Our Take HDR

2012-02-09T19:04:00.000-08:00

This series of brackets was a lot of fun to work with...there was lots of light, clouds, and color. As far as the processing is concerned, I created two different tonemapped images in Photomatix, one with a blue hue for the sky and another that had more yellow for the ground. I took the blue tonemap and put into CS5, then did an HDR tonemap to bring out more details. I layered all images, and painted in various aspects of each...mainly the high details for the car. I reduced noise through the filter is photoshop, then also sharpened the image. I rotated the canvas two degrees, and finally cropped it. Thanks a lot for the opportunity and fun to work on this.

February 2012 HDR set.

2012-02-07T08:18:00.000-08:00

A superb set of images Steve. Very little to do with these really, just a tweak here and a tweak there!

Route 66 rest area

2012-02-02T20:46:00.000-08:00

I love these old Americana route 66 desert rest areas. I tried to get an antique feel out of this with a distorted glow layer. I also tried to straighten it out because the fisheye does not work at all. These images are super clear so thanks for that Steve. I still want to be you when I grow up.

Mueseum at Shoshone

2012-01-30T07:58:00.000-08:00

Coming back from Death Valley we stopped at Shoshone to get some gas. This rusting old car was parked across the street and it was crying for a shot. The thing that really bothered me was the post that dissected the car in two. I spent a great deal of time "removing" that obstruction.

2012-01-15T09:33:00.000-08:00

Thanks for the brackets Roy. They were a lot of fun to play around with.

2012-01-06T14:20:00.000-08:00

This image was pretty fun to play around with. I created the tonemap image through photomatix. Next I took the photomatix image and processed through the HDR function in photoshop CS5 to add some additional texture. The colors were adjusted slightly, but the image was fairly easy. Multiple layers were put together, both for details and color. all in all, a great set of brackets. thanks a lot!

2011-12-31T17:09:00.000-08:00

This was a treat for me. I usually don't shoot in the middle of the day so most of my images have a great deal of movement to deal with. These exposures were perfect in every way. No reason to get fancy. I just embraced the light and went with what I was given. Nice brackets...

2011-12-31T09:44:00.000-08:00

Hi Guys, Firstly Happy New Year to all!! Secondly Roy's set of brackets were so well exposed I really would have been happy to just tone map and say here you go! However each one of you put a different spin on the last one so I felt compelled to try and make mine a little different. Here's what I did. Tonemapped in Photomatix, Used a High Pass filter with Soft Light, Used Viveza to brighten and darken, layered in some clouds on the right hand side (just to be different again) burned the water, used Procontrast to bring out some more of the details, used a sharpner to increase the definition then went monotone with Silver Efex.

As said in the beginning, none of that was needed because Roy's exposures were spot on!!!

2011-12-31T02:48:00.000-08:00

I took some photos a few days ago with the intention of posting them for this months challenge but I was looking through my hard drive the other day and came across this set taken when we visited Stowe Landscape Gardens in Buckinghamshire, UK in September 2010.
I decided that the colours would help to make this one interesting so here it is.
I followed my usual pattern of processing using Photomatix Pro and Photoshop CS5 with Nik Color Efx Pro and Topaz Photoshop Suite plug-ins to end up with this.
I also pulled out the perspective which is exaggerated with my 10-20 Sigma to square up the building and removed the foliage from the top right.

2011-12-05T18:38:00.000-08:00

I had no idea what to do with this one...I just added a as much blur as possible to cover up the ugliness....

2011-12-04T14:14:00.001-08:00

Well, the brackets could have been better. Sorry guys. After I ran them through photomatix I said to myself, now what. I really didn't have a clue. With the absence of a lot of color I was going to go B&W. Then I started playing. Bob Long has mentored me over the past few years and his words rang in my ears. Light, dark, shadow, color, line, shape, form. I wanted to make it interesting and at the same time get the creepy feeling surrounding this place.
In retrospect, I tried to hard to get a good set of brackets. I failed my K.I.S.S. motto. Shoulda picked something that had 3 brackets and shot on my regular tripod...........next time.
Thanks for participating guys.
Now to check out your work.

2011-12-04T07:20:00.000-08:00

Hey...so first off I guess I find this rather strange to be asked to participate in this site. I got a camera less than a year ago and tried my hand at HDR for the past 4 or 5 months. so by all means, everyone else here is much better at this than me, with much fancier tools and likely nicer equipment...but i'm ecstatic to give this a go and see how it goes. this image was a little tough to work with. the colors were pretty saturated from the direct sunlight. so i took a really simple approach here. I tonemapped the brackets in photomatix to play around a bit with the lighting effects. I took the same brackets and created a tonemapped image in PS5 (merge to HDR Pro) to bring out more detail and texture. another layer was made to slightly alter the color hues and saturation. then played around with the light curves and then just painted them into a total package through multiple layers. thanks guys for the opportunity to play around.

2011-12-04T04:31:00.001-08:00

Thank you to Bob for supplying the first set of brackets for us to play with. Like Steve I found it a little strange to be working on a photograph that I had not taken.
Quite a challenging subject here. A lot of blue fringing around the tree line which I spent some time removing and a lot of fuzziness in the middle foliage which I'm afraid I gave up on. Firstly tone-mapped in Photomatix, then into Photoshop where I usually denoise first then using a mixture of Topaz Adjust and Nik Color Efx Pro plugins add detail and toning. It is my usual practice to just add any effects to the whole photo on a new layer then using an inverted mask just 'paint in' the bits I want to benefit from the changes. I flattened the final image added high pass filter to sharpen and then used 'Vintage Grunge II' (from the new Topaz Adjust5 Film Collection) because I thought it added to the dereliction feel.

2011-11-30T17:57:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

Received my first set of brackets and my first thoughts were that it was very strange working on an image I didn't capture. I tend to get very contrasty shots and these brackets were anything but :) I used Photomatix for the tone mapping, High Pass Filter in PS and then extensive use of Nik's Viveza to increase contrasts and colors. Tried to repair the noise on the upper left sky area by doing some cloning but it was still not clean. Noise reduced and then sharpened and then sized and saved.

2011-11-17T13:28:00.001-08:00

Following the chiaroscuro style of Jacques Gude I rendered this image. I was hoping for folks to search the image to see the different elements. I agree with you Roy that it's tough to focus on any one thing here. Hence my thinking.

2011-11-17T08:26:00.001-08:00

Bob sent me 3 bracketed photos taken at the Fantasy of Flight aviation attraction in Polk City, Florida, USA.
My initial thoughts were that although it is a good subject for an HDR there is no real focal point and I found my eyes wandering all around it. Not a bad thing though because there is lots to see.
I followed my (now) normal practice of creating a vivid and a desaturated tone in Photomatix then opened them both in CS5, layering the desaturated image over the vivid one, setting it to hard light and then changing the opacity to suit - in this case about 40%.
I then merged the images and applied a Topaz Labs Topaz Adjust/Photo Pop and also Topaz Detail/Micro Contrast each on a new layer changing the opacity as I thought fit.
Then a little tweaking of Tonal Contrast and adding a darken/lighten centre filter using Niks Color Efx 4 again on new layers, adding layer masks and 'painting out/in' as required.
A final Hue/Saturation mask(s) to deal with over bright areas and over saturated colours inverting the same and painting out the badly affected areas.
I pulled the perspective out a little because I thought it looked better squared up and I also cropped it a bit.
A small amount of sharpening using Unsharp Mask followed by reducing the size to 1024 x 682. I then saved it for the web.