR images (and you should be), in which case using JPEG files is "not an option".
The point is that you are not tied to Adobe's converter if you want to do HDR. You can use another converter like DPP and do the HDR in PSCS2 with no, zero, zip, zilch loss of quality if you use 16 bit TIFF files as the intermediary.
Monito wrote:
Wrong. I'm sorry to have to contradict the moderator and an experienced poster who I respect, but this is wrong.
I never use Adobe to convert RAW files and I do HDR with TIFF 16 bit files all the time. I don't go through Bridge, I just use straight Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 2, also known as PS CS2.
I just created an HDR image out of three JPEGs, using PS CS2.
Thanks for the correction, Monito. I did not know you could use JPEGs or TIFFs...live and learn.
Monito wrote:
You quoted that I wrote that I used 16 bit TIFF all the time for HDR. I produce those from Raw files.
Ok, that was not at all clear from your post.
16 bit TIFF is a perfect intermediate route for high quality photos. Every bit of information that is produced by a conversion of a Raw file is retained in the 16 bit TIFF.
True enough, but it's not clear to me why one would save files in an "intermediate" TIFF format. Images can be brought directly into PS after raw conversion and thus saved in native PSD format. What's the advantage to outputting TIFFs?
