Attached is a shot that I would really appreciate some feedback on. This shot was at sunrise under difficult lighting. I tried to preserve the detail of the mountain while capturing the backlighting of the sun on the cactus. This is my first attempt at a PS HDR merge.

Suggestions would be appreciated.

Very nice image. How nice to have been there at this moment. (Love the desert - no place is as mysterious and magical, IMHO) I've had varying results from PS HDR using several different published approaches. So far I'm still getting better results from bracketing or multiple exposures then blending in PS.

Specifically regarding your image, what jumps out at me is the excessive contrast in the foreground. It seems to throw the whole image out of balance. I'm no expert though - just responding to your sincere request for feedback.

Thanks Buddy. That is the kind of feedback I am looking for. Now that you mention it, I can see what you mean.
I will reduce the contrast on the ground, but I think I will leave it alone on the cactus and mountains, and see what I think.

I think the desert is really beautiful; it is a beauty that sort of grows on you.

Thanks again.
Dave

Not sure if this is an artifact of the HDR, but the final image looks as if it has been shot in broad daylight, with none of the warm subtle colors present at sunrise. I agree with the previous poster that blending of two frames and hand-tweaking often allows for better results. There are multiple techniques published, I like the one that relies on luminosity masking and then selective dodging and burning in the layer mask.

Hey thanks for the comment. This was taken within about 5 minutes of sunrise. Telling me the shot looks like it was taken in broad daylight really woke me up - tells me I managed to make a perfectly bland photo of a stunning vista

I am afraid that when I look at the shot I see what I saw that morning - obviously not what is displayed in the photo. In hindsite it could be that the PS HDR Blend is just smashing this with a sledge hammer.

I will take three of the exposures (sky, mountain and foreground) and do the manual blending as you suggest. Hopefully my PS skills are up to capturing what I saw that morning.

Thanks again!

I agree...you saw somthing beautiful....but the end result does not do it justice. Composition is fine, but the light is way off...and I am betting the colors are a bit off form what the eye saw as well. Do you set custom WB before shooting?

Roman

Roman,
I shot this in RAW and thought the WB did not matter in the camera. I thought the WB only gets applied in PS RAW. Am I wrong?

I made 7 bracketed exposures, set them all to shady WB, set all the other RAW settings to Auto, used PS HDR merge and then made post merge adjustments. Somewhere in that process the colors shifted. Late last week I had a lab make a print - the color shift really hit me in the face in the print; I had a harder time seeing it on my monitor.

I decided to give up on the HDR merge and have been working on the attached for the past few days. This was one exposure for mountain and cactus, and a different one for sky. I have spent a number of hours manipulating this one and at this point do not know what else to it.

Do you think it is an improvement? I hope you do not mind me asking.

Dave

Yes it is an improvment...but you still have a basic color cast over the entire shot...a yellow color cast. It should be warm but the human eye adjusts where the camera cannot.

Here is your new shot:


And here is an edit after adjusting curves and color balance in all 10 color spaces...(RGB,CMYK,LAB)


The warmth is still there...but the colors are back too.

Roman

Roman,

Wonderful. This is what I have been trying to achieve. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you helping me out. I have seen in other posts where you said to work in each of the color spaces and here I can see the results of that approach.

Now my challenge is to see if I can do something similarly. Whenever I try to work in the different channels I get bizarre results. I am going to look for a related tutorial - do you know of any good tutorials on the approach you used?

Thanks again - your willingness to help out and teach is really appreciated.

Dave

LOL, interested in writing one?

James