PhotoEditingTools :: HDR well After the fact

 

Some time ago I used to take 5 photos in my bracketed sets. I was experimenting with different EV steps and this set remained unprocessed. Further these are all jpeg not RAW. Its not a gripping image but has a little potential as an abstract composition. I came aross the set when I was checking through my photos and thought I should give Aftershot Pro”s HDR merge a try out with 5 images rather than just 3. There was no need to worry it worked perfectly. The only item of note was, it is very important to run the feature based align when you are merging 5 hand held images, but Aftershot did a great job.

Not yet a great photo but a pleasing improvement none the less, much closer to what I feel I would have seen and attracted me to take the photo. These days I normally only take three photos but 1.5 EV apart and in RAW on my Pentax and 3 photos 2 EV apart on my Canon. There is lots of well meaning advice of the right settings for HDR, most of it apparently given with authority but totally prescriptive and usually without explanation. If you have decent software I suggest you experiment for yourself and find those settings that best suit you and your camera, and be gentle with the sliders during tone mapping (aka avoid the lurid colours).