HDR with Photomatix

I didn't want to hijack Rob's Desert...

Thanks to Rob's great pic with HDR I have just downloaded the trial version and I must say for my first attempt I am pretty well impressed.
I just opened a .dng file in raw and made 3 copies -2 +0 -2 EV's:







then loaded them up in Photmatix, tonemapped the three images, then went into CS3 and converted to mono, enhanced levels, burn, dodge etc...
and this was the result, not bad for a quick attempt, think I might have oversharpened a bit tho'



I can see it can very useful for part of a work flow for certain types of images and will get the full copy, not keen on the watermarks the trial version stamps on it.
ps) yes, it is that phobic town again

It works, but a bit overdone for my taste. HDR does suit some images very well though and it certainly has a place.

I often find its very nice for skies where the colours blend too much for my liking, but I know that there are awesome clouds in there, ready to be unvieled; its great for semi-abstract things

Another useful technique is to slide down the strength bar, to reduce the amount that it is as HDR.

Alot of the HDR work you will see will be done in photomatix, with the lightsmoothing set to a low bar; I keep it on the top two to the right, and vary the luminosity. It is best to have a complete playround to know what each bar does

Oh and I like the photo, the effect worked well bringing out the sky and textures nicely

Found some quotes on flickr though,
"I create 2 HDRs and tone map each with the same settings, then combine the 2 jpgs in Photoshop Elements using a "darken" blend, which essentially hides it." (talking about watermark)
"I found that I could increase the canvas size of the image (2x), making my picture at the upper left hand corner. The water mark would be usually placed in the the region where the picture doesn't reside. Then just crop back your picture.... "

Or you could purchase the full version, or google stuff.

Thanks for those tips, much appreciated - it was my first attempt so something new to get to grips with in a subtle way...

Ive also tried this Photomatix software, unfortunatley all my trials came out looking rather noisey, I think the ideal situation would be combining true bracketed shots rather than doing it with the RAW converter as I did

And as a tight Yorkshirman I find it a pain having to clone out all the photomatix logos

I downloaded the software to try as well (Mac) and strangely had no watermark at all???

Yes, noise can sometimes be a problem when using raw converter but definately if you shoot bracketed shots then you will get a clean image. Noise only seems to be bad when the initial shots are >/=800ISO (on my K100D at least)