# HDR.....or Not ?



## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

Please help me out here. Tell me which of these you think looks better and why. The image comes from a RAW file taken about 20 min before sunset. One was simply resized, sharpened, and saved as a JPEG. The other was saved as 6 different JPEGs with the raw plugin exposure slider at -1.9, -.9, -.5 +.5, +.9 and +1.9. The 6 jpegs were combined with Dynamic Photo HDR. Intended usage is a computor wallpaper image.


----------



## stargazer (May 24, 2004)

Last, It looks like the color is more natural. Anyway, Dang nice boat no matter what color it is.


----------



## fangard (Apr 18, 2008)

I like the first one. Why? The coloring definitely says sunrise/sunset. That certain glow, if you know what I mean. The other one is nice, but it might as well be taken under cloud cover in the middle of the day.

fangard


----------



## Arlon (Feb 8, 2005)

I like the color of the top one but I don't like the noise added to the image. 

Try just tone mapping the single raw file in your Dynamic Photo program if you can. I use tone mapping alone in Photomatix quite a lot. Sometime the results are surprising (good and bad)..


----------



## Jerry-rigged (May 21, 2004)

I like the color of the boat hull and the grass/brush in the second one. The sky and water in the first one have that dramatic HRD look, without looking overdone...


----------



## apslp (Jul 1, 2008)

First one, Everything looks to be more defined and detailed.


----------



## Koru (Sep 25, 2006)

i prefer the second one. there is noise in the first, and the colour saturation is set too high - the red colour of the face is very prominent and the yellow is too glary for comfortable viewing of the image, in my opinion, also the red on the motor is unreadable.
hope that's helpful.
rosesm


----------



## The Machine (Jun 4, 2007)

second, the first one to bright


----------



## lchien (Nov 22, 2006)

i understand that HDR pics are composed from processing multiple pics taken at different EV values.
The water is not reproducibly going to stay the same, I would expect 6 different shots to blur the water. and possibly the boat and or the background since the boat is not "fixed to the shore and the photo is probably taken from another boat. Are the images used for the HDR processing the same image but modified the RAW?


----------



## RustyBrown (May 29, 2004)

Along the lines of what Arlon said.  I prefer the contract inthe HDR image, but the nois makes me prefer the second. One thing that works for me with noisy HDRs is to through out the highly overexposed files - that way you not "pushing the film so much" (to use an old film term).


----------



## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

Thanks all for the feedback. You are right about more noise in the HDR version. I think I'm going to play with applying some noise reduction to the underexposed jpeg elements and rebuild the HDR.


----------



## Capt Rick Hiott (Dec 14, 2007)

Wouldn't a "White Balance" adjustment help it a lot???????????????


----------



## Slip (Jul 25, 2006)

The first one with color, does make it look more like an evening photo, but I like the last best myself.


----------



## richg99 (Aug 21, 2004)

I am all for the first one, since I like the late ( or early) sun's glow. I also agree with Arlon that there is too much noise in #1. If it can't be fixed, it still would be my favorite, but I'll bet a little noise reduction would cure that issue. 

Just shows that you can't please everybody...or anybody!...some days. Ha Ha 
regards, Rich


----------



## Pocketfisherman (May 30, 2005)

Capt Rick Hiott said:


> Wouldn't a "White Balance" adjustment help it a lot???????????????


It was shot during the golden hour right before sunset. It really was that orangy at the time of the shot. HDR tends to raise the saturation a bit, so I don't think it is color balance as much as maybe lowering the saturation.


----------

