Sunset HDR


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benhooi

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Jul 8, 2009
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Hi, I received some pretty good advice after I posted my first HDR here - in particular, that I should shoot scenes that are actually 'high dynamic range'. So, i've decided to try it out shooting a sunset scene at pandan reservoir near my house. Unfortunately the clouds from the rain earlier hadn't cleared completely but here they are nonetheless :) Let me know what you guys think!

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yup... Your exposure seems well controlled!
The reflection is not brighter than the sky. Good!
thumbs up!

However, I reckon both photos are lacking in that 'Booomz' factor (for want of a better adjective... hahaha!)
Sorry I can't elaborate further. Can't quite put my finger on it.
 

Hi ben hooi! I felt like being a nice nice guy tonight.. So I made a little tweaking to one of your photos using adobe photoshop cs3. I've posted what I did aswell to get the final picture.. Hopefully this helps you and everyone else attain even better HDR photos! Enjoi!

Firstly I did some curves adjustments to give contrasts to the photo.. This is pretty much a good thing to do to prevent your pictures from looking flat. Trial and error till you get it the way you want it to be.
Benhooi4.jpg


Second I didn't like the bluish tint so I used the hue and saturations to desat the blues away. You could use this tool to make other colours brighter or darker too which is a good way of drawing attention or making distractions more subtle.
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Lastly I did some levels and masking to make the areas I wanted abit darker and lighter areas.. lighter..
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And Finally.. the finished picture after all that simple stuff.
Benhooi1.jpg


This is not the only things you can do to your photos, theres a ton of things you can still do! Like unsharpen masking, shadows/highlights, desaturating, blurring, lens correction so on and so on!! Experiment and you'll get results!! Hope I helped a tiny bit! =)
 

WAH thanks alot man... that was really helpful. Admittedly, I did add some contrast with curves in GIMP (i'll get PS someday) but i was abit afraid that the picture would turn out too "unreal". After looking at your version i do agree i could have done a bit more though. Maybe that's the "boomz" factor zerocoolastra was referring to above as well? :) I also didn't quite notice the blue tint but now I can see it's quite visible in the shadow areas. Once again, I actually did increase the colour temperature in my PP but i guess i could have done that a tad more. thanks very much for the input, I'll keep working on this!

Edit: just so you know, I've actually done both the things you mentioned (except i did everything in curves, including reducing the blue tint) and the photo does look better. thanks!
 

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the problem with shooting HDR is that if the scene itself lacks the amount of contrast to carry off the HDR look, it will appear rather dull, which i think is what happened in this case.
 

Lastly I did some levels and masking to make the areas I wanted abit darker and lighter areas.. lighter..

Bro, how did u manage add black patches to your layer mask?
 

use the brush tool in photoshop. Press 'B'. Paint all the areas you dont want black. If you made a mistake paint over the black areas with white. This is called masking. Make sure you click on the right box ok!
 

No problem man!! We all learn!! But we gotta teach aswell! haha

Correct, human beings progress by...first being taught, after that, they teaches others.

that's why we can't find chimpanzee working on photoshop.

evolution is a theory, only applies to geographic matters...like mountains, rivers, forrest,lakes etc.

This subject, in my opinion, is not so suitable for HDR, as we had seen many beautiful sunset pictures being posted here without using any HDR treatment.
 

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HERE IS MY HDR
HOPE U DON;T MINE THKS

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Wow, looks like we have no less than 3 interpretations of the same photo in one thread :) thanks very much for your input, tanjaj. I like what you've done to bring out the details and colours in the sky, although personally i feel the foregrounds looks abit dull/underexposed. Not sure what everyone else thinks, but i can imagine a bit of tanjaj's sky masked into draken's version just to bring back abit of colour and detail at the slightly blown out spots. Whatever the case, i conclude that there's alot more i could have done to add the "boomz" factor to the photo. thanks guys!

To cabbySHE and ricleo, thanks very much for the comments too. If i understand you guys correctly, i should look for a scene with even higher dynamic range before I try any HDR work? I've actually seen some HDR sunsets which i really like, but maybe that's just me (i'm quite entranced by HDR stuff in general).
 

Actually.. No matter what.. A hdr is supposed to enhance a picture.. so if the picture sucks HDR won't make it better. But I think your shot was alright. Don't worry about it.. Just shoot and learn as you go! I have a billion terrible hdr's myself! I don't think I've done one good one yet. lol
 

understood that all LCD tvs are HDR processed and calibrated. that's why they are so " vivid ".
 

Still prefer TS original versions. Look less fake. Good job. :thumbsup:

BTW, where is the lake?
 

Still prefer TS original versions. Look less fake. Good job. :thumbsup:

BTW, where is the lake?

When i first saw his photo, i didn't even think it was HDR. I believe a singular shot with appropriate exposure can do just that.

I would agree with ricleo regarding the lack of contrast. HDR, i believe, so correct me if i'm wrong, should be used primarily to capture ultra differences in contrast. (ie. the interior and exterior of a room in 1 photo) Henceforth lacking that contrast, makes the photo, well, originally dull.

But its just my 2cents worth of comments.
 

the problem with shooting HDR is that if the scene itself lacks the amount of contrast to carry off the HDR look, it will appear rather dull, which i think is what happened in this case.
I personally push the contrast after processing and tonemapping a HDR in Photomatix...usually to the max.

An example:
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but i was abit afraid that the picture would turn out too "unreal"
If you increase the luminance levels too much, the HDR would probably have wierd artifacts and such. I would suggest you get some good HDR software first. Photomatix is a good software and is very easy to learn to use.
 

Ts, u have a nice scene
cant resist n post my interpretation
copys.jpg
 

Still prefer TS original versions. Look less fake. Good job. :thumbsup:

BTW, where is the lake?

Thanks ansel. The look i'm trying to go for is the "real yet unreal" look which i see in many HDR photos I see. I'm still learning, and all the comments here are helping very much. I'll keep at it!

The place here is Pandan Reservoir, near my house :) the sunsets there are often really nice!
 

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