Top 10 Mistakes in HDR Processing, And How to Fix Them

*NOTE THAT THIS COVER PHOTO

IS WONDERFULLY MISTAKE-FREE

TOP 10 MISTAKESIN HDR PROCESSINGAND HOW TO FIX THEM - TREY RATCLIFF

STUCK IN CUSTOMSEBOOKS

COPYRIGHT © 2010 BY TREY RATCLIFF

EDITOR AND PUBLISHER:

Trey Ratcliff

COPY EDITOR:

Luke Lakatosh

CONTENT SUPERVISOR:

The DragonLady

PRODUCTION & MANAGER:

Will Kelly

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

No part of this book may be reproduced or

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Trey Ratcliff and Stuck In Customs Present:

Stuck In Customs | A unique collection of digital eBooks | StuckInCustoms.com/ebook

TOP 10 MISTAKES2010

I’ve already made every mistake in the

book. I think detailing my old mistakes will

help you!

Welcome to the first “Top 10 Mistakes” eBook!TAKE THESE TO HEART, AND

YOU’LL SAVE COUNTLESS HOURS OF PAIN AND SILENT

SOCIAL REJECTION

INTRODUCTIONS

Hello! I am Trey Ratcliff. It's nice to meet you! Perhaps you are a regular reader of StuckInCustoms.com or are familiar with my various tutorials. I really get a kick out of teaching people new ways to approach their digital art. This is the latest in that ongoing effort. I hope you enjoy it, and I look forward to your feedback.

TOP 10 COMMON MISTAKES

I have processed and seen more HDR than almost anyone in the world. I am not necessarily proud of this... it’s just the way it is. I often do critiques of HDR photos for large groups of people, and I know what rings true. By the end of this eBook, you should have a good grasp of my general sensibilities on the matter.

Many good remedies for the

most common HDR woes reside within

the following pages.

First Edition StuckInCustoms.com/ebook

F R O M T H E D E S K O F :TREY RATCLIFF

a p e r s o n a l c o l l e c t i o no f n o t e s a n d t i p s

T E L E P H O N E(888) 880-4509 E M A I LBUSINESS@.. .

This is ugly

HDR does Denis no favors The evil halo

IN HDR PROCESSING

TOP 10 COMMON HDR MISTAKES! PAGE4


IF I CAN SAVE A FEW BAD HDR PHOTOS FROM BEING UPLOADED TO THE SWEET INTERNET, I’LL FEEL LIKE I’VE DONE SOMETHING

RIGHT IN THIS LIFE.

ORIGIN OF THE EBOOK

When I began thinking about this eBook, I was quite flummoxed! My first impulse was to jump on Flickr and comb through thousands of photos until I could find 10 horrible HDRs that fit each of my 10 points.

I then started worrying a bit about it. Even if I chose Creative Common photos, I didn’t really relish the thought of tearing each of them apart in text. Even though my critique would be honest (and probably spot-on), it could be interpreted as downright mean. Now, on one hand, I don’t really care what other people think... but on the other hand, I don’t do things out of spite or malice... I did not want that to be the interpretation.

A PERSONAL JOURNEY

So instead, I decided to use my very own photos from a long time ago!

I started HDR many many years ago, and, slowly, over time I have self-corrected all of the top mistakes. I wish I’d had this guide 5 years ago!

I went through many years of photos and found ten of my old photos that have all the same problems that I still see nowadays. I hope that by critiquing my own work, that it becomes a source of ideas and “a-ha”s for you.

INSPIRATIONAL TIMELINE

I’ve often considered removing my “old” work from Flickr and the blog. I really HATE the old stuff and can’t stand looking at it. I had the occasional winner, but most were embarrassingly bad.

However, I hope this helps prove the case that anyone, including you, can improve and make great strides over time just by sticking with it.

I believe any one can get

better by analyzing mistakes,

forgiving the mistakes, and then moving on to create

more, different, and

better mistakes in the

future.

Yes, this is how my stuff used to look... back in the day So many bad HDRs...



