The Making of “Around the Bend”

If you tuned in earlier in the week you may have seen the image I posted titled “Around the Bend”.

Of course this is EXACTLY how it looked straight out of camera too. Alright, not really.  Despite being out in the country there was actually a fair amount of traffic on this road.  Somehow, standing in the middle of the road on a blind corner for extended periods of time didn’t seem like a real good idea so I “shot and ran”.  Here’s the REAL out of camera shot.

Here’s a quick rundown on how it got from A to B.

In Lightroom …

1. Crop and straighten the image.  That “blah” sky has got to go and we can leverage that double-yellow as a leading line to pull the viewer into the photo.
2. Now for the exposure. What a mess.  Looks like a good candidate for HDR so I focused my efforts on exposing the road properly with the original cropped image and then made 2 virtual copies.  I set the first virtual to an exposure value 2 under my original and the second 2 over.
3. Selecting all three images I sent them out to PhotoMatix Pro (right-click, Export) and applied the default enhancer template. Looks good to me. Reimport to Lightroom.
4. At this point, everything is looking good except for what I kept of the sky. Still “blah” and in need of an overhaul.  Lucky for me I had a shot of a nice crisp blue autumn sky just a few shots further into the collection.  Selecting both my new HDR image and shot of the nice blue sky, I right-clicked and selected “Edit In …” and then “Open as Layers in Photoshop…”.

In Photoshop…

1. First thing is to position the layers so the HDR is on top and the blue sky image below that.
2. With the HDR layer selected, pick the “Select” menu, use the “Color Range…” option and change the “Select” option to “Highlights”.  Just like that the crumby sky, including the difficult to select area between the pine tree branches is selected.  For good measure, I saved the selection using the option at the bottom of the “Select” menu. Just to be safe, I expanded the selection by 1 pixel from the “Select…Modify” menu to prevent any “white lines” between my sky and trees.
3. With the HDR layer selected, add a new “Reveal All” Layer Mask.
4. Select the new Layer Mask, set the brush tool, color set to black and a 30% opacity.
5. After adjusting the brush size to be able to accommodate the height of the sky selection I make my first pass over the selected sky.  Still a little blah so I made one more pass.  There. That’s better.
6. Grab the “Move Tool” and select the layer containing the blue sky.  Move the sky layer left/right until the clouds are positioned to complement the scene.
7. Save the file and exit back to Lightroom.

In Lightroom…

1. The light on the pavement in the foreground is still a little “hot” so add a new brush using the “Burn (Darken)” effect to paint the bright area until it no longer detracts from the scene.
2. Add keywords, additional metadata and share.

Compared to the amazing effort put forth by Mother Nature to provide the fall colors, the few mouse clicks were a small price to pay to help the image along a little.

Have you leveraged HDR techniques in any of your fall photos?  Have a link or two to share?  Use the comments section below to share.

Around the Bend

If you’re in the Central Wisconsin area and have been waiting for “peak” autumn colors, they have arrived!  I shot this image the middle of last week in Doering just a few miles from our home.  Absolutely spectacular autumn colors this year (even if they are a little early).

Have you added any of the fall color to your photo collection?  Share some links to your favorite fall photos and locations in the comment section below.

Lightroom 4 Brings New Life to HDR

Last August I experimented with a Lightroom only HDR image just to see how close I could get it compared to using some other HDR work flow such as Photomatix.  The results were promising.  Now, with the new "Basic Panel" controls in Lightroom 4, things are looking up even more.  Time for another experiment.

For my source image, I chose the shot that pushed me into the world of HDR, "The Great Escape".  You see the original unedited version above.

Here are the steps I took to process the image in Lightroom 4.

Upgrade Process

1. Updated it to 2012 Process engine.  This image was originally imported using LR3 and the 2010 Process engine. Until you upgrade the image to the new process engine you won't even see the new Basic Panel in the development module to be able to use it.  Look for the exclamation icon in the lower right of your display window.  Click on the icon to access a dialog box that will help you upgrade.  You can also chose the Process option in the Calibration panel.
2. Adjust the Basic sliders.  With the image upgraded to the 2012 process engine, you will now see the new LR4 Basic Panel. Gone are the Recovery and Fill Light sliders, replaced with Highlights and Shadows.  These new sliders really provide you with more control over adjusting just those parts of your image that need it.  In this example, I pushed up the troubled shadow areas of the foreground without any adverse effects on my colorful sky.



