HDR using Photomatix Pro 3

It's interesting that Fred Troilo posted his experiments with a HDR (High Dynamic Range) style image, because I have just recently been experimenting with producing HDR images using the Photomatix Pro 3 software.

Below are 3 HDR images of a Monument Valley Sunrise that I just created using multiple camera captured pictures at different exposure levels. {click on the image to see a larger version}


This HDR image used 3 images: nominal/-2/+2 stop images.

This HDR image used 3 images: nominal /-3 /+3 stop images.

This HDR image used 5 images: nominal/-2/+2/-3/+3 stop images.


Here are the +-3 stop images for your reference.
Nominal exposure


+3 exposure



-3 exposure



Of all the images, the HDR images come the closest to portraying the spectacular view I was seeing.


I actually shot 7 images in 1 stop increments from -3 to +3 stops and I was not able to create from any one of them an image that even came close to the results of the HDR images.

In this round of experimenting, the HDR image composed of the +-2 stop images turned out the best in my opinion, but you probably won't be able to tell that from the smaller images I've used for this post (+-2 stops is what the Photomatix folks recommend). The only processing I did to the Photomatix output file (.tif) was some "chromatic aberration" adjustment using Adobe Lightroom.



This was only my second time using the Photomatix Pro software to create an HDR image, so there is definitely a lot more practice needed on my part to processing the image, but Photomatix will become a new tool I will be using to create my pictures where there are a wide range of tone values present that should be portrayed in the final image.




I hope this was useful and interesting.


David Gralian
http://www.davidgralian.com/
david@davidgralian.com