Comparison of Image Processing with HDR and Layers

[Imagebuffet]

I shot an image of a church's stained glass windows and created two versions from those images. In the first version, I ran 3 exposures through an HDR processor (Photomatix) and used Adobe Photoshop Elements (APE) 5 to adjust. In the second version, I used HDR on the stained glass, and put that on its own layer, and used conventional editing on the rest of the image on its own layer. Here are the results:

First Image:





Second Image:



I can't decide which image is preferable. Both have their merits. I think I prefer the second image.

[DavidsStudio]

#2. Looks more natural and capture the truer colors of the stained glass.

David

[ShutteredEye]

Originally Posted by DavidsStudio

#2. Looks more natural and capture the truer colors of the stained glass.

David

+1, #2 is far and away the better image.

[DigitalScape]

Another for the second image - has a natural look to it.

[pugz]

#2 for sure. looks really natural

[Lexie]

Another vote for #2. I agree with the others. It does have a more natural look and better colors of stained glass.

[Arnor]

Richard,

I find the first image to be very flat because of the evening of the exposure - there are basically no shadows to give it depth. The second one looks a bit too dark, but my laptop screen is out of calibration so it may just be my screen. But the second one has a lot of depth and detail to it and I agree with others about it being a much better image.

Best regards,

[jeffkohn]

I agree the second looks better although it's a bit on the dark side.

The first one, I have to think is not the best Photomatix can do. This type of image should be pretty well suited to HDR (especially since there's no sky). It looks like you used the "tone compressor" instead of "details enhancer", I've yet to see an image where the "tone compressor" tone-mapping did a good job. The color balance of the first also seem pretty bad.

I do agree with your "hybrid" approach though. Using a tone-mapped HDR image as part of the manual blending process can be very useful at time.

[ngoduyviet]

Pretty obvious which one is better, but have you tried to color-correct the first one, then process it a bit? then it'll be more of a challenge

[Imagebuffet]

Originally Posted by jeffkohn

I agree the second looks better although it's a bit on the dark side.

The first one, I have to think is not the best Photomatix can do. This type of image should be pretty well suited to HDR (especially since there's no sky). It looks like you used the "tone compressor" instead of "details enhancer", I've yet to see an image where the "tone compressor" tone-mapping did a good job. The color balance of the first also seem pretty bad.

I do agree with your "hybrid" approach though. Using a tone-mapped HDR image as part of the manual blending process can be very useful at time.

I always intend to use details enhancer on my HDR images, and that is my default, so I'm fairly certain that I used the details enhancer.