Opinion?

[John Fowler]

It does look good. For me, as I work on my images, eventually it gets to a point of having to ask myself, "What do I want to say with this picture?" And any relation to the original scene or even what was in my mind's eye when I took it isn't that important. My idea of what the picture should look like develops over time independently of other considerations. Faithfulness to the original scene isn't important to me. I'm not recommending this approach or even defending it, just saying that's how I am.

BTW, I have never had any luck trying to make an HDR image starting with just one exposure. I almost always use three exposures: +2, 0, and -2 stops. I sometimes use more when lighting is especially difficult (e.g. shooting directly into the sun).

And FWIW I have found Nik's HDR Efex Pro 2 as a Photoshop plugin to be my favorite HDR software. Your mileage may vary.

 

[DAA]

This might be a little too much lipstick on the pig, but here it is:

I like it. Like you said, might be a bit over cooked, but I dig it - I tend towards over cooked a lot with mine, I just like the look. The added feature is something I'd have never thought of, but it really works - for me anyway.

- DAA

 

[intuitive cat]

I've found that the thing that tends to make the HDR's a little overdone for me is too high of a details setting * too much of an edge glow - too high of a detail contrast. certain elements are just naturally washed out and not distinct and when those features are too defined, it no longer looks natural.
I've been doing minimal processing with the photos I take, mainly attempting to make up for the fact that i don't have access to tweaking my settings much with my point & shoot (Pentax Optio WG-1)
.I'm happy with what it does for what it is, but with just a little minor adjusting, the photos pop that much more. I like my images a little bit oversaturated and bold, yet try to maintain a sense of the real at the same time, to try to give a feel of the experience and magic of a place.
I've noticed that what I tend to do is simply adjust the Highlights/Shadows settings (using CS5) to balance out my highlights & shadows, slightly revealing details where they wee too dark & toning down the lighting & exposure, which would be extremely tedious to do manually with my p&s camera.
I feel like the highlights/shadows adjustments give me a lot of the bonuses of an HDR without the need for 3 or more exposures and all of the 'frilly' unreal aspects of HDR.

 

[Bill]

Tone curves are very powerful and now that I have a vague understanding on how use them correctly HDR has been nearly eliminated from my workflow. I still bracket shots from time to time but I'm much more likely to blend images rather than use Photomatix.

 

[John Fowler]

Tone curves are very powerful and now that I have a vague understanding on how use them correctly HDR has been nearly eliminated from my workflow. I still bracket shots from time to time but I'm much more likely to blend images rather than use Photomatix.

Me too. But I blend parts of bracketed images, which I still think of as a kind of HDR.

 

[IntrepidXJ]

I haven't used Photomatix in quite a long time...on the rare occasion I need to blend images, I prefer to do it by hand in Photoshop with luminosity masks.