Most readers will already have these tools and links, but in case you are new to the subject matter, the following are the most critical bits.

FREE HDR TUTORIALOn the web and very helpful

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-tutorial

PHOTOMATIX PROMy HDR Software of choice

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/PhotomatixUse coupon code “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to save money

TOPAZ ADJUSTGreat sharpening software to help the photos “pop”http://www.stuckincustoms.com/links/get_Topaz

Use coupon code “STUCKINCUSTOMS” to save money

MORE REVIEWSI only review software that I actually use... so go here for the latest!

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/reviews/

Free HDR Tutorial and the Tools I UseBETTER PHOTOGRAPHY WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM OUR FRIENDS....

A beautiful set of tones made perfect, thanks to Photomatix Another Photomatix success from Japan











Only because I have made so many

mistakes can I now create new HDRs

that are more satisfying on almost

any level.

In the following pages, you will see

how these two images do not suffer

from the 10 unmentionables.

All Mistakes Corrected

It has been a joy overcoming past mistakes

HDR can still be used in powerful ways



Every Problem in the Book (the eBook!)This incredibly horrible old photo below from yours truly has many of the telltale HDR mistakes.

MISTAKE #2: DIRTY WHITES (PAGE 32)

MISTAKE #6: LOSING ALL SENSE OF COLOR (PAGE 20)

MISTAKE #3: BLACK CLOUDS IN DAYTIME WHITES (PAGE 29)

MISTAKE #10: TOO MANY COLORS (PAGE 8)

MISTAKE #5: EARLY PROCESSING (PAGE 25)



Mistake #10: Too Many Colors



Mistake #10: Too Many ColorsSOLUTION

Don’t saturate more than one of the primary colors.

I find that people (and, when I say people - now and in the future - I am often referring to myself in the past) often use HDR to saturate more than one of the three primary colors. Below, you can see that I saturated all three!

This is not good and not necessary at all.

THE SCIENCE BEHIND IT

Many of you may know how one of my hobbies is researching the visual system and brain interaction. I

recently came across an article that talks about this very issue.

As you know, the retina has rods and cones. There was a lot of eye-tracking research done to see what people’s eyes do around color. It turns out that the eye is indeed attracted to saturated colors, but the cones “burn out” and become fatigued when looking at saturated colors for too long. When these cones get burned out, they move away to find relief and rest for a few microseconds. Well, if their eye immediately drifts to a different highly saturated color, then it gets even more fatigued.

So make sure your photo has places to “give the viewer’s eye a break”.



HDR Colors Done RightIn the photo below, you can see that I’ve chosen to only focus on one of the main three primary colors.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #9: Forest & Jungle



Mistake #9: Forest and JungleSOLUTION

Don’t take photos of jungle or dense trees with the HDR technique. It just doesn’t work as well as you think it might. It’s always challenging to take photos of tree-heavy areas for some reason. You would think that HDR might help to bring out all the light and “feeling” of being in these areas, but it does not. The only time I get these tree-heavy photos to work is when I am able to:

1) Single out one or two of the most interesting trees2) Make the whole scene not look too busy3) Make the colors look natural and real4) Use the sun either in the background or the

foreground, and use its light in an interesting manner.

COLOR SOLUTION

Have you noticed that your “greens” in HDR processing look a little fake? You may have the sense of “food-coloring-green”. To fix this in photoshop, open up the Hue/Saturation dialog, choose “Yellow” from the dropdown, and decrease the saturation.

Note this is counter-intuitive. What appears to be “too green” is actually “too yellow”. You will see this problem more in daytime greens because the biomass is actually somewhat translucent, and the sunlight is giving it a yellowish color.



A Well-Executed HDR Forest

After countless mistakes in taking photos of tree-heavy areas, I have found that there are only certain compositional and lighting conditions that work well.

Using a wide-angle lens to give the bamboo forest the “feeling” of closing in around you helped achieve the overall look of this image.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #8: The Localized Halo



Mistake #8: The Localized Halo

SOLUTION

Watch the Luminosity Slider in Photomatix. The more you move it to the right, the less halo you get.

