This is the step where we get into the meat of HDR Photography.  If you don’t know too much about HDR yet, this is the step when your image could take a major turn for the worst.  This is also a place where you may need to think back to your original vision for the image.  It does require some reflection on your part.  I am going to try and detail this part as best I can.  I have a feeling this is going to end up being a pretty extensive article, but I hope it’s worth it for you [and me].

Start with Reflection

When we are in a location, we often feel something there.  I am usually in a great state of appreciation when I am out for the purpose of photography. A location could make me feel intensely happy or stimulated from the scene or the location could have a storm coming and have a very ominous feeling.  I really believe that this is an important exercise to approach for a couple of minutes.  It really shouldn’t take very long at all because the image usually activates this when you see it.  Take that moment and remember. What is it about these scene that you wanted to bring out.  Do you remember that some aspect of it was way more grungy in person that it is reflecting when you’re starting to tone map?  This might be something that comes to mind. You’re creative source should be present for this process.  I’ll just list a few that come to mind for me:

These are a few examples of things that you could bring out depending on your use of Tone Mapping.  The optimization would then later be done in Photoshop.  Tone Mapping does a great job in getting the image to a base level.  Photoshop, Lightroom, or Aperture is probably the best place to finalize colour saturation, levels, and blacks/whites. These programs are very specialized so they will not degrade the image like Photomatix may.   Whether you’re going to do further processing or not, I like to do this exercise to try and put myself back in the photo a moment and then try and bring that out.

Photomatix Default

Once you click the “Tone Map” button, the program will load your file in a totally new view.  This is going to be exciting I hope.  I love this point because your odd looking .HDR file comes to life.  Depending how you set up Photomatix, it probably brings up the Default settings or your previous settings from your last edit.  So if you can remember, I showed the bracketed files back in step one – Take Photographs and think HDR and I showed the HDR file in the last post. I’ll continue with the screen shots and show you what I get for the default settings:

You get a pretty good sense of the Tone Mapped HDR image here.  I don’t mind the sky and water; however, I remember the building across the water to stand out a lot more than it is here.  It seems flat and so does the mountains off in the background.  I really want to bring out the detail in that lower part of the building.  You could get away with pressing process and being done with it.  I want to go a bit further than that and it wouldn’t really get too in-depth if I did that.  I also want to help and further your understanding in this entire process.  So I think before I go into how I maneuver the slider settings, I’ll just quickly run over the sliders to help give you an idea of what they may adjust in your photos.

HDR Photomatix Vocabulary

This is going to become a post all on it’s own and I’ll simply link to it in the futrue; however for my loyal readers, as I try and gain exposure, I’ll write it out here for now.  I’m going to touch on my heavy hitters for now.  Anyways, enough of that.

Strength

As you may have guessed, this is the adjustment that controls the strength of the tone mapping.

Color Saturation

Simply controls the saturation of image.  Important to note is that it controls the entire saturation of the image.  When an adjustment does this, it’s considered a Global Adjustment.  I usually leave this setting in the middle at 50% because Photoshop or Lightroom will do a better job with adjusting the saturation.

Light Smoothing

Here is where you’ll control how aggressive you want your tone mapping to be.  In my eyes, this setting is in connection with the feeling you want to convey within your image.  It’s a bit different than the strength because the further right you get here, the more realistic of an image you’re going to get.  If you want something much more aggressive you have to go to the left.  I usually find that the middle selection works great and is my starting point.   In a more technical aspect, it controls the compression of the Dynamic Range.  More compression = a more surreal, exaggerated look.

Micro Contrast

This controls the micro, or fine details of the image.  It’s looking at the small details like noise, and textures, and the edge contrast.  This setting can exaggerate details a step further than the luminosity. To be honest, I usually max this setting out to the right and I’ll move it back from there if required.  One reason I’d move it back would be due to exaggerated halos.  Use the Micro Smoothing and Highlight Smoothing to try and find a visual balance with the Mircro Contrast.

You will notice that there are other adjustment sliders within the program and I urge you to play with them to see what it does with the image.  Each image is usually unique and small adjustments will fine tune it towards your vision. And I will be creating more articles around specific elements of HDR in the future. I have a lot of post topics listed for post and I just have to get to them. :)

Play with your Tone Mapping

Hopefully the quick overview on those major settings in preparation for this part of Tone Mapping your HDR.  It’s time to move into a state of play.  Photomatix has a great benefit because it has a live window to view your adjustments before actually committing to the change.  Depending on the size of the window, it may take the software a few seconds to make the adjustment though.  This is where no one is ever going to see what you’re doing so change the settings to their max or to their minimum in an effort to see what it does to your image. A lot of people that start HDR end up going very extreme and it can cause a lot of negative feedback on photo sharing sites like Flickr.

