Single Photo v 3 Shot HDR

As the setting Sun was about to disappear behind a roof top yesterday I could clearly see the Sun without being dazzled. At first I used the Canon G5X normal CR3 single shot of the scene: (processed to jpg in Affinity Photo without any adjustments)



The shape of the Sun can just be seen but the strong Sunlight closed down the lens aperture leaving most of the scene dark and dull. Next I switched to the HDR (High Dynamic Range) setting where three pictures are taken in rapid succession and parts of each are used to make a composite photo. One photo is exposed as the above one. Another is slightly over exposed to bring out the darker areas. The final one being slightly under exposed to reduce the glare from the brightest sections of the scene. All this is done in the camera taking about five seconds. The final result being: (exactly as produced by the camera)



A much more realistic lighting effect. Normally I wouldn't point a camera at the Sun without a solar filter but this time the light from it was much weaker as it was low in the sky and shining through thin cloud.

HDR

Many thanks to Adrian of Adrian's Images who happened to blog that Google had made their set of NIK filters free so I had a quick look and found they would work with two of the programs I have on the Mac: Aperture and Adobe Photoshop Elements 10, fully in Aperture v3.5.1 and all bar the HDR filter in Elements 10.

It was a quick, though large 600MB+ download, an easy installation followed by a quick online search to see where they could be found in each program.

I gave the filters each a quick look in Aperture and then chose a photo to try out the HDR filter:

The rather insipid original:


A bit of  a crop and then a look at some of the many pre-set choices, ending up with 'Deep 1' to give dramatic effect. It doesn't end there as there are many tweeks which can be applied. I used the 'Graduated Neutral Density' controls to finish with complete with a partial rotation of the filter to give more light on the left hand side:



That, for me, brought a dull photo to life with a bit of atmosphere. This was only a quick trial as there are more complex and localised changes which can be made with this set of filters but they will take more than a bit of research plus lots of trial and error to find out how to get the best out of them.

Make it More Interesting (Simply HDR Mac app)

Lots of things to experiment (play) with on the MacBook now. One such is the Mac app 'Simply HDR'. It is not what I would call an HDR program, more an arty manipulation app which works on a single photo but with many effects to choose from.

I started with a dull photo of the artificial bird of prey I had taken recently ......



...... cropped to remove the telephone cable and then adjusted by choosing HDR HDR-12 with adjustments to grain strength, smoothing and vignette:



To me this made a much more dramatic and interesting view from what was a photo I would probably have binned.

Trial of Dynamic Photo-HDR

I was checking to see whether there was an update to the ReDynaMix plug-in I use in Photoshop when I spotted a stand alone product from the same company. Dynamic Photo-HDR from Media Chance.  At $54 it is far from cheap but I do like their other product and what really caught my eye was that it was able to perform an HRD like process on movie files as well as still photos. They say this is an experimental addition to the program. With photos it can work on a single one like ReDynaMix or with multiple photos with diferent exposures as you would expect for genuine HRD processing.

There is a fully working trial version (the only extra in the trial is to put a small watermark on the output files) so I downloaded and installed that. For video processing I also had to download a package of free video codecs. That was a bit unnerving as the first thing it wanted to do was uninstall a codec I had already. As it had its own copy in the package I let it do that. Then it gave many reports of errors in the registry. These seemed to related to the stuff it had uninstalled so I followed its recommendation of removing those references from the registry. That took a while as each was reported seperately.

Once that was finished and before anything else I made a quick check that video playing was still working OK. It was so I could start breathing again!

Last night I tried a few short video files in Dynamic Photo-HDR and was reasonably impressed with the way it improved the dynamic range and some detail in murky video files. That could be useful for dull weather nature videos. The interface is pretty easy to use and there is an instant view of the changes though I would have liked the window to have been larger. Once satisfied with the changes saving is a slow process - the company acknowledge this and do warn that increasing the dynamic range on a video can increase the effect of grain.

 


On to the results:

Still photo HDR:

One of three photos taken with different exposures
 

Resultant tone mapped HDR using all three exposures
( the program allows for much tweaking and variation)


Video HDR

This is a reworking of a video I took some time ago.




The original:



This is not a program for making video. Either clips can be HDR processed and later assembled together in a program like  Corel Video Studio or Video Pad or the clips assembled first and the resulting video then HDR processed.

All in all, given a bit more testing, I think I shall be investing in a copy of Dynamic Photo-HDR as I am used to the interface - very similar to ReDynaMix - and it is easy to use when manipulating photos or videos. The only gripe I have so far is that video files cannot be dragged and dropped on to the program whereas photos can.


Apple Maps:
Can't resist linking to this brilliant video:



Apple should be ashamed of themselves and I'm sure Steve Jobs would be turning in his grave to see such useless software being produced in what should be a top end product.

