HDR Plug-In (Free!)

[Gdad]

Saw this on another forum and thought I would pass it along- it operates in CS4 and CS5 and seems to work much better than the built-in HDR processing to me- and best of all it's free!

http://www.georgedewolfe.com/freehdr.html

[Gdad]

4 Shot merge I did last night- this is a set I could never seem to get right with CS5 alone. Click for Flickr to see the daytime version.

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5096/5415199849_5b278a6160_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/capturelifeinaction/5415199849/)
Tower HDR (http://www.flickr.com/photos/capturelifeinaction/5415199849/) by ~Life by the Drop~ (http://www.flickr.com/people/capturelifeinaction/), on Flickr

[Experiment_626]

That's a nice result -- makes it look like the ride building has been painted with glow-in-the-dark paint!

Scott

[ChiSoxKeith]

Awesome!

Thanks for the tip.

[Marlton Mom]

Thanks for the link!! I was having an endless amount of trouble doing this with CS4 and I just gave up trying HDR. I can't wait to try this one out.

Marlton. Mom

[Gdad]

I was having an endless amount of trouble doing this with CS4 and I just gave up trying HDR.

I feel the same way- I have a lot of merged HDR images I have made and just canned since I usually get soemthing I like better with a single raw file. I think this has a lot of potential though- here is the 'day' version- from 3x files. (Sorry the clouds look a little funky- they must have been moving fast or I was shooting slow.)

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4152/5415195957_8d12599540_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/capturelifeinaction/5415195957/)
Tower HDR (http://www.flickr.com/photos/capturelifeinaction/5415195957/) by ~Life by the Drop~ (http://www.flickr.com/people/capturelifeinaction/), on Flickr

[Marlton Mom]

[QUOTE=Gdad;39826579] (Sorry the clouds look a little funky- they must have been moving fast or I was shooting slow.)

I think the clouds add to the picture, after all it's the Tower of Terror! Even the clouds seem wigged out....:eek:

~ MM

[WDWFigment]

I still can't get over what it accomplished with the notoriously hard to edit nighttime exterior of the ToT.

Here are my best (non-HDR) attempts, and even they have some color bleed:
http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4005/4360074350_4380dcb48c_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tombricker/4360074350/)
Historic Sunset Boulevard Landmark: The Hollywood Tower Hotel ("RAW Idea") (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tombricker/4360074350/) by Tom Bricker (WDWFigment) (http://www.flickr.com/people/tombricker/), on Flickr

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2607/4072777791_9846d057ec_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tombricker/4072777791/)
"You Unlock this Door with the Key of Imagination" (http://www.flickr.com/photos/tombricker/4072777791/) by Tom Bricker (WDWFigment) (http://www.flickr.com/people/tombricker/), on Flickr

[Daisy14'sDH]

Is there anyway to use a HDR Program in LR3?

[rdunative]

http://farm6.static.flickr.com/5131/5418023479_0706b290b1_z.jpg

[ssanders79]

Is there anyway to use a HDR Program in LR3?

Photomatix works with LR3.

[Code]

I still can't get over what it accomplished with the notoriously hard to edit nighttime exterior of the ToT.

Me either.. here's my best attempt and it took a heck of a lot of work done by hand.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4138/4773790591_017f8b8e01_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/_code_/4773790591/)
Waiting for you...... (http://www.flickr.com/photos/_code_/4773790591/) by CodyWDWfan (http://www.flickr.com/people/_code_/), on Flickr

[WDWFigment]

Used it over the weekend a few times with great success. All three shots were of Spaceship Earth at night with the same lighting (easy stuff), so we'll see how it performs for me in more difficult situations (Tower of Terror at night). So far, I'm a huge fan. Thanks for the tip, Jeff!

[boBQuincy]

I tried the free HDR on some of the same subjects I had done with Photomatix 4. Some aspects of the images processed with free HDR are better than Photomatix, some are not as good. With PercepTool the (no longer) free HDR may be better everywhere, I may try the 30 day trial. Or wait for Photomatix to release version 5. ;)

The whole HDR process is not in it's infancy but is far from mature and I expect to see continuous and rapid improvement in the image processing. For now I see little reason *not* to take three exposures of almost every scene, even if we don't plan to use HDR for now. At worst we have used up some memory card space and have three exposures from which to choose, at best we can work with the three images in the future as HDR processing improves.
Speaking of three images, that is still the limit for most Canon dSLRs, sad.

Does all this sound a little like the reasons to capture in RAW even if we don't plan to use it now? And was that not good advice? :)

[ColleenG]

I downloaded the zip file, but now what do I do with it? Do I need to put it somewhere within photoshop once I extract it? I'm really Photoshop illeterate.

[bdtracey]

Does it work with Elements?

[WilsonFlyer]

Does it work with Elements?

It seems to install in Elements 8, but I can't figure out how to get to it. I've got a feeling this is one of the many limitations of Elements, unfortunately. Can anybody confirm or deny?