Or clean up in Photoshop after the HDR processing.

HDR ALGORITHM

The algorithm does its best to make many “photos within photos.” That is, as the algorithm

sweeps across the photo, it will try to make “slightly” different areas “much” different. In the example below, it saw the tree was a little darker than the background, so it decided to make it a lot darker than the background by lightening the area around it.

Often times, there is just no good way to tweak the sliders to make it look perfect, and that means the solution is to clean everything up in Photoshop.

This photo has other problems as well, such as over-saturated and too-yellow trees.



Localized Halos FixedYou can see how the darker mountain looks acceptable in front of the lighter mountain. There is none of the halo problem. This was achieved by remixing the HDR result with one of the original photos.

You will note that the photo below also has no “blue sky halo,” which is the #1 Most Common Mistake you will come to at the end of this eBook. In this case, I fixed that by remixing the -1 exposure because I thought the blue tones looked best.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #7: Dirty Flowers



Mistake #7: Dirty Flowers

SOLUTION

Although you can still HDR Flowers, do not use the technique on the white, shiny, or silky parts of the flower.

SELECTIVE MASKING

In my HDR Tutorial and in the HDR DVD, I always recommend masking. This is a process in which you can remix the result of the HDR with the original photo.



Clean Flower ColorsHDR threatened to darken and discolor these white-pink cherry blossoms. It required remixing with the original image to keep things clean and pure in color and tone.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #6: Losing All Sense of Color



Mistake #6: Losing All Sense of ColorSOLUTION

Shoot at a higher ISO to get less reflected light, remember the original color, and ensure it is reflected in the final photo.

COLOR REFLECTION PROBS

Sometimes, we get so into the HDR processing that the image becomes a distant memory of the actual scene.

The color of a scene in HDR can get worse because surfaces pick up reflected colors, which then re-reflect on other surfaces. You may notice this in “too-yellow” interiors where warm lights end up making everything look more orange and yellow than in reality.

A long shutter speed can make this problem even worse. To combat it, decrease your shutter speed by increasing your ISO.



Ensuring Proper ColorThe Saturation slider in HDR programs can sometimes over-color the clouds. Don’t let that happen. Remember, I recommend using programs like Photomatix to make 70% of the photo look good, and then go do any corrections (including cloud color correction) by remixing with one of the original photos.

The photo below threatened to make the clouds too blue in the processing, so I needed to make them their original white to keep it realistic.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #5: Early Processing



Mistake #5: Early ProcessingSOLUTION

Save some of your best photos, and wait a few years before you process them.

FIRST IN, LAST OUT

Inevitably, we all will end up wasting some of your best photos with your mediocre technique. That is a shame. As you can see in this photo below, I was in beautiful

Milan, Italy. The lighting conditions were amazing; it will never be like that again.

I went home and processed it immediately. Now I see that was a mistake, because I could do so much better now. If I would have saved this for a few years, I would have been able to avoid the obvious mistakes of too-dark clouds, too-strong HDR, and white-point problems.

Don’t pressure yourself into processing photos in the order in which you take them.



Late ProcessingI processed the photo below a very long time after I actually left Paris. I picked up a lot of processing tricks in the meantime, and it helped me to make this one look much better than it would have if I had processed it immediately.

For example, here I used the Wow Landscape filter from Nik Software. Use the coupon code STUCKINCUSTOMS to save money if you want to try it. You can grab it from the website below.

http://www.niksoftware.com/index/usa/entry.php

Illustrated

Correction





Mistake #4: Sickly, Coalminer People



Mistake #4: Sickly, Coalminer PeopleSOLUTION

Very simply, don’t HDR people’s skin. It never works.

HDR EVERYTHING ELSE

As you can see in the photo below, everything else looks pretty cool. The shirt looks shiny and interesting. The wall is nice and textured. As described above in Mistake

#8, I recommend that you selectively mask in the real skin tones from one of the original photos.

You will also notice that HDR skin not only looks dirty, but it gets a bit of a “green tone” or sheen on top. It’s very strange and certainly doesn’t feel right.

