The Golden Gate

View from the north looking south of the Golden Gate Bridge.

 

HDR Techniques and tutorials:

 

I used a technique on this photo which I initially heard about from Trey Ratcliff. Two of my other favorite HDR photographers, Cliff Base and Brandon Watts also use this technique. You will find tutorials online from both Trey and Brandon.

 

Another incredible HDR photographer and one of my heroes on flickr is Artie. In every HDR photo he posts he puts details of how he did it. He also have a really good photomatix details enhancer tonemapping tutorial.

 

A short description of my current technique:

 

I start with three exposures at -2, 0 and +2 since my Nikon d5000 supports three shots with AE bracketing. I would like to do more exposures, but I am worried about bumping the camera to adjust EV to take another set.

 

I then open the RAW format into camera raw and set the white balance of each image. I then save out copies in jpg form. I read in Trey Ratcliff's tutorial that photomatix suggests this method.

 

My settings in Photomatix are usually very close to:

 

Strength: 100

Color Saturation: 40 - 60

Luminosity: 5-10

Microcontrast: zero or higher

Smoothing: 0-10

 

White Point: I look at the histogram usually and try to move the bell curve into the middle. Sometimes I will just go with what looks best.

Black Point: Same as white point, but after I adjust Black Point, I might go back and adjust White Point and repeat until the bell curve of the histogram is in the middle or it just looks right.

 

Gamma: 1.0

 

I usually don't mess with anything else because I will end up doing adjustments in Photoshop.

 

Sometimes I will tonemap two or three versions of the image depending on if I like the way the sky turned out or the details.

 

I will group up all the tonemapped versions and the original shots into a group in Bridge. I will then use the Bridge command to open up all of the shots as layers in Photoshop.

 

Once in photoshop, I will usually decide which of the tonemapped versions is the best overall. Then I will mask in the parts of the other tonemapped images that I like. Then I will mask in anything from the original images that I like. Along the way, I might have to apply a curve adjustment layer to individual layers that I masked in. I do this to match the overall brightness or darkness of the image.

 

Once I have masked everything in, I usually do a unsharp mask on the details, and a denoise on the sky. The HDR process creates a lot of noise and especially creates noise when using just three images. This is one of the reasons I would like to use more exposures. I use masks to control where the denoise and sharpening happen in the photo.

 

Once I am happy with the entire composition, I will try a few Topaz Adjust filers in Photoshop. Usually I just use exposure correction on the default setting. The other settings are a bit too much for my tastes. If I don't like what it comes up with, I usually will do a curves adjustment layer with the "S" curve in order to add a bit of contrast.

 

I might add a hue/saturation layer to take out unwanted yellows or reds. I might also bump up the vibrance a little bit if needed.

 

In this photo Specifically:

 

I masked in the 0 EV shot for the foreground. It was really windy and the details of the grasses were too fuzzy after the tonemapping.

 

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