When bored...HDR....

It was another rainy and blustery day in Toronto today, the second in so many days.  Often I find myself very listless and just bored on these stay-in-door days, these feelings were further enhanced by the fact I have to go into work later tonight for my least favorite corporate conglomerate.  This little bit of extra time did allow me to experiment some more with HDR and do a comparison between that work and just normal adjustment layers work in photoshop, which is most typically what I use.  I still prefer the adjustment layers method but the HDR method does produce some interesting eye catching results.  I’m generally a moderate HDR person, that is, someone who doesn’t try to make it too painterly.  Occasionally I will produce the odd image that is very ‘painted” but that is pretty rare and usually only when I’m trying to make a point.  I tried to blend the painted look with the normal enhanced look that I try to achieve with HDR image processing, so with respect to that it really doesn’t look as “HDR” as it could be. 

The HDR image on the right was made using 4 variably exposed images brought together and tone mapped in the photomatix standalone software. . The regular photoshop’d image was made with a single flat image with “perfect” exposure and various adjustment layers to help achieve the desired results. 

On a personal level, I like the results of the regular photoshop method more, but that’s just my preference and I’m sure others will have different viewpoints.  I thought I’d just blog about it and show the differences in styles that I often invoke.

And yes i know...they are not the same image sequence. i moved just a tiny bit when composing the HDR sequence.