 Sharon Day |
Question using Photomatix I've been trying out Photomatix and like the effects, but I see a lot of pixelation (or noise) in what should be smooth areas such as the sky. I don't think I have accomplished one HDR image that would be useable for anything but a Web-sized print and only after using noise software on the sky. Anyone know what I'm doing wrong or if this is just the nature of the beast? Thanks!
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- Carlton Ward Contact Carlton Ward Carlton Ward's Gallery |
The first thing is to shoot at a low ISO like 100 and using more depth of field helps as well. The "Smoothing" selection works with "max" being the lighter touch and "min" will look a lot more graphic (almost cartoonish) and introduce more noise. I think this makes the most impact. You have to play with the "strength" and "saturation" sliders a bit as well as all the others to find what you like. Here is an image in which I used 5 exposures and used PhotoMatix "Exposure Fusion" instead of tone mapping. I like the result. Hope this helps...
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Sharon Day |
Thanks, Carlton! I only shoot at ISO 100 and typically at f/16 and sometimes even higher. I did play with the sliders and every adjustment still displayed way too much artifacting in the sky. I had forgotten about that. I tried it once and liked it a lot so I'll try it on the one I was playing with this morning. Is it possible to completely eliminate noise with HDR? Or is that just something you have to live with? Thanks for responding. Glad to see you're still around the Q&A.
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Sharon Day |
I meant to say your waterfall photo is a beautiful example! I do not understand why you can shoot waterfalls and edit in HDR but not trees if there's a breeze. Movement is movement, isn't it? Thanks again!
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Steve Jolicoeur |
Try the exposure blending and use jpeg or tiff, tiff is better, these will look the most natural , but you can`t use raw, they will look the most natural and is easyest to use,when I get noise you need more exposures I find.
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Kristopher Hollingsworth |
Also, shooting above f/16 is likely giving you a softer image. Look into diffraction, which is the behavior of a wave (such as light) when it encounters an obstacle. This has a good overview: And the wikipedia article has all the science gobbledegook if you are into that sort of thing. ^_^ There are probably some BP articles on the subject as well.
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Sharon Day |
Thank you, Steve & Kristopher. I'll check the links out.
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- Kenneth De Pree Contact Kenneth De Pree Kenneth De Pree's Gallery |
It is fine to say shoot at ISO 100, and it is good to do so. But this is not always possible. Also, when making an HDR you cannot be sure even shooting at ISO 100 is enough protection. I am speaking from experience because when I started doing HDR I also was discouraged by noise, especially in the sky, as you say. For this reason, I always start putting the photos together into an HDR by having Noise Ninja, my noise remover, work its magic on each of them. I then save the photos as .tif, to prevent compression reducing detail, and make the HDR, after which I do whatever editing I think is desirable. Finally, as the last step, I sharpen the HDR photo. Doing it this way, I have greatly improved the quality of my HDR photos. I don´t use Photomatix, but one equal to it, so I can't be sure you have the same setting, but on the program I use, the setting that I usually use gives me two additinal options, sky and skin. I find that by using the sky option that I also greatly reduce the chance of noise screwing up the sky.
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Sharon Day |
Thank you, Ken! I'll try running mine through Noiseware before editing them for HDR. That sounds like it would work well too.
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- Kenneth De Pree Contact Kenneth De Pree Kenneth De Pree's Gallery |
A couple more thoughts. Because the sky seems to be where I have the most problem with sky, sometimes after the HDR process, I will replace the sky. This way I can pick the sky I want and not worry about noise. Also, depending on the photo, I sometimes make the HDR than use noiseware, not trying to remove every grain of noise, but just enough so that it doesn't spoil the photo. You should always try to remove the least amount of noise that you can. Overdoing on the noiseware is also very detrimental to the photo. As you play around with it, you will soon get the feel for what you can do to accomplish what you are after. As I mentioned in earlier reply, doing the sharpening at the end is most important
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