Exposure Fusion

Pre-Monsoon clouds were gathering as I shot this photo at Seethanadi Nature Camp inside Someshwara Wild Life Sanctuary, Hebri Karkala. I used Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens on a tripod to get 3 bracketed images at 2 stop difference. I used Photomatix Pro to fuse exposure of these three bracketed shots to produce this photo. In Expo­sure Fusion a series of brack­eted images are processed to produce a dynamic range image. It takes the best tonal­i­ties from each image in the sequence and com­bines them to cre­ate a sin­gle image. Best part of each image gets recorded and fused together to com­bine all of the best ele­ments in final image. You have quite a lot of control to adjust which tonality of the exposures are used in the final image.

You might ask how is Expo­sure fusion is different from HDR? The only resem­blance the two have are that they com­bine a sequence of brack­eted images together. In Expo­sure Fusion the final prod­uct looks more real­is­tic to how the scene really would like. This means that the shad­ows main­tain a cer­tain amount of shad­ows and the high­lights remain brighter in higher tonal­i­ties then a high con­trast scene.

HDR takes the sequence of images and blends the images seam­lessly but does its best to even the tonal­i­ties in the extreme tonal­i­ties of shad­ows and high­lights. That is why HDR the appear­s arti­fi­cial­ and unnat­u­ral­.

Expo­sure Fusion after fus­ing the images together keeps the tonal­i­ties how they would appear if one was to be look­ing at the actual scene being pho­tographed. HDR image most of the time shows the uneven tran­si­tion between the lumi­nance and can there­fore lose the appeal of real­ism. Expo­sure Fusion pro­duces results that are truer to the scene that the pho­tog­ra­pher is try­ing to capture.

Photomatix Pro produces both fantastic HDR as well as Exposure Fusion. Try it and you will love the results. Trial mode is also available for Photomatix Pro.

Today (30th April) Adobe released Photoshop CS5 Trial. I grabbed copy early and wanted to try the new features. here is a quick take on HDR Pro feature of Photoshop CS5.

Among all the new features CS5 boasts HDR Pro is one of the most hyped. Till now we needed to go to 3rd party soft wares like Photomatix Pro to get that HDR look we want. This feature is revamped-from-the-ground-up and called HDR Pro. Like the Merge to HDR feature in Photoshop CS4 and earlier, HDR Pro lets you combine two or more exposures of a single scene into an impossibly rendered composite, complete with wide-open shadows and richly detailed highlights. The big difference: Unlike Merge to HDR, which is about as easy to control. HDR Pro offers superb controls and delivers quite a reliable result.

I quickly compared my Photomatix pro rendered HDR which features in my last blog Nir-Laksha Dweepa-Day2-Kalpeni. I used the same set of files and here is the result with HDR Pro. I think there is definite improvement from the CS4 version. But if you want superior control over your HDR then photomatix is still the king. Let us see the results. First is rendered with Photomatix pro and the second using HDR pro. Judge yourself which one you prefer. As you can manipulate any HDR to your hearts content, there is definitely scope for improvement in both the shots. This is what I liked.

Photomatix Pro Rendered HDR

HDRPro Rendered HDR

Remove Ghosts option is new in HDR Pro. This will eliminate movements when you are shooting multiple images in a busy environment. I had a photograph of Tilakkam island from that trip which I had taken as HDR but was unable to publish as there was ghosting artifact I thought that would be perfect candidate for checking ghosting option and predictably it came out picture perfect with HDR Pro. Here are the results. First one is with Photomatix Pro which produced nice output but with lot of ghosting artifact which is minute but visible on large photo.

Photomatix unable to resolve Ghosting

Here the same set of photos by HDR Pro which ghost elimination has made it crisper. Even though I like the output Photomatix produces HDR pro is winner here.

HDR pro which removed Ghosting artifact efficiently

Remember that this is not a definitive review or a shootout between this two HDR softwares. It is just a short comparison I did within the short time I had to express my views. I welcome your view on that.

Contemplation

Sunset at Thanner Bavi beach taken using Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens on Canon EOS 5D mark II as HDR.