Don’t ever think about what someone on Flickr or another similar sight may think of what you’ve done.   Do your thing, play, experiment until you are pretty happy with the vision you had for your image.  Any feedback in the future will help you learn.  It’s interesting because as people learn and become more experienced with editing for HDR Photography, they tend to notice the wisdom of “less is more.”  People can preach this wisdom as much as they want; it’s like your parents telling you information and you don’t listen until you’ve finally gone through the experience.  This learning experience is the same thing you go through with anything.  You just have to push through the early times and know that you are experiencing what you’re supposed to in order to get better here.  So, in my experience I’ve learned to adjust the settings for tone mapping in a way to start each image. Below is usually my starting ground instead of the Photomatix default settings.  I’ll start with my own and then adjust from there to see where I want to take the image.

I like to start with these settings. They have given great success in the past and I can adjust a few things from here.  The main settings I start to adjust would be Micro-Smoothing, Highlight Smoothing, White and Black Points.  The image looks overall muddy and grey.  I want to fix that up so I will change the settings that I just mentioned.  I am going to only partially consider how the sky is looking at this point.

You should notice the changes in the sidebar to the left.  I’ve changed the black and white points up a little bit but not too much because I know that Photoshop will allow more control of these points/levels in the next step.  I just want to get a better sense of the overall image.  I changed the Micro-Smoothing up just a little bit to remove only a bit of the noise.  And I wanted to adjust the Temperature because it felt a bit warm with oranges that I don’t remember seeing in person at all.  The architecture is looking as I recall now and I am feeling more like I did at the time.  This might be where someone would stop the process and say they are done and post online.   I want to go even further in my processsing.  The sky looks better, but there is a classic HDR halo that is surrounding the architecture.  This is what I really don’t want.   In the past, I’d try and fix it here globally.  I have learned that you don’t have to settle for the halo or trying to adjust the Micro-Smoothing more here to fix it overall.  What I really suggest doing before clicking the “process” button, is to change the preview window size to small.  I suggest this because when you post the image online, some sights or sometimes you have to show a preview of your image.  A preview or link to the image is usually a smaller image and you’ll notice that the ‘haloing’ really stands out at a smaller level.  I think this is the root cause of most of the internet HDR hate.  It looks as if the picture is terrible, but if you open it up and look at it in a much larger size, the haloing is reduced because you’re looking at more of the image overall.  HDR is meant to see really large because it’s like your eye experiencing the scene.  Your eye is constantly looking over a scene and adjusting the dynamic range of light. You don’t get to stand back and see the scene as a whole like you do with the smaller pictures. Either way, I like to view it small to see how the first look at the image may be.  Halos are exaggerated and I know that I need to look at some other steps.  Below is a look at the smaller preview window and see if you notice what I was just talking about.

Image Uniqueness in HDR Processing

Each image is unique when it comes to HDR.  You may not need to do the same processing for every single image. Some images, I am able to stop at the last step.  It’s great when that happens, but it’s not always like that.  In this specific image, I want to fix the halo around the architecture because it’s going to distract viewers and it’s ultimately not what I saw and felt at the time I took the photographs.  For the above tone mapping, I decided to stop there and I clicked process.  It takes a few minutes to process and I am left with that Tone Mapped image. I will then save it as a 16 Bit Tiff file.  You could save it as an 8 bit JPG or 8 bit Tiff.  I have room on the hard drive and until it’s very low, I’ll continue to go with a 16 bit tiff.  I’ve read that it contains much more bits of information and allows for cleaner adjustment.  I am not sure how much it will help, however I am trying to plan for the future at the same time as today.

What I do now is unique to the image and I decided to try here. I re-opened the original .HDR file to Tone Map – almost as if I didn’t already process the first tone mapping.  This time I am going to tone map with the sky as my focus. The image is going to look a bit softer overall and I want to see an image with no haloing surrounding the architecture.

You should notice the changed settings here.  The Micro-Smoothing and Highlight Smoothing is adjusted heavily and the overall image looks pretty good.  When viewing it in a smaller view, the halo has been reduced enough to be happy with today.  Someone with a more critical eye may see more of a halo.  We all see things differently.  I enjoy the sky look here and I’ll stop the tone mapping to process the image and save it as well.  As I mentioned, I don’t do this normally or for every image.  Right now, even as writing this out, I don’t know how merging these 2 images in Photoshop will look.  In my head, I visualize it working out as a clean image just like what I saw that day.  Only the next step will tell when I go to it.   Sometimes, just loading up one of the original RAW images and using that sky or other points of the image will work.  It’s process unique to the image and dynamic range.

I would recommend that tone mapping is just part of the workflow.  It’s not the end all and be all of your HDR image. It’s totally okay to now go further with the image in photoshop.  We’re using Photomatix to do the complex compression of the dynamic range because it does a much better job than Photoshop does currently. Don’t think that the image has to be perfect in Photomatix. Just simply do and don’t think you have to do the best. Just do and you’ll have room for growth and improvement.  In the next part of the Workflow I’ll take these two tone mapped images into Photoshop and we’ll see what can come out of it.

In the mean time, or if you’re interested in looking at more HDR photography, check out Urban HDR or 13 Inspirational HDR flickr Groups.

Next Step is about life after Photomatix!

Optimize your HDR Image in Photoshop