Exposure Blending and HDR

[Murkar]

This is my first attempt at exposure blending, which I mixed with HDR in photoshop. It's three shots at different exposures (one for the sky, one for the ground, and one for around the sun) which have been mixed in photoshop (not merged to HDR; just used sky from one, ground from the other, etc. to form one photo). Then, merged to HDR in photomatix. Placed as a layer overtop of the original blended exposure image, and reduced the opacity of the HDR to get this.

What do you think?

[irishmuth]

I don't know enough about HDR to tell you anything technical, but I can tell you that I love the result!

[Murkar]

Thanks!

I don't really know much about it either, I've only actually done I think two other HDR photos, and this is the first pic I've done with manual exposure blending.

[emanhaud]

Over all I like this shot, but it looks to me like there is a white border about 1px wide between the ground layer and the sky layer.

[Murkar]

It is! I'm actually in Ogunquit right now, I'm thinking I'll go do a retake on this shot tomorrow morning at sunrise.

I think the 1px border is just a result of my sharpening technique. Though I'm using a tripod, I'm shooting a Sony Alpha A-200 with a Tamron lens I bought off of Amazon, and I'm really not satisfied with the picture quality. The resolution is high on the images, but that doesn't really make much difference if the images are as soft as mine turn out to be.

Anyways, as I said, the line I think is a byproduct of my shaprning technique. It's a really good way to sharpen images that I use, it's a bit complex so I've just made it into a photoshop action, but it does that.

Have a look at the telephone wires on the right side, they've got the same thing.

Also...I'll try and lighten up the people. I've got five or six sets of photos from this, I'll use one without people. Just haven't had the time to process them yet. :P

[ohfour]

I like the colors and exposure in this, but the sharpening artifacts around the wires really look bad IMO.

Even if the image is a bit fuzzy, when you're resizing from 2592x3872 down to 535x800 most of the blur will simply vanish. Just don't do any sharpening until after you've downsampled the image.

And even if you do want to sharpen it like crazy, you can do a "high clarity range" shot where you clone the not-quite-so-extremely-sharpened wires back over the rest of the sharpened pic :-p

[Murkar]

I always downsize first but I will work on it, that's a good idea. I never thoguht of doing that, could get rid of the white line between the sky and ground as well with that.