PhotoWalkPro

A couple of months ago, HDR Soft, the creators of the vastly popular Photomatix Pro HDR software, released a new version of their software called Photomatix Light.  This new version is meant to take all the heavy lifting out of the HDR process by reducing the number of sliders and making things much more automatic for the beginning HDR enthusiast.  I hadn’t given much thought to the product but after receiving quite a few inquiries from my readers I thought perhaps I should give it a try. Read the rest of this entry »

After getting back home I finally got a chance to run an image set through the new HDR PhotoStudio on my Mac.  I wrote a post the other day announcing the release of the new Mac version of this software.  I finally downloaded a copy while sitting in the airport in San Diego and installed it on my system.  I decided that for my first test I would process a group of images that I had just worked with a few days previously in Photomatix Pro.  I loaded the bracketed images and began working my way through the processing, which is very different from the workflow in Photomatix.  After working with the different controls for a while, I came out with a result that was quite different from most HDR images I had previously created.  The difference was that the version processed in HDR PhotoStudio was extremely photo-realistic, but with the expanded detail in the highlight and shadows that defines the very purpose of shooting HDR.  This is especially true in the shadow areas, which are full of detail without being overly lightened. Read the rest of this entry »

I have been waiting for this one for awhile now.  The folks at Unified Color have finally released the Mac version of their HDR software for the Mac OS.  HDR PhotoStudio has been available for Windows users for quite some time and there has been promise of a Mac release and now I can’t wait to get my hands on it and give it a try.  I know a couple of people that have been using it and getting some fantastic results but since I work primarily on my Mac I didn’t want to commit until they released a version that would fit in with the rest of my image editing workflow.  it just never made sense to have all of my images on my Mac except for the ones that I wanted to perform HDR processing on. Read the rest of this entry »

Before I get started, let me just say that I am not looking to stir the flames that seemed to have been fanned by Trey Ratcliff’s guest blog appearance over at the Photoshop Insider this past Wednesday.  Trey wasn’t the one stirring things up, in fact his article really had nothing to do with HDR and was a very insightful piece that I highly recommend you read.  Here’s the thing though, Trey is most widely known for his HDR photography (he has just released a book of his HDR work) and in some circles is widely credited with popularizing the look with his heavily toned, brightly saturated images.  Of course Trey would be the first to downplay that analogy.  He’s just a guy that found something that he really enjoyed doing and was passionate about and shared it through his website, Stuck In Customs.  So why then is there such venom for over something that so many people have come to enjoy?

There are those that might call themselves purists and will decry even the mentioning of HDR as incorrect and a bastardization of the true meaning of high dynamic range.  Are they correct?  Well, technically yes.  HDR is more about capturing the range of tones that fall outside of the normal dynamic range of a single image range.  It is a process to capture that extended tonal range through the use of multiple exposures, which are then combined into a 32-bit file that contains extended highlight and shadow detail.  When that information is squeezed back into an 8 or 16-bit file, those extended tones need to be mapped back into a gamut that can be seen and printed by today’s display technology, thus we get the term “tonemapping”.  Sounds complicated doesn’t it?  The simple truth is that the look that many adapters of HDR capture and processing can look over-the-top to some people.  I have heard it referred to as cartoonish or Harry Potterish.  Or, as someone said last Wednesday, “It Sux” and “isn’t real photography”.  It’s this type of statement that I have a problem with.

Juan Gris - Portrait of Picasso

The mere words imply that we must all conform to one person’s definition of what is good and what is bad.  What is art and what is trash.  So if this is the case, who’s opinion is the correct one?  Was it the person that said that Cubism isn’t art?  How about Surrealism, or pop-art, or any other art form that was new and innovative and “different” from the norm.  The truth is that, as much as it irritates some of you out there, the term HDR will forever be associated with a style of imaging, no matter what the process or software used.  There’s no since in fighting it because it is just too popular of a label now to ever get that genie back in the bottle.  As for whether or not HDR is art or not is not for me to say, at least not where you are concerned.  You will need to form your own opinion.  If you like it, great, if not, that’s okay too.  Just remember that any art form is subjective and open to self-interpretation.  Just as I don’t think that Campbell Soup cans are art, there are a lot of folks that would disagree.

As for those of you that are interested in learning HDR and exploring what it has to offer, I say play to your heart’s content.  Photography should be personal before it is anything else.  If you like what you see and want to try your hand at it, then by all means, you should.  How many people do you think have ever tried to emulate the style and processes of Ansel Adams because they so loved the look of his images.  They may not have been successful but I bet they learned a lot along the way, which probably made them better photographers.   Just remember that you should always try to create for yourself.  Do the thing that inspires you the most and then work at it, rejoice in it, and, if you are brave enough to face the haters, share it with the rest of the world.

