Photoshop Creative

I loved the effect on Andy's photo in the Faux HDR thread. I decided to try it myself. I got the tutorial from the PET magazine. Very easy, but as the article says, it doesn't work on everything.

Before HDR


After HDR


I was amazed that there were rocks in among the trees after HDR. They weren't visible in the original. Pretty neat trick.

Completely agree - HDR isn't always good. I feel there are two ways to look at it...... It can be seen as a method of expanding the range of luminosity captured by your camera, so that you will get details in both the highlights and the shadows simultaneously...... or, it becomes an art form in its own way - though in my opinion I think it works best inside buildings.

The human eye can pick out details in both highlights and shadows, and yet we expect photographs to have dark and light areas - and when we see such a range, particularly outdoors, the eye/brain combination presses an alarm to say, "Hey that's not right".

The best uses I've yet seen for HDR have been in very difficult lighting situations - contra jour, or wherever there's a full range of "black to white" or, better still, inside churches and old factories or farm buildings.

I used to belong to an HDR Group on Flickr, and I was impressed by a professional use, in a non-artistic way, of HDR.......... a realtor (estate agent in English) used the techniques for his pictures inside houses - it put details into the shadow areas and reduced highlights - including providing the ability to see the view outside through a window! I also discovered some absolutely wonderful HDR pictures taken inside churches - old ones, with small windows and painted walls, ceilings and sculptures.

Suzanne,
The faux HDR may bring out the rocks among the trees but (just my opinion) you loose the drama of the shadows in the original.
Chas

Thanks Geoff. You've given me some fine ideas for my future use of HDR. I will save your post to revisit when I attempt this again.

Chas - I have a lot of work to do before I can be totally satisfied with the results. As the author said, it takes some tweaking to get the results you want. Learning and doing, learning and doing - that is what this is all about. Never want to stagnate by thinking I've learned it all.

Suzanne, You might consider running a levels adjustment to bring back midtone contrast(that's the middle slider-just move it a little to the right). I often do that to finish my hdr's.

If your faux HDR looks a little drab you can also do a levels adjustment layer to ge the colors back.
Chas

Thanks all! Great ideas for me to hold on to.