LR4 Basic Panel

3. Local Brush Adjustment.  Even with the magic shadow slider, the silhouette of the bluff in the background still needed a little help.  After painting the dark areas, I started pushing the various sliders, including the new local "Noise" reduction slider until things started to fall into place.

LR 4 Local Brush

The end result...


I don't know about you, but I find myself fairly impressed.  My need for HDR in my landscape images was to overcome the tonal range limitations of my camera.  The new Basic Panel in Lightroom 4 is a very serious tool to help fit that need.

Lastly, I wanted to comment on LR4 performance.  I've seen a lot of comments out there about things seeming a little "doggy" in the development module and based on my limited experiences to date, I'd have to agree.  It's not unbearably slow, but it also isn't what we've come to expect from Lightroom.  I can remember similar complaints when Lightroom 3 came out of beta and it didn't take long for Adobe and the user community to get things rectified. 

Have any experiences of your own with the new Lightroom 4 Basic panel?  Share your thoughts using the comments section below.

Until next time, keep on click'n.

-Ken



"Forgotten"

Last week I posted an HDR landscape image ("HDR or not? You Choose") and promised I'd share another one today.

Very "wintery" don't you think?  This poor, lonely hay bale watching over the frozen winter desert.  If you'd like to see the "pre-HDR" image, click here.

Have a great day!

HDR or not? You Choose

I mentioned at the beginning of the week that I found some time to get out and shoot last weekend. While post processing "keepers", I decided to take a few minutes and turn out a couple of single-shot HDR images as well. By "single-shot HDR", I'm referring to taking a single frame, making a couple of virtual copies in Lightroom exposed both over and under the original and then processing them in Photomatix Pro 4 with some final touch up in Photoshop. I keep forgetting I can auto-bracket now :-).


RAW Image



HDR

I'd really appreciate some feedback on the output.  Which do you prefer? HDR or RAW?

Stop back on Monday for another HDR landscape and in the meantime, have a safe and happy weekend.

Calling all HDR Skeptics

I recently donated a print I had hanging on my office wall to our company's annual United Way silent auction fund raiser.  I was happy to help the cause, but the result was I had a blank space on my wall.  Time for a new print :).
I've mentioned here on the blog before that I've begun experimenting with High Dynamic Range or HDR (See "My First HDR" and "A Trip to the Eye Doctor").  While I've only been participating for a short time, I've been following the topic in the blogosphere for much longer.  I've always been fascinated by the amount of controversy that surrounds the topic in the photography world.  On one side are the purists who proclaim any computer manipulation of a photo results in it no longer being a "photo", but "art" so they simply refuse to participate.  On the other end of the scale are those that apply so much tone mapping to an image that it makes your eyes bleed to look at.  In the middle, however, is a technology that can save an image destine for the trash and turn it into something the camera simply couldn't capture by itself.

Here's an example.  Last fall I took some photographs of a scene that had too wide of a tonal range for my camera to take it all in.  It didn't matter how I exposed for this photo, there was just no way the camera was going to get it right.  Here's the original image.

The early morning sun cutting through the fog in the background caught my attention, but as you can see much of the image is "blown out" while a large part is also deep in shadows.  If I subscribed to the "purist model", there would have been no hope for this image.  Even with neutral density filters, I couldn't tone down that bright light enough to get the rest of the scene properly exposed.  Instead, I used Photomatix Pro to make a single image HDR to get this....

Click image for larger view

... which is now proudly hanging on my wall rather than lost to the electronic void which we call the "Recycle Bin".

Whether you're a photo purist or an HDR extremist, I think we can all agree that the image is better with HDR than without.  Whether you chose to call it "art" rather than a "photograph" doesn't matter in the least to me.

The Missing Piece - Topaz Adjust

A while back I mentioned that I've started to dabble in the world of HDR (High Dynamic Range) and tone mapping (See post "My First HDR").  I'm continuing on that journey and have spent a fair amount of time reading and studying other HDR processed images and wondered why I just couldn't quite get "the look" that I enjoy in some of the other work I've been reviewing.  After downloading a 30 day trial of Topaz Adjust, I think I found the answer.

Here are the images start to finish.

Original RAW photo straight from the camera.

Single image HDR produced with Photomatix Pro




Final image produced by Topaz Adjust (click for larger image)

  The additional exposure adjustments in the doors, pillars and stained glass window really sell it for me.  I feel another software purchase coming on in about a month :).

