![]() Obviously, I use it for my own pictures now.įig. But it will come to good use in the next part, which presents us with an actual, usable workflow. Now this may have sounded theoretical and perhaps slightly boring. This worked for me, and if you use my settings it will also work for you, since there is no sensor or production variance involved. You may choose any setting that works for you. Tone Compressor settings and profile for consistent colour rendition A good one with bright colours was Tone Compressor with the following settings.įig. Several algorithms produced consistent colours. Photomatix’ Exposure Fusion: Average is one obvious candidate for consistent colours, and yes, it worked. That should turn all the colour blotches to black if they are identical in the two layers. The colour blotches are identical, but since half of them are surrounded by white and the other half by black, those Photomatix processes that treat colours dynamically (depending on pixel surroundings) will produce different colours for each identical pair.Ī simple verification procedure is to position the white half on top of the black half in Photoshop and set the top layer to Blend mode Difference. To identify those settings that behave predictably we need to create two versions of the reference chart, namely one with black and one with white background. No surprise, Detail Enhancer can be one of these. Other settings produce dynamic colour shifts depending on the surrounding pixels. Long story short: Some settings in Photomatix produce consistent colour shifts and can be calibrated. ![]() Then I tried another setting and calibrated that one.I converted the TIFF output to DNG in Lightroom and calibrated that file in Photoshop as if it were a raw file from a camera.Then I simply ran this triplet through Photomatix.Note that this combination has -2 as the middle and presumably “normal” exposure. I tried several variations, but found -4/-2/0 to be closest to actual shooting.Then I saved five TIFF versions of it from Photoshop, each 1 EV darker than the previous.I created one such card and saved it as DNG.It is used as a target at the final visual comparison. These values are readily available on the ’net, and using Qpcard 201, you even get one “for free” at the end of the calibration process. Now we do not need the physical card itself, but we need a digital version with all the correct colour values. Use a standardized colour chart, GretagMacbeth or QPcard 201. The trick is to do exactly the same that we did with our cameras. The calibration process here can be applied to any HDR program that produces consistent colour shifts. Or rather, calibrate ACR and Lightroom to interpret the camera correctly.īut can we calibrate Photomatix? Yes, we can. To get rid of the red cast you have to reduce saturation to a point where the rest of the image is verging on b&w.īut does not this problem sound familiar? It is exactly the same as Adobe ACR, which exaggerates red for Canon, Nikon and Sony alike. And it is not only a question of simple saturation. But red is not the only colour that Photomatix is particularly fond of. The middle image has correct colours from a camera profile. The one to the right is Details Enhancer with most settings at “wild”. The one to the left is Tone Compressor with all settings at zero, as neutral as possible. The one in the middle is a normal exposure. ![]() The solution applies to any HDR program that creates unnatural but consistent colours. In the second part I will present a workflow “for the rest of us”, where I use what I found in the first part to effortlessly create a consistent suite of HDR images from one shoot – the HDR slider. In the first part I will look at the problem of consistent colours in Photomatix Pro, and how it can be solved. Until the “HDR slider” arrives I would like to have something similar and simple. I think of HDR as an extreme version of Lightroom’s Fill Light and Recovery combined, just a method to get back what I saw and I know was there. Now with Lightroom there are simple sliders for them all and more. Does anyone remember as far back as 2003? That was when we corrected exposure using multiple layers and blending modes in Photoshop, and when we created “fill flash” using clever masks. And I also want HDR to be just another part of my toolbox. But I don’t want my pictures to look like HDR. One of my favourite photographic subjects is church interiors (no castles in this part of the world), and HDR is indispensable. Alexandre Buisse in A Plea for HDRsaid it all.
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