Canon 1D Mark III
Canon 24-70mm F/2.8 @ 50mm
4 Exposures from 1/60 sec thru 1/125sec @ F/11 ISO 100
I've been doing a lot of HDR research as of late. In doing so I've concluded that for the most part HDR in and of itself is cool but it takes a fine touch (read labor intensive...) to avoid that pasty HDR look. Photomatix is dang cool and I don't regret the purchase price of $99.00 US either. It will still have a place in my toolbox.
So I went back out to the www and did some poking around for a better solution for my laziness when it comes to manual blends in Photoshop. In digging I found an update to a tool I'd tried in the past but decided it was at that time far too buggy for me - LR/Enfuse. I had tried version 2.0 but could never get it to behave predictably. It would crash a lot...
LR/Enfuse 3.0 is a huge improvement! Enfuse itself is a commandline utility that does blends without the HDR pastiness. Oh and it's open source so the price for Enfuse itself is FREE. LR/Enfuse is a plugin for Lightroom that provides a user friendly UI dialog box. select a series of images to blend and sit back while it chugs Enfuse through the images. Yes this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several minutes depending on the number of images included. You can create stacks of image sets and batch process those in LR/Enfuse too! So set it up and let em run overnight while I snore...!
Timothy Armes wrote the plugin for Lightroom and he asks for a donation to download the plugin. Enfuse is free. Go here to find them both: LR/Enfuse
The above image was a set of four exposures that were processed via LR/Enfuse then I did some dodging of the darker areas in LR. I think is a more pleasing result that what I was able to produce via Photomatix Pro: Tatoosh Range from Skyline Trail - HDR Blend
So please lemme know what yall think of this one!!
Posted by Sean Bagshaw on October 3, 2008 at 7:40 PM
Thanks for the review on this plugin Rick. I'll give it a look. It appears to do a nice job, and the end result feels natural. However, without seeing the original four exposures that were blended, I'm not sure that this image is showing much more dynamic range than what can be achieved with careful digital exposure and perhaps some GND work. In comparing the two image versions (photomatix and Enfuse) I would have to conclude that there are elements of each that I prefer and this mirrors my own experience that there isn't yet one solution/technique/application that works for all high dynamic range images or even all parts of one image. I'm sure like most of us, I find I have to use a variety of tools and techniques to get where I'm trying to go. I usually start as simple as I can with careful exposure, GND and polarizer. LightRoom or Camera RAW often gets me the rest of the way. If that doesn't make it then I'll try curves masks, luminosity masks, double RAW processing or blending multiple exposures. When I run into particularly stubborn halos, blocky shadows and difficult transitions I give photomatix a try. Usually the photomatix image on whole looks bad, but there might be a portion of it I can use to overcome a tough spot. LR/Enfuse looks like a great additional tool for the utility belt.
Posted by John Williams on October 4, 2008 at 11:39 AM
Ditto, thanks for reporting your efforts as you play with HDR. I've used Photoshop's HDR and hated it (the results were bad enough that I wonder if I wasn't using it properly). I had much better luck with Tufuse, and think it is a great product for shots where there is little movement. My best results by far have been when I blend by hand, but it is very time consuming.
Discussion
2 repliesCanon 24-70mm F/2.8 @ 50mm
4 Exposures from 1/60 sec thru 1/125sec @ F/11 ISO 100
I've been doing a lot of HDR research as of late. In doing so I've concluded that for the most part HDR in and of itself is cool but it takes a fine touch (read labor intensive...) to avoid that pasty HDR look. Photomatix is dang cool and I don't regret the purchase price of $99.00 US either. It will still have a place in my toolbox.
So I went back out to the www and did some poking around for a better solution for my laziness when it comes to manual blends in Photoshop. In digging I found an update to a tool I'd tried in the past but decided it was at that time far too buggy for me - LR/Enfuse. I had tried version 2.0 but could never get it to behave predictably. It would crash a lot...
LR/Enfuse 3.0 is a huge improvement! Enfuse itself is a commandline utility that does blends without the HDR pastiness. Oh and it's open source so the price for Enfuse itself is FREE. LR/Enfuse is a plugin for Lightroom that provides a user friendly UI dialog box. select a series of images to blend and sit back while it chugs Enfuse through the images. Yes this can take anywhere from a few minutes to several minutes depending on the number of images included. You can create stacks of image sets and batch process those in LR/Enfuse too! So set it up and let em run overnight while I snore...!
Timothy Armes wrote the plugin for Lightroom and he asks for a donation to download the plugin. Enfuse is free. Go here to find them both: LR/Enfuse
The above image was a set of four exposures that were processed via LR/Enfuse then I did some dodging of the darker areas in LR. I think is a more pleasing result that what I was able to produce via Photomatix Pro: Tatoosh Range from Skyline Trail - HDR Blend
So please lemme know what yall think of this one!!