HDR in Photoshop???

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leeharrison2

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Name
Lee Harrison
Edit My Images
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I've recently been playing around with HDR in photoshop and I've not been achieving the HDR effect, I've tried use 3 pictures with the HRD merge all of different exposures and I've tried merging 5 pictures of different exposures, but once the picture is merged together, it basically look like the original correctly exposed one... is there something that I'm doing wrong to get a better effect???

Original...

DSC_0038.jpg


HRD (3 pictures +/- 2 stops)...

HDR1.jpg


I have tried playing around with the 3 picture pre and post HDR but just can't seem to get it...

Ok, I know this probably isn’t the best picture to create a HDR image with but I still think that the Merged HDR should be better than that???


I have watched a few tutorial on how to create HDR effects by using 1 image and just creating new layer and editing highlights/shadows and they came out ok but I'd like to the able to do it properly and I think it give a mopre natural HDR effect...

False HDR from tutorial...

Untitled_HDR2.jpg


Any advice welcome...

Thanks Lee Harrison
 
I much prefer Photomatix to Photoshop when it comes to HDR.

As for that image, I think the contrast of the foreground is a tad too strong. It does have a nice ominous feel though.
 
You can't achieve "the HDR effect" from that photo because it doesn't have a High Dynamic Range to start with.

HDR techniques work where the range of tones is so great that you have some areas burnt out and some areas completely black. You don't have any real highlights or shadows so there's nothing for the HDR software to work with.
 
Smeghead said:
I much prefer Photomatix to Photoshop when it comes to HDR.

As for that image, I think the contrast of the foreground is a tad too strong. It does have a nice ominous feel though.
Click to expand...

I have heard alot of people suggesting Photomatrix, and I have tried the Free Basic software but wan't very impressed but I can't afford the proper software...
 
leeharrison2 said:
I have heard alot of people suggesting Photomatrix, and I have tried the Free Basic software but wan't very impressed but I can't afford the proper software...
Click to expand...

Well the free version is exactly the same as the full version, except you get a watermark on the final image.

Personally I've gotten good results with it. It gives a much better "base" to work on once it's done all its calculations and stuff, and I find it has better fine tuning and controls too.
 
StewartR said:
You can't achieve "the HDR effect" from that photo because it doesn't have a High Dynamic Range to start with.

HDR techniques work where the range of tones is so great that you have some areas burnt out and some areas completely black. You don't have any real highlights or shadows so there's nothing for the HDR software to work with.
Click to expand...

That is true, I knew that it wasn't the best photo to experiment with HDR, but I still expected some kind of effect, but to my original question, appart from the picture selection, do you think that there is anything that I am doing wrong the technique???
 
Impossible to tell, except that since you've ended up with a well exposed HDR image that looks the same as the well exposed non-HDR shot suggests you're doing the right thing, technically.

I may have this wrong, but I suspect you're actually interested in tone mapping as an effect, not HDR as such.
 
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