Tone mapping

[greenmorpher]

Have a look at this, you experts.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=36238053

Can we do this (or fake it) in PL without the plug-in (which costs as much as PL).

Best regards, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Success in Store: how to start or buy a retail business, enjoy running it and make money" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Buy at Amazon or http://www.worsleypress.com[quote][/quote]

[Hoogo]

Are you sure that you want THAT?

Try highpass-filter in L-channel with a high radius.

[akeller]

*

[akeller]

*

[greenmorpher]

Nice pictures, Andy. Of course, PL has HDR (in PL 15, Menu Bar > Filter > Digital Camera > Create HDR). I tried the Carnival series from Photomatix site with this. It came out far too light and flat, but by fiddling with the curves and stuff (Menu Bar > Tool > Curves), I got something although it's pretty awful. I have no doubt someone more familiar with this tool could do far better.

Thanks for the links to tone mapping. I'll have a look at them.

Hoogo -- I'll try your cunning kludge, too. No, I don't want that result most of the time, but sometimes it might be fun.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or http://www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

By the way, the so-called "fake HDR" effect is simply the old masking process (dating back to film days) that HDR replaced, of course.

And the images I played with (actually "did nasty things to") were from http://www.hdrsoft.com/download/pml_mac.html

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[Martin Huber]

Have a look at this, you experts.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=36238053

Can we do this (or fake it) in PL without the plug-in (which costs as much as PL).

The attached action creates a similar effect. It creates two groups: one for the shadows and one for the lights.
The Curves adjustment layers are controlling which luminosity values are modified, the blur layers are controlling the size of the halos. The Histogram adjustment layers can be used to adjust the "HDR" effect.

ToneMapping.actions.zip

Martin

[greenmorpher]

Many thanks, Martin, I'll have a go with that.

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[bkh]

Have a look at this, you experts.

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read. ... e=36238053

Can we do this (or fake it) in PL without the plug-in (which costs as much as PL).

It's a pity most people don't publish their originals. However, I guess that it's fairly easy to obtain such "artistic" effects using PL. (Producing naturally looking HDRs more or less out of the box is much harder and probably requires special software.)

In any case, I'd use the L curve to reduce the contrast in the mid-tones (making the L curve almost horizontal there) and then compensate for the loss of local contrast by adding a blur filter with large radius (for digital photographs, I use a value around 30) , threshold at 15 - 20 % and negative intensity for the L channel. My present favourite is Adaptive Soften because it doesn't sharpen edges. It's a bit slow, so you might want to switch it off while adjusting the L curve.
Add saturation to your liking. The sample picture also has some amount of blurring in it, so add a Gaussian filter with high radius and low intensity if you really want that effect as well.

I'll attach an action to add appropriate adjustment layers to the selected layer - play with the L curve and adjust the local contrast by using the layer intensity of the Adaptive Soften filter.

Here's a sample (no saturation or blurring added - it's from a street scene I found in the net, http://www.cocinandocon-nestle.com/nirf ... k2_big.JPG)

NewYork2_big_after.jpg

Cheers,

Burkhard.

EDIT: I suppose that you can achieve the same effect using Martin's action - the reason I posted mine is that it might be easier to use, especially if you like to tweak your images using Curves, but if you want "realistic" looks, you'd better stick with Martin's action.

[bkh]

Of course, PL has HDR (in PL 15, Menu Bar > Filter > Digital Camera > Create HDR). I tried the Carnival series from Photomatix site with this. It came out far too light and flat, but by fiddling with the curves and stuff (Menu Bar > Tool > Curves), I got something although it's pretty awful. I have no doubt someone more familiar with this tool could do far better.

Tried this as well. Now I expected that PL just stacked the photos (resulting in a very contrasty 16 bit image looking like the overexposured version, but with all the information in the shadows still present). Instead, it seems to do some sort of tonemapping, and unfortunately, there is very little control over it, and no documentation about the HDR algorithm used and the meaning that single slider labelled "contrast" (probably meaning contrast reduction). Or am I overlooking something? Shouldn't "contrast = 0" result in just the stacked image, without any tone mapping applied?

Cheers,

Burkhard.

[greenmorpher]

Cool bananas, Burkhardt. Between you and Martin, that gives me a solid starting point. I'll have a play with it over the weekend. Many thanks. I hope others are getting some enjoyment out of this thread too!

Cheers, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE Bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Type & Layout: Are you communicating or just making pretty shapes?" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Amazon or www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

Playing with these actions, I find I don't actually know what the "L curve" is, Burkhardt. I've lurked around among the tools but using your Action, I can't reproduce your final thing.

Martin -- tried your action on an appropriate photo with very pleasing results. SEE ATTACHED.

Best regards, Geoff

Geoffrey Heard
Publisher, Editor, Business Writer
The Worsley Press

FREE bonus book offer. Get "How to make great ads for (sm)all business" FREE when you buy "Success in Store: how to start or buy a retail business, enjoy running it and make money" or "How to Start and Produce a Magazine or Newsletter". Buy at Amazon or http://www.worsleypress.com

[greenmorpher]

Hey, Andy, I shoujld have captioned the picture above: "YOUNG radio guy!"

Cheers, Geoff

[bkh]

Playing with these actions, I find I don't actually know what the "L curve" is, Burkhardt. I've lurked around among the tools but using your Action, I can't reproduce your final thing.

When you apply the action to the image, it'll add two adjustment layers. One of them is a "Curves" adjustment layer. The L curve is the one that comes up when you open the adjustment layer (actually, the sum channel comes up, but it's the same as the L channel ).

The example I posted is basically what I get when applying my action to the image without any modifications.

Cheers

Burkhard.

[OldRadioGuy]

... I shoujld have captioned the picture above: "YOUNG radio guy!"

That's me in an earlier life!

Bob