11 years ago Comments Off

Front Row Seats

No-Man’s-Lands Journal Day 17 (Travel Diary Day 283)

A little over a week and we’ll be flying to Buenos Aires. I feel prepared, I think. In the meantime, there are things to buy and people to say goodbye to, again.

The Cool Bits – Technical Info

Processing Time: 1 hour 30 minutes
Processing method: Photomatix & Luminance Masks.
No. of Exposures: 3
EV Range: -2 0 +2
Aperture: f/9
ISO: 100
Focal Length: 10mm
Lens: Sigma 10-20mm
Camera: Canon 60d
Plugins: Nik Color Efex for Contrast adjustments, and shift in lighting & Topaz Denoise
Luminance Masks: Not used.
Photomatix settings: Choose Default. Increase Strength to 70, Decrease Saturation to 35, Luminosity to 1, Lighting Adjustments to 4, White Point to 0 and Gamma to 80.

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Today’s Photo – Front Row Seats

The Theatre Royal in Newcastle. This isn’t my usually style of processing, I think it’s fair to say. I often prefer high contrast images, but here I was interested in creating a dark, mysterious, smoky cinema, reminiscent of times long since past.

Tip of the Day – Avoiding excessive noise in Photomatix

The Gamma slider in Photomatix is used to add general brightness to your image. As I understand it, the slider mainly affects the mid-tones, which is why you generally lose contrast when you increase it. Using the gamma slider to simply increase the brightness can, however, have a negative affect on your image by introducing extra noise. If I have a balanced image with details in the highlighted/darkened areas, then I’ll simply adjust the general brightness in Photoshop rather than the Gamma slider in Photomatix. My photos after I’ve used Photomatix are usually extremely flat and sometimes a touch dark. The main goal is to have as much information in the tone mapped image as possible and then do the rest in Photoshop.

Available Tutorials:

Beginner’s HDR tutorial

Digital Blending HDR Tutorial