How does a pirate take photos? In HDaRrrh!

Published February 27th, 2007

I am an amateur photographer. And I place heavy emphasis on the “amateur” - I recognize that I’m not very good. Just know that I have zip for formal training in any capacity, and that might mitigate my ineptitude some. (This weekend my friend asked if I could purchase a Novice Filter - you know, to filter the novice out of my pictures. He’s a funny guy.)

One of the techniques I play around with is HDR photography. I’m definitely not very good, not even in the same league (or solar system) as this guy, who is an absolute master. If one of my shots ever turn out that good, I might have to give up amateur photography altogether and retire on top.

A photographer is, sometimes, only as good as his tools. The big 2 tools for creating HDR images are Photoshop (I hope you don’t need a link to that…) and Photmatix. For fun tonight I’ve taken a pair of my HDR shots (the best ones I have, somewhat sadly…) and run them through both programs to see what comes out. Consider this post a bit of a mini HDR software review, I suppose - we’ll not be reviewing the photos themselves - I am already aware of their general mediocrity. But hey, if a program can make a picture of mine look better - it’s probably a good program. Though you may need an unobtanium processor to run something that powerful…

The first shot comparison is one of the Hollywood Hills I took at sunset on January 12, 2007. This was right after I got my Canon SD700IS, and I didn’t yet have a tripod. So there was a lot of jitter while I changed settings in between exposures. This doesn’t help the quality of the photo, but it does allow us to compare the two programs abilities at image alignment.

Photoshop:

Photomatix:

Be sure to travel to flickr to see these full size, it will help you understand the following discussion - assuming I’m not typing to myself at this point.

The first thing that stands out is the Photomatix shot has much more vibrant, (over)saturated colors. This is typical of Photomatix processed HDR photos. This effect can also be achieved with Photoshop, but it is usually so overwhelming I stay away from it. The second thing that stands out is how much less jitter and ghosting there is in the Photoshop picture. Since getting an aligned picture is key, this is worth mentioning. For the Photoshop shot, I asked it to auto-align the exposures. As you can see, it did a rather respectable job. The auto-alignment of Photomatix was…atrocious. Awful. After some toying around, I was able to find the semi-manual alignment controls in Photomatix, and produced what you see above. This is much better than the first pass, I guarantee you - but it’s still not as good as the Photoshop auto-align, and that’s a little sad.

Back to the colors. Creating vibrant HDR photos in Photomatix is about as easy-as-pie as can be. A minimum of sliders that are highly tailored to HDR effects. This of course is a 2-edged sword - if you don’t like the way it’s turning out, there’s no other ways to tweak with the photo. You’re locked into the controls that you have for HDR processing, and not much else. Photoshop is as arcane as can be, and you have to learn how to use a few standard photo processing techniques, as well as how to apply them to HDR processing, to get any worthwhile final products. Otherwise you end up with either horrific pictures resembling a bad acid trip while someone is shoving ice-picks of color into your eyes, or pictures that are so grey and drab that they look like a nanobot plague has settled on the world. So finding that balance can be pretty tricky. So the basic takeaway here is Photomatix easy, but limited (and you’d better keep that camera dead steady), Photoshop more complicated but more powerful. Which is pretty standard for life, really.

Anyway, this picture is kinda crummy for assessing image quality, thanks to the jitter and the fact that the originals were jpegs - HDR shots should really be assembled from RAW format photos. Which brings us to photo #2.

Photoshop:

Photomatix:

These shots were taken with a Canon S50, on a tripod, with auto exposure bracketing and in RAW format - basically, the best conditions. And to be honest, I think they came out pretty darn good for me, and especially compared to photo #1 of this post. Definitely be sure to click through to flickr and view the pictures at full resolution.

Once again, the Photomatix shot is inherently more saturated. It also has a distinct blue hue/tint that I’m not entirely crazy about here. That’s the sort of thing I’d want to correct in Photoshop after the fact, but I left it here for educational purposes. Here I like the Photoshop shot better by far. The Photomatix one is just too over-processed looking for me, what with the tint. It looks otherworldly, to be sure - but I was there and it was a gorgeous scene without that. It’s not so over the top as to be artsy, and it’s not close enough to reality for me to like it. It’s in the middle, and mediocrity is death. The Photoshop version I was able to play with extensively - and could even use a little more work. As pointed out by a commenter on my flickr, there’s a halo around the ridgeline. Halos are common in HDR processing, some people like them, others don’t. I think it’s situational. Here - not so good, I agree. I could probably get rid of it with a little more work. It’s worth pointing out that the simpler tools of Photomatix were able to pretty much eliminate the halo. But the Photoshop shot really captured the scene as it was when I was there. I mean it didn’t look quite like that, but it felt like that.

So there are a couple of things to think about when picking an HDR processing program. Know that Photomatix will default to a more fantastic output than Photoshop will - if you like that look, great. But also know that Photmatix shots pretty much all look like photomatix shots. The tools are highly specialized, easy to use - and somewhat homogenizing. Photoshop is of course a full photo editing suite that will do HDR, with practice - but also do everthing else under the sun, moon and stars.

I know the stuck in customs guy uses Photomatix, and I have no idea how he gets his shots so amazing. But that’s part of the art - he clearly is squeezing the absolute most out of that program, and I am in awe of it. For me, I like the micro-tweaking options in photoshop and plan to keep using it. I like toys with lots of buttons and dials!

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