This is actually an image from yesterday and nothing interesting composition-wise. It is my first result from experimenting with Photomatix HDR tone mapping. Hmm … I don’t know why they put such a bad example on their homepage, but it’s their business 🙂
What can I say about it?
It is good. It delivers better results than the tone mapping tools in Photoshop. Much better. It has two algorithms, but the only interesting is the one used by default. This is a clever algorithm that works out local contrasts. You have some parameters to play with, but it is easily understandable.
It can’t do miracles. You will have to dodge and burn a little on the result. The right side of the sky in this image was too dark, the middle part of the fence (where it seems more dense) was too dark, the lower right corner was too light, but that was easy to overcome, because the raw material delivered by Photomatix was flexible enough.
I suspect that results will be even better inside of churches, etc. Remember my country church? This image was not HDR and I had to hide the partial burnout on the altar table with a blur. I like this blur and I think it fits the subject, thus I would have probably used it anyway, but it is always good to have options, and HDR gives options.
Is this how it looked like? Nope. Not really, but it would be utterly impossible to capture a scene like that. The light was blinding, contrasts extreme. Had I not used HDR and tone mapping, I wouldn’t have had anything. I’d say this is much more than nothing, right?
No Song of the Day yet. Maybe tomorrow.