A challenging wide dynamic lighting range

[cedric (Ted Cousins)]

@Terry

HDR has come to mean those horrible edits where people made shadows bright because they could. Shadows should be dark. How dark can be personal taste. <> I regret naming this file HDR as I won’t use that term any more to describe a wide dynamic range of lighting.

I too dislike the term - especially when a scene of say 16 EV appears on a monitor** at around 8 EV … or worse in a print.

** For example, my monitor white is set to 90 cd/m2 and black is about 3 cd/m2 which is 4.9 EV

[dqpcoxeas]

My version…

Difficult HDR_04.CR3.xmp (24,3 KB)

[priort (Todd Prior)]

@Terry

I too am not a fan of the HDR effect people use in image editing. Hence my use of the term wide dynamic lighting range which it certainly is. Unfortunate name I kept on my picture file from one of my editing classes. Your edit is very good but the clouds could be darker to represent what I saw in real life.

I think for images with extreme shadows and highlights you could always have several versions. It really depends on your intention and often that is realism but on the other hand there may be little room for some thing creative and digital editing allows for it… I think the key is if you are going to do a big or “enhanced” lift of the shadows then it should be accompanied by or be part of some relighting to go along with it to offer something perhaps creative or interesting but as many people note maybe not the straight gobs of contrast and color…

[Jose_Figueres (jofial)]

@Popanz

Why give away the beautiful contrast between bright light and deep shadows?

I think the same.
I’ll leave my proposal.

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (13,8 KB) (Ansel/DT)

Cheers.

[anon42863590]

My quick effort using just dt 5.3 latest build, might be a tad dark overall - Hard to judge when you don’t “see” the actual lighting conditions yourself

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (15.5 KB)

[commutergraphics]

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (17.2 KB)

take your pick, rembered to set white balance after I’d exported the first one

[AtaraxicShrug (Rob)]

Here was my go. Still not happy with the tops of the mountains.

EDIT: I totally forgot to mention this is dt 5.2 and NOT agx. I know it wasnt what the op was asking for, but I really wanted a go at this photo

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (24.6 KB)

[jonathanBieler]

RT edit using log encoding :

Difficult HDR.CR3.pp3 (18.7 KB)

[alicem]

@commutergraphics

take your pick, rembered to set white balance after I’d exported the first one

Beautiful colours in the white-balanced one. I honestly kept the default values for the balance. I relatively rarely fiddle with that these days, unless something looks really off or I have a white item just begging to be colour-picked in the picture…

@jonathanBieler

RT edit using log encoding

Thanks for the .pp3. I never tried log encoding (sounds and looks scary) and I might take a look at this concrete example of how it can be used.

[jonathanBieler]

It’s not super complicated, usually starting from a flat edit I add a spot in full image mode, add log encoding, put scope to 100%, and press automatic button to set the levels. Then just edit starting from there. Sometimes I tweak a bit the local constrast but that’s about it.

[Adlatus]

Difficult HDR.jpg.out.pp3 (17,0 KB)

[dqpcoxeas]

Difficult HDR_06.CR3.xmp (29,8 KB)

[Popanz (Uli - using AgX)]

A second version:

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (24,9 KB)

[kofa (István Kovács)]

My take (dt master, with agx and capture sharpening) – thanks for the play!

Difficult HDR.CR3.xmp (17.4 KB)

[Christian-B (Christian Bouhon)]

Hello,
Here is my proposal. I tried to make the scene bright and give it fairly warm tones using my basic AGX preset.

Difficult HDR_01.CR3.xmp (18.1 KB)
DT 5.3 (master)
Greetings from Luberon (France)
Christian

[Terry (Terry Pinfold)]

@AtaraxicShrug

I know it wasnt what the op was asking for,

I welcomed any software for the edit. It was not simply an agx challenge. Your edit is very reasonable. The color is the canyon was very warm because of the light reflecting off the rocks. You have capture the color as I remember it.

[Terry (Terry Pinfold)]

@jonathanBieler

RT edit using log encoding

I don’t use RT but this edit shows Rt as a very capable editing program, which I always knew it was.

[europlatus]

Difficult HDR_02.CR3.xmp (14.9 KB)

[priort (Todd Prior)]

Thought I would play in ART too …about 6 clicks…

Difficult HDR_art.jpg.out.arp (12.0 KB)

[kofa (István Kovács)]

Very nice, natural-looking result.