A Trip to the Eye Doctor

Since "My First HDR" post, my wife and I purchased two books on the topic of HDR and I've been submerging myself deeper into the pool.  I just finished Trey Ratcliff's "A World in HDR" and found it to be a very interesting read.  It features many of Trey's own HDR images captured from exotic locations around the world complete with his own comical commentary.  It also includes a chapter or two too get you started with processing your own HDR images.  With my newly found HDR education, I set to work to turn this image...

... into this...

      (click image for larger view)

Technically this is now my second HDR, but I'd have to say this is my first HDR after reading instructions from someone who knew what they were doing :-).  The irony is that the building featured in the shot is the "Eye Clinic of Wisconsin" hence the title... "A Trip to the Eye Doctor".  For some reason I find that funny.

If you'd like to see more of "The HDR Project", I've created a new set on Flickr to house the results of my continued experimentation.  I would REALLY appreciate some feedback on these images as I'm struggling with whether or not to make them available for sale in my gallery.  So far I'm really enjoying both the process and the results.

What do you think?

My First "HDR"

For those of you not familiar with the acronym "HDR", it stands for "High Dynamic Range".  It is a process by where you can merge multiple exposures of an image together in order to properly expose drastically different areas of an image by bring out the details in shadow areas, toning down the highlights in overly exposed areas, etc.  It's often also associated with a process called "Tone Mapping" which allows you to "amp up" the color saturation into what I call hyper-realistic images.  In the photography world, the HDR topic seems to be one of great debate as most people fall into either the love it or hate it category.  Personally, I like some of the hyper-realistic images, but tend to lean toward the more natural look in most cases.
While on vacation a few weeks ago, my wife and I arrived at the tail end of an amazing sunset among a crowd of other shutterbugs.  While I snapped off a fair number of shots, I admit that I didn't take the time to employ such techniques as "fill flash" to capture the exposure I was really after.  Like I said, the light show was pretty much over and time was of the essence.  I found some nice foreground subjects in a pair of Adirondack chairs, but as you'll see from the original image below, the exposure was pretty dark against the sunset.

The tripod mounted exposure was taken at ISO 100, 95mm, f/22 for 0.8 seconds. Let me point out the sensor dust now as it will be the topic of discussion for tomorrow's post.  See the little "pepper-like" spots in the upper left corner and again above the tree line near the center of the image?  Yep, that's what a dirty sensor does to your images.  More on that tomorrow.
Through the magic of Lightroom 3, I was able to remove the dust spots and adjust the exposure to improve the photo a fair amount.  Remember the post on file formats?  THIS is why you want to shoot in RAW format.  It provides you a fair amount of room to maneuver in post processing with the additional information that's captured in the RAW format.  Here is the same image after my Lightroom adjustments...

You can see I removed the sensor dust spots (and a few other distractions), used some fill light to bring the exposure of the chairs up some and you can start to see that the grass is actually green.  In truth, I really wanted more fill light as it did wonders for the foreground, but the more fill light I added, the more noticeable the nasty halo I was getting around the silhouette of the bluff on the left.  After exhausting my bag of tricks I still wasn't where I wanted to be with this photo.  This is when I decided I'd been putting off the HDR thing for about as long as I could and it was time to give it a try.
I mentioned that HDR combines multiple exposures.  Ideally, you would have used auto bracketing to produce 3 or more exposures (I don't have auto bracketing on my D40x so it would have been a manual process).  Well, there's my first problem.  I only had one exposure of this scene.  What to do?  I decided to make two "virtual copies" of the image in Lightroom 3 and then exposed 1 of those copies under (EV -2) and 1 copy over (EV +2) so in total I had 3 exposures to use. My wife had been playing with a trial of HDR Soft's Photomatix and decided that it was something she had a use for and I'd read enough about it to know that it was one of the most widely used applications for HDR processing.  After applying yet another discount from my NAPP membership (I'm telling you it's worth the price of admission :), we were the proud owners of Photomatix Pro.
Here is the HDR output of the 3 exposures after being processed through Photomatix Pro using the "natural" preset (and a few more tweaks in Lightroom).

The foreground is now where I wanted it to be, we're just starting to pull out a little detail in the bluff to the left and the sky is still more or less intact with the beautiful sunset.  This is much closer to what you would have seen with your own eyes had you been there.
So there you have it - my first HDR!  I'll be the first to admit that I have a lot more to learn when it comes to utilizing Photomatix Pro, but for my first attempt I'm rather pleased with the results.  I'd love to hear your feedback.  What do you think?