Sometimes (and only sometimes), it looks interesting if you use the HDR technique on the iris, but nowhere else. The success of this depends on a number of conditions, and I invite you to try it!



HDR and PeopleThe photo below has everything in HDR except for the skin tones of the Indian boy. It helps to bring out the rich texture of the environs without making his face and skin look mottled or strange.

If you want more help to see exactly how I do masking to remix the HDR result and the original image, I have an HDR DVD that will be of great service to you!

http://www.stuckincustoms.com/hdr-dvd/

Illustrated

Correction





Mistake #3: Black Clouds in Daytime



Mistake #3: Black Clouds in DaytimeSOLUTION

If you are going to make some nice HDR “dark clouds,” make sure there is no blue sky also in the scene.

IT’S IMPOSSIBLE

I think you’ll agree with me that it is just not possible to have sunny skies, blue skies, and black-dark clouds out at the same time. These sorts of scenes are immediately rejected by the viewer as impossible.

If you are going to have dark clouds in your photo, be sure that the entire sky is cloudy. That’s a bit more believable.

Still, I recommend not letting your clouds get to “pure” black. Keep it a dark grey... it’s still cool.. don’t worry about being too extreme. The viewer’s eye will immediately adjust to the darkest thing in the sky, and that will become their anchor.



HDR Clouds in the DayThe default HDR processing will almost always over-darken clouds. In this example below, there was blue sky, and it was obviously daytime. I did not want to “blacken” the clouds too much because it looks unrealistic.

The bottom half of the photo has most of the HDR process in force, and there you can see the strong textures and colors. The clouds on the top are maybe “half ” HDR, since they have been heavily remixed with the -1 exposure from the component photos.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #2: The Dirty Whites



Mistake #2: The Dirty Whites

SOLUTION

Don’t worry about moving the sliders around in your HDR program to make the whites look clean. It is very difficult!

If you use Photomatix 4 or later, you can use the “ghosting” tool to go in, select this area, and then choose which exposure to use in its stead. I’d suggest the -1 or the -2 EV version.

There is another HDR program from Nik Software that will allow you to use “control points” to fix these issues without needing Photoshop. See more at http://www.niksoftware.com/index/usa/entry.php

AGAIN WITH THE MASKING

Otherwise, it becomes absolutely necessary in these situations to correct the HDR mistakes in Photoshop. Simply remix the HDR version with the original picture where the sky looks clean.







Pure Whites in HDRIn the initial processing of this photo below, the sun came out that dirty color that one comes to expect with the HDR process. There is no good “slider situation” where you can get it to look okay inside the HDR program. So, I recommend fixing that bit by remixing with the original sun.

Illustrated

Correction



Mistake #1: The Blue-Sky Halo



Mistake #1: The Blue Sky Halo

SOLUTIONS

This is the #1 question and mistake in HDR! I have found three workable solutions.

#1: Slide the luminosity bar far to the right

#2: Remix the final HDR with one of the original photos in Photoshop. Mask in the blue sky that looks the best.

#3: Don’t take the photo with plain blue sky! Come back to this spot at sunset, sunrise, or dusk. The varied colors and light levels in the sky will hide the halo effect.



The Blue Sky HaloThe photo below is a good example of how to face the perpetual problem of the blue sky halo. There are two main structures here. The one on the left is not a problem because of the particolored skies and clouds beyond. The HDR algorithm is busy there with all the various tones and shades, but on the right, there is just plain blue sky. To fix this bit, I had to softly remix the original photo that had the same sorts of blues that blended in with the left side of the photo.

Illustrated

Correction

I hope you enjoyed this eBook. Not only do they take a long time to make, but they have taken me many years of toil and expertise (and

hundreds of mistakes!) to make this possible.

Many Bothans died to bring you this information.

Visit StuckInCustoms.com/ebook to see the latest offerings, and I would LOVE to hear your feedback!

A Big Thank You from the Ratcliff family!


Documents

Top 10 Mistakes in HDR Processing, And How to Fix Them