HDR fun

This week I did some shooting at White Point in San Pedro. I was really looking for some tide pools but this is what I ended up with. I almost always shoot for HDR these days (at least when it involves the outdoors) even if I end up using a single file for the final image. I was recently asked to post a sample of my HDR source files so I thought these would be interesting. I usually shoot in aperture priority mode with a seven frame bracket - one normal exposure, three over, three under, in one stop increments. This is the normal exposure from the auto brackets.


I then use Photoshop CS3 to combine the seven files into one HDR 32 bit file. I really like the way CS3 handles the image alignment. That file is then saved in the EXR format. There is no way to display that 32 bit file in a web browser, but this is sort of what it looks like.


Now here is where the magic happens. The EXR file gets opened in an app called Photomatix. I am tempted to post a screen shot of the interface, but it wouldn't translate well in such a small format, but just trust me when I say that Photomatix has some awesome pixel pushing power. After tone mapping is applied, the resulting file gets converted to 16 bits and saved as a TIF. This is what the file looks like at that stage. BTW- there is a Photomatix plug-in for Photoshop that might eliminate the need to jump from app to app, but I have yet to get it to work as well as the stand alone.


The TIF file is then opened in Photoshop where I do some clean up work, especially in shots like this where I need to remove some motion artifacts in the water. Then there is the usual treatment involving adjustment layers, some USM and my favorite new picture postcard trick I learned from Mr. Margulis (more on that in the future). After all that, this is what I end up with. Is it all worth the effort, I'm not sure yet, but its been a lot of fun.