It's Over

I hope you enjoy this photo. I'll gladly provide critiques in

exchange for your critique. Thanks, Scott.

Did you photoshop the clouds that way or is that the capture. It looks a bit fake which could either be very cool if it's real or just fake. The details say it was photoshoped but that may have just been a mistake. Let me know.

An interesting image, I personally find the car a bit distracting however I think a good capture.

Thanks for the critiques! I agree... the car is a bit distracting. This image was made using Photomatix and 3 separate exposures. I've really cranked the gamma setting to make the clouds much more contrasty than how they really appeared to the eye. The overall shape of the clouds, and the rainbow, are authentic. Thanks again for taking time to comment!

Very powerful and dramatic photo. The treatment of the clouds is well done, and I have seen enough of these types of skys to accept it as believable. I agree the car is distracting but what are ya gonna do. It would be possible to digitally remove it but it would be a lot of work and I don't think it would make that big of a diff. Perhaps burn it in a little. You sure cant crop it out since either bottom up or left side crop would destroy crucial elements. Well done!

 

 

Realmente espectacular!

Scott, I almost could believe this when I first saw it! That's very cool how you merged three exposures this way. I am thinking of buying the Photomatrix plugin for HDR tone-mapping. What did you have to do to get three separate layers in this way? It's quite good and I am very interested. Thanks.

Hi Kurt! Thanks for the compliments!

 

I used the stand alone version of Photomatix. The original exposures were taken as properly exposed, properly exposed - 2 full stops, and properly exposed + 2 full stops. This gives you a lot of dynamic range to work with. Photomatix then provides the tools to "map" these three images into a new one. If you haven't tried it yet, you can download their stand alone version for free, and try it out. It watermarks the resulting images, but at least you'll get a feel for what you can do with it.

 

Cheers,

Scott.

Fantastic sight. We do get some wicked skies, and the rainbow - sweet! I can't say I care for the suberbia foreground, but you can't be everywhere all the time.

Hey Scott, I know there are Photoshop techniques that I have not yet mastered. However Photomatrix enabled you to do this, it's really good because I can't see any edge effect. Maybe I don't know what to look for :) Anyway, I'm getting a new PC this week, and I am thinking of buying the plug-in because, even though the tone-mapping is often overused and overdone, it's a useful tool, and I did not know that you can create composites of separate images. This is great.

Hi Kurt,

The reason you won't see any edge effect here is that Photomatix isn't layering up images the way you would with Photoshop/Paint Shop Pro. It's taking multiple images of different exposures, then creating a single high bit-depth image (more than 24 bit) in memory from them, which you then map into a 24 bit image using tone mapping. It makes it easy to get effects that would be very difficult to do otherwise.

 

I think I read somewhere that you get more control over tone mapping with their stand alone software than you do with their plug in, but I may be wrong... just something to consider before you buy.

 

Cheers,

Scott

You should get royalties from PM. I've been interested in buying the stand alone and you have sold me on it here. Excellent sky!

Thanks Joseph! If only I could... it's be great to actually make money on this hobby, instead of just spending it! Cheers!

Beautiful! Beautiful!

Canada is heaven....:) yes it is!!!