Something new for me. HDR

Bored out of my mind today i decided to download the trial version of CS5 just to give me an idea of what i could get if i was mad enough to buy the full version. Obviously the full program is well out of my price range, for the price tag of a little over £1800, but thought i might as well take advantage of the 30 day trial, of course not everything is open in the trial version either.
After looking through the program i thought i would try the HDR toning, then just chose 4 random images from over the last few months and these are the results. These are images not previously uploaded by myself, i could not seem to do much with the originals in PS E6.
I will upload originals and the HDR version for comparison.

Image 1A and 1B - Taken at Ashridge estate





Image 2A & 2B - A view over the Chilterns from Aston Rowant




Image 3A & 3B - Wilstone Reservoir




Image 4A and 4B - Red Kite @ Shuttleworth




Comments welcome

Hi Mark I'm guessing there is a pseudo mode in CS5 that tonemaps to look HDR, I say that as you said you used 4 random images which are all different. I have never used CS5 for HDR but I do use Photomatix and also Dynamic Photo HDR and use at least 3 different exposed shots but usually 5. One of the best pseudo softwares I have seen for single image HDR is HDR EFEX PRO..Image below done using Hdr Efex

single image fake


If I remember rightly this is 5 exposure stacked

Yes Owen its HDR Toning on a single image instead of stacking the image to create a proper HDR image with dedicated software, i should of said false HDR images really
End of the day, if i did want to do proper HDR images its about finding the more affordable software. Photomatix is a cheap option i suppose Maybe something i will invest in in the future, i was just interested in what the HDR toning could do in CS5

Mark if you decide you do want to try more HDR this software is very good ans only around £35 mate...
http://www.mediachance.com/hdri/index.html

You can try demo mode which is pretty good

Cheers Owen...Webpage now saved in fav`s. Maybe something for the future to delve into

Like what it did with the forest picture, but not fussed on the others to be honest, just looks like it's gone mad with the saturation! :/

xx

not sure about any of them Mark
try putting a RAW file into photomatix ,I downloaded a beta version for free
its better than CS5 and it really really good when stacking 3 or 5 pictures.

Thanks for the feedback Laura and Cakey.

I think image one worked the best too, reason maybe due to there being no sky in the image, image 2b, the sky is awful, looks noisy and pixeled, all images are Jpeg so there`s another issue, i must start to shoot in Raw

Laura, with the saturation, when going into HDR toning settings in CS5,there are two settings under color settings, Vibrance and Saturation, Vibrance is maxed out on all the images i worked on, but maxing out saturation and leaving vibrance as it was set the image looks a lot better but still not on par with a proper HDR image.

Cakey i do not think i can download the beta version now, just a trial version...
I am guessing Photomatix is just a plug in for various processing programs. PS CS2, Lightroom etc. If thats the case i think i can wait a little longer before getting into HDR

Hi Mark. Looks like you have done what I did the first time I played with hdr in cs5... over do them them. Try being a little more gentle. It's so easy to do the first time and I think everyone does it.

Spot on Dave exactly what i did. Hopefully before the trial of CS5 finishes i will be able to get out a little and grab some new photos to work on, and make sure i shoot them in RAW.