Picturenaut

[Kermit power]

I've just been having a little play around with Picturenaut 3.0 - "donation-ware" (ie, pay what you think it's worth) HDR & tone-mapping software.

Any noise in the shots is down to multiple conversions of the RAW file rather than the fault of the software itself, and hopefully I'll get some decent bracketed shots tomorrow evening in London. Other than that, I quite like it! Trying to figure out how it all works and what all the options do is a bit of a mystery, but that's part of the fun, I suppose!

My initial mess around produced the following shots in around an hour or so, including the conversions.

Original exposure...


Bourges0 by Chris Walker Epsom, on Flickr

Conversion...


Bourges output by Chris Walker Epsom, on Flickr


Original exposure...


Cathedral0 by Chris Walker Epsom, on Flickr


Conversion...


Cathedral output by Chris Walker Epsom, on Flickr

Next steps are going to be trying it with properly bracketed exposures, and maybe trying the same shots in the trial version of Photomatix to see if I prefer the results. I would certainly like to figure out how to keep more contrast in the sky on the first conversion.

[gary71]

I quite like the original of the first one to be honest

How far did you push the original in each direction to make up the HDR? I'd reckon about a half a stop up should get the buildings and a stop down should get the sky.

I'll try one with those settings in Photomatix and see what it looks like

[gary71]

After a quick play I can't get the original to look 'better' just different. So I'd conclude the original is OK

[muppetdave]

gary71 said:

I quite like the original of the first one to be honest

Agree with this comment really, the first one looks far better, with the HDR looking a little washed out to me in both cases.

[jr502]

muppetdave said:

Agree with this comment really, the first one looks far better, with the HDR looking a little washed out to me in both cases.

Me too. With the first one it looses depth and interest. The original is better.

[Kermit power]

jr502 said:

muppetdave said:

Agree with this comment really, the first one looks far better, with the HDR looking a little washed out to me in both cases.

Me too. With the first one it looses depth and interest. The original is better.

I think the same too, but I only started playing around with this at 10:30 last night, and I wasn't about to go out in the rain looking for some properly bracketed shots of images with a wide EV range!

If the rain holds off, I'm trundling out for the forum photo walk in London this evening, so hopefully will get some more suitable shots as a result.