Vieux Québec (HDR)

Crazy traffic on this pic lately.. it's an old over the top HDR.. I really don't like it anymore. Got much better pics but hey. Enjoy!

 

Hmm what would this other building pic be without a hdr makeover?

I would have love to see someone go into this shot on the lower right side but they all feared for their souls to be frozen into my Lumix L10... So i had to compensate with a more pushed tonemap look!! : )

 

There is no mixing true HDR and single Raw HDR or 2 different HDR here. It's from 3 pics once more. -2, 0, +2 as usual.

 

 

***VIEW LARGER HERE***

 

 

Thanks all for the feedback!! I haven't got time for photography lately so what do i do.. i post old pics that have never seen the light!! : )

Even if i wish for the composition to be a bit more complete on future pics i had great feedback from a few friends and contacts about my workflow on dynamic range images and i'm very happy about that. Espacially when it comes from others that have grately inspired me through the last year or so!!

 

I've tried many ways to process pics to get a natural yet pushed tonemapping!! I've mixed single raw and normal (numerous diferently exposed photos) hdr pics but it never looked quite "natural".

So i've found that i should spend less time in Photomatix and more in Photoshop.

 

So here is a bit of my workflow:

 

1-First i take at least 3 photos making sure the lowest value pic doesn't have burned highlights and in the highest value that the shadows become midtones. To try and get plenty of details in every area of the pic.

 

2-I blend those 3 unmodified RAW photos in Photomatix.

There is no specific recipe there but here is the one i used for this photo:

 

Strength: 90 - Saturation: 75 - Luminosity: 10 - Smoothing: the middle button (but i usually use a higher smoothing so halos don't appear).

Micro-contrast: 10 - White point: around 3 - Black point: around 0.2 - Gamma: 1,25 - Micro-smoothing: 8.

I leave the rest for Photoshop.

 

3-In Photoshop it always depend on the photo so for this one i did the following things:

 

The image came a bit underexposed from Photomatix but that way i didn't get halos and burned highlights so:

 

Shadows and Highlights:

In Shadows: Amount: 3.

Levels: RGB mode: 4 - 1,05 - 249

Brightness and contrast: Brightness: 3

After that i applied a curve cause i wasn't quite happy with the contrast but the photo was a lot brighter.

A apllied a Curves layer: Linear contrast (presets) at 50% of opacity.

Filter: Sharpen: Unsharp Mask: Amount: 60 - Radius: 15 - Threshold: 10

I played with Hue and Saturation with the "Blues" to get a darker sky and "Yellows" for the color of buildings.

Did some dodging on the buildings so it would be a bit brighter and to increase the contrast with the sky.

Applied a Noise reducer plugin (Imagenomic-Noiseware Pro).

Did a bit of lassoing to reduce those parts with too much "Cyan" around the buildings.

Finally i used a Nik Color Efex Pro plugin/Tonal Contrast to boost the tonemapping and sharpness without creating halos.

I don't remember the exact amount but i applied it on a different layer and reduced the opacity around 25%.

 

So that's about 95% of this shot.

That may seem a lot for those who only blend into Photomatix but it took me around 20 minutes.

The before and after results are really worth it!!

Cheers!!! Hope this comes in handy to someone!! : )

Done