Testing LRCC HDR merge function.

Blacktop

Senior Member
Merged 3 shots 0,1,-1 EV. Used heavy ghost reduction as it was very windy out today. Also selected "auto tone" as well.

(I'm very impressed with the ghost reduction here BTW. I love how Photomatix does GH and I like it much better than HDR Pro in NIK. (JMO))

The only thing I did to it was select the gradient brush, and darkened the sky to the original -1 EV shot, and brought out some shadows,. and uppoed the exposure a bit in the foreground and on the barn.

Then I did my usual crop (not much, some off the right side as the road was showing a bit}.
Also took away a little sharpness and noise from the sky, and sharpened the rest of the pic. (with the brush).

Then I adjusted the whole shot adding white and a touch black. White balance stayed "as shot".

It is very good for basicly just blending exposures and then brushing away, which I could do in PS by using layers. This is faster however and much simpler.

If I wanted that HDR-ish look, I would have done it in Photomatix, but for this, doing it in LR really works. The only thing I need to do is upgrade my GPU . Slow as molasses.

_DSC9056-HDR.jpg


https://www.flickr.com/photos/117211217@N08/17255923656/in/photostream/
 

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
Good looking scene.

Are you using the GPU as support to the CPU in LR? Uncheck the GPU box and you should see some speed improvements. Somewhere in the preferences, don't remember exactly but disabling the GPU helped here.
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Good looking scene.

Are you using the GPU as support to the CPU in LR? Uncheck the GPU box and you should see some speed improvements. Somewhere in the preferences, don't remember exactly but disabling the GPU helped here.

Thanks , I have already done that almost right of way after installing LRCC. Now there is no lag with the sliders, but the heavy processing stuff like merging still takes much longer than in other HDR software that I have.

Watching "task manager" in windows 8.1, merging in LR, using 99% CPU, merging in Photomatix less than 50%.
 

Bourbon Neat

Senior Member
Geez, 50% is a pretty big difference. I have decided to go easy with the new LR, will use Nikon or DXO software for now. Kind of leery to get going with it after seeing all of the issue it has created for some folks over at adobe forum. I can do without those kind of problems.

How did you get your 3 shots for the landscape in your original post? Is it a one time trigger of the shutter or you firing 3 shots with bracket enabled?
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Geez, 50% is a pretty big difference. I have decided to go easy with the new LR, will use Nikon or DXO software for now. Kind of leery to get going with it after seeing all of the issue it has created for some folks over at adobe forum. I can do without those kind of problems.

How did you get your 3 shots for the landscape in your original post? Is it a one time trigger of the shutter or you firing 3 shots with bracket enabled?


3 shot bracket 1EV spacing on the D7100.
 

Blacktop

Senior Member
Pulled over on the way home to take this shot. Who wouldn't?:D

I took 5 exposures knowing that I was going to play with the LR merge function when I got home.

I used 3 of the 5 shots. 0, -2 and +2. I did a little more extensive editing after the merge than last time. I'm starting to warm up to not actually using a dedicated HDR program like Photomatix to create natural looking high dynamic images.
As much as I like Photomatix for the "HDR" look, it is not easy to get a high dynamic range natural looking shot with it. It creates a lot of artifacts, which is ok if you're going for that look, but with just a straight merge I can get more natural looking images.

After merging and making a few adjustments in LR, I exported it to PS where after looking at it for a while, I did nothing, except export it to NIK Color efex pro. Applied some pro contrast, and some selective glamour glow, and took it back to PS where I applied a mild selective unsharp mask to the foreground grass area and in the middle where the trees are.. That's it.

Saved it back to LR, where I cropped some of the edge off, and smoothed out the sky some more. I hate overly clarified skies! Nothing worse then a beautiful sunset/sunrise ruined by over saturating and over "clarifying" the sky...BTW, the colors pretty much match the original colors of the sky. I may have pulled back on the orange a touch as it was overwhelming that side of the image.

Oh yea! Since the Camera model still won't show up here. D300

Sunset.-.jpg
 
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