I’ve been home for about 24 hours now but my body is so confused that it might take 24 more to get me back on track.  What with the 12 hour time difference, 21 hours in the air, and a little Daylight Savings Time to boot and I don’t know whether I’m coming or going.  I’ll probably crash hard sometime this afternoon but since I was up early I took the opportunity to process one of the HDR images I shot while visiting Putra Jaya in Malaysia.  Putra Jaya is the home to most of the national government buildings in Malaysia.  There is some controversy over how much money was spent to build everything, including a big lake and seven bridges (which wouldn’t have been needed if they hadn’t built the lake).  But all that aside, it really is an amazing place with spectacular bridges, wonderful architecture, and a big, wide boulevard for national parades.

This particular image shows a view of Masjid Tuanku Zainal Abidin, otherwise known as the Steel Mosque.  The view is from the main boulevard, through a giant archway.  I wanted to get a direct, head-on view but there was an Indian video crew making some sort of music video or something just off to my left so I settled for this view.

So here’s the technical info on the image above.  I shot a 5-image bracket with my camera set to high-speed continuous.  I didn’t have my tripod with me so I just made sure that my shutter speeds were going to be fast enough to hand-hold.  One thing I like to do when shooting hand-held brackets, besides having fast shutter speeds, is to set my focus point on a specific spot in the image.  This helps me from drifting the camera during the exposure sequence.

Once captured, I imported the images into Lightroom and did some minor adjustments to the white balance and a little image spotting (my sensor really needs a good cleaning).  From Lightroom, I exported the five images into Photoshop using the Merge to HDR command in Lightroom.  I still prefer the image alignment in Photoshop over Photomatix so once the HDR image was created I saved the file as an EXR and then opened it in Photomatix Pro for some tonemapping.  I tried to stay fairly light with the tonemapping settings and then saved the image as a 16-bit TIFF file.  From there I imported the tonemapped image back into Lightroom where I could do the rest of my image processing (clarity, black point, vibrance, saturation, etc.) and then back to Photoshop one last time for some perspective correction and a little noise reduction in the sky areas using Nik Dfine 2.0.

It sounds like a lot of work but it really only took about 20 minutes total for the whole process.  I have a lot of other images that I am looking forward to processing, like some panoramas and more HDR images.  I’ll be sure to share my processing and the final images with you in the days to come.

As it is with every Photoshop World, the end came all too quickly.  I thoroughly enjoyed my stay in Vegas, even though the dry air was playing havoc with my sinuses.  Friday began pretty early in the AM with a trip with some old and new friends to the Neon Boneyard.  We had a little bus issue so Matt Kloskowski, Chris Orwig and I headed outside the hotel to shoot some cool shadows and a few sweet rides parked out front.

It’s not every day that you see a Lamborghini, Mercedes McLaren, and Ferrari all lined up and ready to shoot, that is unless you are visiting Las Vegas casino.  Chris Orwig was the first to move to the cars, where he not only shot a portrait of Matt but also pulled out his small plastic TLR to grab some images of the vehicles.  He even managed to give me a scare as he climbed up on the wall of the parking area for a better angle on the cars.  It wasn’t the wall that made me nervous, it was the 2 story drop on the other side of the wall that got me.

Chris Orwig captures the essence of Matt Kloskowski

Chris and his plastic twin lens reflex camera.

Working the reflection on the back of the Ferrari

We finally hooked up with our bus and made our way to the Boneyard, which is actually divided into two separate yards.  We had access to both yards and I grabbed my gear and began shooting.  As I began exploring the first yard with my camera, I remembered something that Matt told me on the bus ride over.  He said, “Give yourself an assignment or you will just wander around not knowing what to shoot.”  Matt was right and so after several minutes of shooting and changing lenses I decided to shoot everything with my 10.5mm Fisheye lens.  The tight quarters seemed to be made for shooting with that lens so I closed the zipper to my camera bag and started working the Fisheye all over the place.  I even made a three shot panorama with it.  That’s David DuChemin standing in the right side of the image.

David DuChemin grabs a few shots in the Boneyard

Here’s a few more shots from the morning.  Most of the images were processed in Lightroom.  I did however shoot a few HDR images and used the Lightroom Plug-In to send them to Photomatix for some combining and tonemapping.  I then was able to save the new image back into Lightroom and finish it up in the Develop module.  Here’s a few more images from that morning.

I will fill you in on Saturday’s happenings and show you something new I learned while sitting in the keynote way back on Thursday.  Until then, have a great beginning to your week.  I might need a little coffee to get mine jump-started.