HDR Sunset - iPhone4 + Photomatrix Pro and ReDynaMix

Lovely sunset last night and this time we managed to get into the right place early enough. I only had the iPhone4 with me and after taking a few shots I discovered I could take slightly different exposures by choosing different places in the photo for the camera to focus. I use the app Camera+ and, as with other photo apps on the iPhone you use the touch screen to tell the app where to focus. What I found was, with something with contrasting areas of light like a sunset, not only does the app focus where it is told but also takes the exposure reading from that area. That gave me the idea of taking three photos with slightly different exposures to use for making an HDR picture.

This is one of the photos as taken by the iPhone:

The other two were slightly darker or lighter.

The idea was to transfer the photos to the PC and use Photomatrix to do the HDR processing. On loading them I had to change the numeric level of one as Photomatrix nagged that it thought two were the same exposure. That gave it a -1, 0 and +1 combination of exposures to work with.

My biggest surprise was Photomatrix Pro 4.1 gave me a set of built in preset thumbnails at the bottom of the screen with different results to choose from. Something I have not seen before with this program:



I chose Enhancer - Painterly and told it to process. The result being:



There must be a way to get back to the thumbnails but I couldn't find it so loaded the three originals again. This time choosing Enhancer - Grunge:



Those results were just as the program set things up and it would have been possible to add a bit of extra individual tweaking.

While in a tweaking mood I loaded the top original iPhone photo in Photoshop Elements 10 and used the ReDynaMix plugin to see how well it could achieve an HDR effect from one picture:



As the saying goes - when it comes to trying to reproduce what the eye sees on subjects like sunsets - yer pays yer money and yer takes yer choice. The Grunge result I like as an arty picture though it looks nothing like the actual Sunset. Of my efforts the ReDynaMix is the nearest to the real thing though the idea of HDR is to achieve a High Dynamic Range.

There is at least one app for the iPhone which automatically takes HDR photos but the one I tried processes the photo immediately after taking the shots and it was a long wait before any more photos could be taken. With something as fleeting as a sunrise or sunset it was better to be able to take lots of shots and do the processing later.

The Camera Never Lies

That's what they used to say but in this digital world of HDR and airbrushing my reply to that would be humph!

I set the Lumix TZ7 to take three shots of the same scene at -1  0  +1 EV



Then I combined them as an HDR tonemapped image using  Photomatrix so as to make the sky a bit more dramatic at the same time trying not to make the green areas too unrealistic.



Then, being the inveterate twiddler I am, I thought I would further process the HDR image in Paintshop Pro using the ReDynaMix plugin. I also cropped the result.



Which of these looks like the scene as I saw it? None of them. The digital camera doesn't see the full spectrum range our eyes see or at least cannot process it in the same way our brain does. Which image is most interesting, well that is always subjective.

Finally I decided to convert the last image to greyscale.



There is something about b/w images. Colours don't get in the way of seeing the shapes and textures.

Sunset

Last night was the first time for quite a while that there has been a sunset where the clouds reflected the lovely oranges and reds as the Sun dipped below the horizon. This gave a photo opportunity and a chance to experiment. I used the Lumix TZ7 and tried several different settings. Also I was able to try out a plugin which gives HDR like effects on single photographs.

The first pair are looking towards the setting sun from my back garden.
First as taken by the camera:


Secondly the same file after processing:


This pair are looking to the South:
Again, as taken by the Lumix:


Once again the same file after processing:


I was astounded how much detail there was to be found in the deep shadows using the RE-Dynamizer HDR plugin. There are quite a few controls to tweak and these were just a first trial to see what it could do. RE-Dynamizer is not free but the trial version is fully working and just adds its name to the top and bottom of the picture when saved. It is a standard Adobe type file and should work with any program which can handle them. I use Paintshop Pro X2.

The Lumix does not have the facility to take RAW photos and it was obvious, especially on the second pair of photos, that it introduces some noise on JPGs. It will be interesting to see what it can do with RAW files.

Lambs, Fruit to Come, Experiments with HDR, a Yellow Dog

All todays efforts were taken with the Lumix TZ7

There are a few short lanes / tracks left in the village where one can pretend there are no buildings. This one leads to the field where we saw the lambs.





Signs of things to come:
The first strawberry flower (growing in the greenhouse)



The flowers on my dwarf plum tree. It only had two flowers last year but this year things look more promising.



Having at last found how to set the bracketing on the Lumix I have experimented taking shots at +/- 2/3 EV and decided to see what the result would be if I processed a couple as HDR using  Photomatrix Pro. Considering the photos were taken hand held the program did a great job of matching the three shots which make up each picture.

A Daffodil (not a lot of difference with this subject)



A succulent with the low sunlight shining through the plant. (A much better subject)



Somebody was not amused when I burst out laughing. Bobby had decided to push through a miniature weeping tree which is covered in catkins. Maybe he was doing his impression of a Lincolnshire Yellow Belly.




It's a good job he doesn't suffer with Hay Fever.