ProjectVISUAL

(N.B. This is Part 3 of my lengthy HDR Tutorial. Part 1 can be found here.)

So you’ve got your equipment, you’ve headed out into the big bad world, and you’ve taken your three / five / however many exposures of your favorite landscape, building, automobile or granny, now you’ve got to turn them into your very first masterpiece! You will of course need Photomatix for this to work; it’s the one essential piece of software you need. There are a couple of others, but I’ll mention them later. You can pick up Photomatix from HDRsoft. Remember to use the discount coupon “projectvisual” when purchasing to get your 15% discount .

OK, so open Photomatix. The left image below should pop up and you can select ‘Generate HDR image’. The right side image will jump up in your face and let you open your set of images.

      

Once you select the exposure range you can fine tune all your setting below. The ones shown are the settings I almost always use; if you shoot in RAW you can adjust the white balance at a later time.

Leave Photomatix to do its magic; importing your images, aligning them, reducing noise, fringing, and all that other stuff that make Photomatix so wonderful. You’ll end up with a HDR image that needs to be tone mapped so it can be properly viewed on your LDR monitor. Select ‘Tone Mapping’ from the first image above (or Process –> Tone Mapping from the toolbar and BAM! you have your image!). Don’t stop now though there’s still plenty to do …

Details Enhancer

There are two top level tone mapping settings in Photomatix – Details Enhancer and Tone Compressor. As far as I am aware Details Enhancer is the setting most people use; it’s also the default one so lets just stick with that one . Now Photomatix has a lot of settings, some of which you probably won’t use, and I think the best way to show you how each one affects your HDR image is with two images for each setting; one at the minimum (left) value, and one at the maximum (right) value. Bear in mind that by using this method of showing you the effect of each setting, all of the images below will look like extreme (slightly odd) versions of the finished shot. Also you can’t tell how one setting influences another .

• Strength

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Controls the strength of the contrast enhancements. A value of 100 gives the maximum increase in both local and global contrast enhancements. The default value is 70.”
  • What I say – While other settings in Photomatix will enhance or flatten your pics, without a decently sized strength value your photos will not have that WOW factor you are looking for. Typically a good starting value for this is about 70%, but I’ve slid it all the way up to 100% on more than one occasion.

• Color Saturation

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Controls the saturation of the RGB color channels. The greater the saturation, the more intense the color. A value of 0 produces a grayscale image. The value acolor channel equally. The default value is 46.”
  • What I say – This one is self explanatory; I always leave this setting at about 75 – 80%, but will go higher if I’m in a very colorful mood.

• Luminosity

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Controls the compression of the tonal range, which has the effect of adjusting the global luminosity level. Moving the slider to the right boosts shadow details and brightens the image. Moving it to the left has the opposite effect, and gives a more “natural” look to the resulting image. The default value is 0.”
  • What I say – Mmmmm this one is a little tricky to explain technically but it really corresponds to the brightness levels in the photo. Set it low and your images will be dark, set it high and your image will be bright! Often I will set this at the very maximum.

• Microcontrast

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Sets how much local details are amplified. A higher value gives a ‘sharper’ look. The default value is 0.”
  • What I say -Very useful for bringing out those hidden details in outdoor shots. Got a wall that looks one dimensional? Do those leaves look too flat?! Increase the microcontrast to bring out the brick and mortar and all those wonderful leafy veins in all their glorious detail!

• Smoothing

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Controls smoothing of the contrast variations throughout the image. This setting has an important influence on the look of the tone mapped image. High values give a more “natural” look, low values a more “artificial” or “painterly” look.”
  • What I say – This is a very important setting and one which many people often set too low. You know those pictures with all the halos around trees and buildings, like the left one above? They come largely from setting the smoothing slider too low. I find it’s best to look at all the smoothing settings and find the one that suits you best, but I would tend for the high end though .

Tone Settings

• White Point

  

• Black Point

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Both sliders control how the minimum and maximum values of the tone mapped image are set. Moving the sliders to the right increases global contrast. Moving them to the left reduces clipping at the extremes. The White Point slider sets the value for the maximum of the tone mapped image (pure white, or level 255). The Black Point slider sets the value for the minimum of the tone mapped image (pure black, or level 0). The default value is 0.25% for the White Point setting and 0% for the Black Point setting.”
  • What I say – I find that both the White and Black Point settings should be used together. Typically I bump up the values of these to give the contrast of the image a bit of umph. The White Point should ALWAYS be greater than the Black Point though.

• Gamma

  

• What Photomatix says – “Adjusts the mid-tone of the tone mapped image, brightening or darkening the image globally. The default value is 1.0.”
• What I say -The Gamma setting is like an extreme way of setting the brightness, kind of. I generally leave it at its default settings unless I’m still not happy with the shot after I’ve fiddled with all other settings.

Color Settings

• Temperature

  

  • What Photomatix says – “Adjusts the color temperature of the tone mapped image relative to the temperature of the HDR source image. Moving the slider to the right will give a “warmer”, more yellow-orange colored look. Moving the slider to the left gives a “colder”, more bluish look. A value of 0 (default) preserves the original color temperature of the HDR source image.”
  • What I say – Photomatix says it all really about this one; increase the temperature setting to give a warm yellow colour, decrease it to give a cooler blue image.

• Saturation Highlights

  

• What Photomatix says – “Adjusts the color saturation of the highlights relative to the color saturation set with the Color Saturation slider. Values higher than 0 increase the color saturation in the highlights; values lower than 0 decrease it. The default value is 0″
• What I say – I don’t use this setting much, but it can be useful for bumping up the colour saturation in some small highlight areas in photos so it’s worth playing around with.

• Saturation Shadows

  

• What Photomatix says – “Adjusts the color saturation of the shadows relative to the color saturation set with the Color Saturation slider. Values higher than zero will increase the color saturation in the shadows. Values lower than zero will decrease it. The default value is 0.”
• What I say – Exact same as for Saturation Highlights, except for shadows .

Miscellaneous Settings

• Micro-smoothing

  

• What Photomatix says – “Smoothes out local detail enhancements. This has the effect of reducing noise in the sky for instance, and tends to give a “cleaner” look to the resulting image. The default value is 2.”
• What I say – Although this will reduce noise as the value of the setting is increased it will also flatten shadows and detail in the image. I leave this at 2 or less as there are other, better ways of cleaning up noise afterwards.

• Highlights Smoothness, Shadows Smoothness, Shadows Clipping

  I always leave these three settings at their minimum values as I’ve yet to see them add anything significant to my images – if I ever do find use for them though I’ll update here accordingly .

I hope these points help you all out, but the most important key to getting the best results with Photomatix is to experiment with the settings yourself. With a bit of luck once you become more adept at manipulating these settings you’ll be creating your own HDR images just like our finished image here:

Photomatix can be found at Hdrsoft.com. There are others, but Photomatix is in my opinion the best I’ve tried. If you have it already that’s great, if not you can download a free trial version from the website for either WINDOWS or MAC OSX. Any images made with the trial version will be watermarked however .

Purchase Photomatix at 15% discount with Coupon Code “projectvisual”

If you’re feeling adventurous you can jump straight in and buy Photomatix for either WINDOWS or MAC at a discount of 15% if you use the coupon code “projectvisual”; you’ll see where to enter it if you click either of my oversized links below! Hdrsoft were kind enough to give me this code because I asked them so nicely

There is actually more to be done after you are through with Photomatix (really???!!!!). It’s true! They’re just quick after touches – I’ll talk about them soon in Part Four!