A Few PhotoMatix Re-Edits . . .

[Gizmo 76]

Good Evening/Morning,

Damn this PP'in stuff has been keeping me up late this week!! After looking through far too much flickr today, and seeing way too many cool HDR shots, i've been messing around in Photomatix with some old shots to see if I could tame my pushing it too far methods

Here are 3 of the better ones . . .

1.


2.


3.


Click images for large versions

What do you think??

Good Night

Giz

 

[macker2006]

I like the effect mate. It gives the pictures a very 'rendered' look but can turn something rather mundane into a great piece of art

 

[Biscuit761]

They are superb, wanting to have a go at this myself but never sure were to start

Can it be done in P'shop CS2 ?

Bill

 

[bowenjones]

I really like that third one Gizmo
That would look great on canvas imo

 

[vulkan75]

yup! 3rd for me too Giz......looks like your getting the hang of it now

 

[SweetGirl]

Awesome photos. 1 and 3 for me.

 

[SeeHear]

Sorry to sound so dumb but what are HDR shots??

 

[mg-paul]

Impressive, 1 and 3 are excellent.

 

[wabbitt]

I love number 1 followed closely by 3. Looks almost illustrative.

Sorry to sound so dumb but what are HDR shots??

HDR = High Dynamic Range

Description Here

 

[Gizmo 76]

Thanks for all the great comments

Biscuit - I believe it can be done in CS2, or you could download the trial version of Photomatix and give it a try bud, be careful though because I done this and by the end of the evening the money was spent and I purchased it!!

My shots are HDR cheats really as they were created from a single RAW file, to truely do it you have to take at least 3 seperately exposed shots, but you can still have much fun with just a single RAW

I'm down the girlfriend's tonight and her laptop has all of my saved RAW shots, so I might just well be posting a few more images tonight

Cheers again all...

 

[alfienoakes]

The first 2 are a little overdone for my taste. The third one looks the best to me. It's fantastic what you can do with Photomatix and a single raw exposure.

I've brought a few old shots to life lately using the same technique. I have found that Capture One is much better at processing the RAW files than ACR to achieve the end effect. Which RAW processor are you using?

 

[Tobers]

Number 3 is excellent.

Here's a guide of how to do something similar in Photoshop. I use the layer blending method and it's v.good indeed.

 

[Gizmo 76]

Cheers for the comments

I just use the RAW convertor that is part of Zoombrowser EX

Here is one more I done before looking into some other set's of shots later on. Taken in Aylesford, Kent again, I tried to keep it similar to No. 3, but the lack of sun means I lose some of that sparkle

4.


Looking on this laptop it look's flatter than mine at home where I processed it, on my screen at home it definitely appeared sharper and a bit more contrasty

Who's screen is right??

 

[Gizmo 76]

Ok, this is the HDR'in out my system for a bit, tried a few shots out tonight and some of the ones I thought would work well didn't really.

I done one in the style of the others that i've already done, and then the final two i've tried to keep a bit more erm.... realism to them.


5.


6.


7.



I will attempt some proper 3 exposure ones in the near future. Now back to over the edge

Giz.

 

[iGiDK]

Absolutely superb mate, this is an excellent selection and your processing is very striking without going OTT

 

[alfienoakes]

Very nice again. I Particularly like the harbour wall one.

Funnily enough I tried the same process on that Marlowe Theatre sculpture last week. It didn't turn out anywhere near as good as that one. Shame about the shadow in the top left though.

For what it can do to an image, Photomatix is a bit of a bargain.

 

[Gordon @ Convergent AV]

They do all end up looking like artist impressions rather than photo's. Not that that should be considered bad. I like the look of them.

Gordon

 

[Gizmo 76]

Cheers for the comments

I enjoyed going through my old stuff and trying out this process, learn quite a bit about the software in the process. I will definitely dipping back into this from time to time

I had another look at No. 5 on my home computer this morning, and it definitely has a bit more contrast, and colour to it, It seem's that uploading it to the web has softened the overall look slightly

Giz

 

[Gizmo 76]

Just been re-arranging my 'sets' and 'collections', and I noticed I had the original shot from aylesford bridge on flickr. No doubt I could process it a bit better normal now than I could when I originally done it, but just to give some people an idea how a photo started and then ended using 1 File HDR

1. Original (slighty different crop)


2. Processed

 

[ghibbett]

Gizmo - any chance you could run me (us?) through how you got from your 1st photo to the fine HDR shot?

Cheers,

 

[hutters]

Gizmo - any chance you could run me (us?) through how you got from your 1st photo to the fine HDR shot?

Cheers,

The way I've done it, and from what I can see it's the same method that Gizmo is employing, is this:

- take one RAW file
- make (at least) 3 exposures at say -2, 0, +2 from that RAW file (I use Rawshooter Essentials) and create 3 x tiff files
- open Photomatix,
- load the 3 files
- create the HDR
- tweak the settings
- output to jpeg

it literally takes just a few minutes

 

[Gizmo 76]

As Hutters said basically

Here is a useful thread for you that originally grabbed my interest...

Electrolyte's HDR Tutorial

The one thing that i also tweak, with alot of my shots, is the 'highlights and shadows'. You can bring out details and add some punch with these settings, I do this in Elements 5 after I have processed the HDR file.