Cheating at HDR

[lumix]

Love it or hate it, what do you think?
This is purely a record shot of a lake I fished last week. I have been playing with a couple of programmes that generate HDR images. Only having the one shot of this image, I decided to cheat a little and see what the outcome was. First I lighted the image and made a copy. Them I darkened the image and again made a copy. Blended them together and generated a HDR file. Tone mapped and here is the result. Not the best picture in the world, but certainly different.

First the original image, then the HDR.

[Steve40]

Re: Cheating at HDR

Heres a shot at cheating with Mediachance, Dynamic-Photo HDR. 1 stop of exposure difference simulated between 3 exposures.
First time I have tried this program.

[Stephen]

Re: Cheating at HDR

Heres a shot at cheating with Mediachance, Dynamic-Photo HDR. 1 stop of exposure difference simulated between 3 exposures.
First time I have tried this program.

Steve, I can't help feeling that you have used the programs default output and a little inprogram tweaking of saturation, vivid colours, etc during the tonemapping stage would make for a more realistic image.

To be honest though Rons original image was not so bad and I wouldn't at first have thought of it as a candidate for an HDR image. Perhaps lifting the foreground and darkening the sky is all that's needed. However his end result is not so bad IMO, though I still think about a half stop increase in EV would help it.

[Tom]

Re: Cheating at HDR

I think the result has produced a sky that looks as though it was painted and everything else a bit over saturated. Something in between might have been the job.

Love it or hate it, what do you think?
This is purely a record shot of a lake I fished last week. I have been playing with a couple of programmes that generate HDR images. Only having the one shot of this image, I decided to cheat a little and see what the outcome was. First I lighted the image and made a copy. Them I darkened the image and again made a copy. Blended them together and generated a HDR file. Tone mapped and here is the result. Not the best picture in the world, but certainly different.

First the original image, then the HDR.

[lumix]

Re: Cheating at HDR

Tom I have to agree this is not quite how I would have liked it. The purpose of the exercise was to see if HDR's could be generated without producing three separate exposures. It was never going to be perfect but opens a new door to giving a little extra to an otherwise dull image. I believe HDR's are only really successful if the image is taken with the end result in mind. Also you do need to have a static subject to get a good blend of the three images. This little experiment waves all that as only one exposure is used, and that could be of a moving subject. Not a process that suites too many images but on odd occasions may come in hand.