First attempt at HDR - overcooked?

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi all,

I took this photo of the SOAS mosque in Brunei today. I combined three exposures -1, 0, +1EV using the Merge to HDR feature in Bridge. I then adjusted Levels, Hue/Saturation and Contrast to get the following shot:



My question is: does this still feel real to you, or is it slightly overcooked?

Thanks for your thoughts,

Jonathan

Exif:
Camera: EOS 50D
Aperture: f/8
Shutter: 1/250, 1/500, 1/1000

[Sterling]

Looks good to me - no halos, no radioactive saturation, no weird darkening of the sky. I would be interested to see what the original shot looked like.

[stafford]

I think you've done the HDR processing just right. But you might try increasing the black point and decreasing the white point, if you are using photomatix, to reduce the highlight clipping on the building. Just my personal opinion.

[Spiralofourdiv]

Technically I think it is very well done; there are not HDR processing artifacts that I can see. It being "overcooked" as you put it is really just a question of opinion and artistic preference. I personally do not think it's overdone at all. Well done.

Te only issue I have is that it seems almost UNDERdone. The sides of the building are still pretty washed out. The usual goal of an HDR image is to have no strong spikes on either side of the histrogram, and this image still has a lot of strong whites in it... Bring the white point down in Photomatix like somebody else said. Darks look okay to me, but I think you could still get away with making them brighter.
If you think it's just too saturated after your HDR processing, which for the record this image isn't (I think it has a great brightness and clarity to it), you can always just tone down the vibrance in PS or something. In my limited experience with HDR, I always try to strive for correct exposure range and do my best to forget about color balance and saturation because I can always fix those later.

-Brian

[Jonathan Evans]

Hi all,

Thanks for your comments and critiques. After taking on board the comments about the black and white points to remove the blown out parts of sky and building, I have had another play in Photoshop and come up with this...



Do you think this is an improvement?

Thanks again in advance,

Jonathan