HDR software advise needed.

shaylou

shaylou

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Shayne
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I have decided to get a HDR plug in for my lightroom 4 but sense I have never used one before I need your help. One thing that I know I want is a natural look. I really do not care for pictured that looked photoshoped. Something that has a nice workflow with lightroom 4.

Can you please make suggestions and if you have time explain why you prefer it over the other software.

Perhaps some ideas about what is important to look for when choosing one.

Thanks in advance for your help.
 
I use Photomatix Pro and find it integrates with LR4 nicely. It has all sorts of presets and settings giving you any look you want.
 
Another vote for Photomatix, once you get the settings sorted for your images you can save your own preset and just apply it for furure ones.
 
shaylou said:
How do your pictures look?
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However I want them to is the honest answer. You can process them any way you choose, increasing or decreasing the strength of the HDR 'look'.
 
Morph3ous said:
However I want them to is the honest answer. You can process them any way you choose, increasing or decreasing the strength of the HDR 'look'.
Click to expand...

Yep you can get anything from lovely and sutble to..... Well let's say over the top.
 
Photomatix is amazing. Its very easy to make things look very pants with it though. The hard part of HDR is making things look real, subtlety is the key. There are a lot of user presets out on the net.
This is one of the more natural HDR's I have produced with Photomatix.
It was a LOT darker than it looks when I took the shot.
 
swanseamale47 said:
Another vote for Photostatic, once you get the settings sorted for your images you can save your own preset and just apply it for furure ones.
Click to expand...

I use photomatix, I do save my recipes, but usually treat each image, rather than presets (PS) to be honest, after all their all different, although PS do make shortcuts then further tweak
 
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shaylou said:
I have decided to get a HDR plug in for my lightroom 4 but sense I have never used one before I need your help. One thing that I know I want is a natural look. I really do not care for pictured that looked photoshoped. Something that has a nice workflow with lightroom 4.

Can you please make suggestions and if you have time explain why you prefer it over the other software.

Perhaps some ideas about what is important to look for when choosing one.

Thanks in advance for your help.
Click to expand...

Just out of curiosity. You have a Canon camera. Have tried the HDR in the latest version of Canon's DPP?
 
Photomatix for me too, once I've got the processed HDR I then play around with the image in photoshop until I'm completely happy with it.

Look forward to seeing your results, good luck :)
 
Like the others have said, you really can do as much as you like. Here's an example of an HDR image which doesn't look HDR (if you know what I mean)

Each one of the 5 images that I stitched to get the panorama was made using three bracketed shots at -2, 0 and +2. I processed one set in Photomatix to get the look I wanted then saved the settings as a preset. I then used Photomatix's excellent Batch Processing tool to do the other four using the preset. Made life soo much easier and quicker.


Lulworth Cove Panorama 3 by Minnis Photography, on Flickr

This is another example. Photomatix allowed me to bring out the detail in the windmill...


Thurne Windmill by Minnis Photography, on Flickr

I love Photomatix for multiple exposure work. Its just great.
 
killwilly said:
Just out of curiosity. You have a Canon camera. Have tried the HDR in the latest version of Canon's DPP?
Click to expand...

No I have not try that. I'm not real computer savy so its important to me to have everything as simple as possible. I figured that with a plug in I would have less transferring around and could pretty much have as close to an all in one program as possible. I didn't care to take time with canons software because the overwhelming advice to not start my photography journey with a camera brands software in case I ever decided to change brands. I'm happy with lightroom so I guess I will purchase it.
 
I only have the Nik HDR Efex but hear an awful lot of folk bigging up photomatix. Any opinions?
 
Photomatix is the nuts...I use 3 or 4 programs (actually only 3 now that I think about it - bombed one a while back) but PM is the one I revert back to time and again.
 
I'm a bit computer challenged so I'm going to search how to install and use with lightroom 4. I took some bracket shoots the other day and think they might turn out nice. I hope all goes well with this first try. It seems that everyone like pm so I'm going to go with that. Thanks for all of the help.
 
Have a look an Enfuse - it is free and had a Lightroom plugin (which is Donationware i.e. you donate an amount and the limit of 500px output is removed). It gives great realistic HDR without too much work. You will never get the over cooked HDR that you can get with Photomatix et al, so if that is what you want, then Enfuse isnt the tool for you.

Stephen
 
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