Best hdr look for high DR (digital)

Allthink · Sep 21, 2024

Hello colleagues
Question for architecture photographers
What software, or manual method you do when you have at least 5-7 stops difference between interior and exterior AND, it's not an apartment that you can balance with flashes but a big spaces.
In case you are getting very real, close to real shot "look", what methods you apply?
All software I know of , and i tried them all, don't give close to natural looks. On the other hand, manual methods are hard to blend as some interior elements of arc. that are close to exterior lighting have to be in almost same ~ lighting as exterior and not close to interior lighting, sometimes in between.

loccdor · Sep 21, 2024

High exposure latitude film, like Kodak Portra color negative, or Ilford HP5+ in black and white combined with semi-stand development, can usually take these shots in a single image.

Also lower contrast lenses, like vintage ones with less or no coatings, can help to balance out the extremes of bright and dark.

MattKing · Sep 21, 2024

The best I have seen is from an Architect who now does as much photography as he does architecture.
I'm racking my brain trying to remember his name!
When I've heard him speak and share his work, he has described using the HDR tools in Photoshop, but my sense is/was that he brings a lot of technique and experience to their use.
I would say that the "look" he achieves in his work - much of which is in relation to new commercial and multiple unit residential developments and their marketing - does include some drama. I can usually tell that some HDR is used, it is just that it is used with good affect.

koraks · Sep 22, 2024

Allthink said:
manual methods are hard to blend as some interior elements of arc

Isn't that a matter of 'simply' improving masking technique?
You could for instance combine manual masking (using a brush etc) with an initial tonal separation in which you select only the highlights.
I think another key part of this HDR thing is to not exaggerate it. We're used to seeing a much brighter exterior through the window compared to the interior, so it's best kept that way for the end result to be natural.
I feel this is all a bit obvious so I'm sure you had already considered it.

It might help if you showed one or two examples of successful and not-so-successful attempts, so people may offer specific solutions or possibilities. Would this be feasible?

loccdor said:
High exposure latitude film, like Kodak Portra color negative, or Ilford HP5+ in black and white combined with semi-stand development, can usually take these shots in a single image.

Sure, but that still leaves the question how you get that materialized in a natural manner on the final print or scan. I assume that @Allthink is aware of how he can capture the full density range required and that his question is specifically about the digital editing (or alternatively darkroom printing) stage.

Allthink · Sep 22, 2024

koraks said:
Isn't that a matter of 'simply' improving masking technique?
You could for instance combine manual masking (using a brush etc) with an initial tonal separation in which you select only the highlights.
I think another key part of this HDR thing is to not exaggerate it. We're used to seeing a much brighter exterior through the window compared to the interior, so it's best kept that way for the end result to be natural.
I feel this is all a bit obvious so I'm sure you had already considered it.

It might help if you showed one or two examples of successful and not-so-successful attempts, so people may offer specific solutions or possibilities. Would this be feasible?

Sure, but that still leaves the question how you get that materialized in a natural manner on the final print or scan. I assume that @Allthink is aware of how he can capture the full density range required and that his question is specifically about the digital editing (or alternatively darkroom printing) stage.

Hi
yes, you are right about what you wrote at the end.
about masking technique, not that I have to improve it, I know them pretty good, but it's time consuming, especially if you have dozens of such images to edit, and each one, have ~50 elements of glass, separated by metal construction that holds the glass pieces, and you have to do mask for each one, separate the metal(as partly interior) and do gradial blending, which is even more time consuming.

I can attach example, but you can imagine public place, metal+glass construction, dozens of pieces of glass, were interior isn't lit enough(for camera, for people is ok) and at sunset, when it's a magic time, you have pretty high dr offset, outside is 6-7 stop brighter. That's the scenario. HDR PS/all third party software don't deal good with that, especially if the interior ceiling/walls are white, as they are also darkened, and manual methods are just not realistic to fulfill within normal time frames. So I wonder what methods architectural photographers apply in editing(not so in shooting technique) while still not hours of masking but still realistic look results and not dhr look results like some software do. I probably look for balance, where it's good enough or pretty good as a blending method, but without going for hours of masking for multiple images.

nmp · Sep 22, 2024

This is how I do it without the use of masks resulting in most natural looking HDR encompassing the full tonal range, requiring no special processing engine:

-Take your bracketed shots ranging from highly under-exposed (histogram is well to the left of 255) to highly over-exposed (histogram is well to the right of 0.). Normally I would take them in raw.

-Open all of them in Adobe Camera Raw and make any necessary global adjustments like white balance, sharpness, lens based corrections etc except tonal changes - same for all files.

-Open all files in PhotoShop. The idea is to blend the files equally into one file. The way to do is to stack them in a new file as layers and let the program to do an auto-alignment.

-Change the opacity of each level with the formula 100/(layer no. from the bottom). So the lowest layer would be 100%, next 50%, then 33%, 25% 20% and so on (to the nearest whole number.) This way each layer is weighted exactly the same.

Now you will have a file with full tonal range with no clipping on either side. You can merge the layers and save as a separate file and do the rest of adjustments to this file to your liking.

I have been doing like this for a pretty long time primarily for landscapes. I haven't seen it elsewhere but probably not all that unique.

:Niranjan.

Allthink · Sep 22, 2024

nmp said:
This is how I do it without the use of masks resulting in most natural looking HDR encompassing the full tonal range, requiring no special processing engine:

-Take your bracketed shots ranging from highly under-exposed (histogram is well to the left of 255) to highly over-exposed (histogram is well to the right of 0.). Normally I would take them in raw.

-Open all of them in Adobe Camera Raw and make any necessary global adjustments like white balance, sharpness, lens based corrections etc except tonal changes - same for all files.

-Open all files in PhotoShop. The idea is to blend the files equally into one file. The way to do is to stack them in a new file as layers and let the program to do an auto-alignment.

-Change the opacity of each level with the formula 100/(layer no. from the bottom). So the lowest layer would be 100%, next 50%, then 33%, 25% 20% and so on (to the nearest whole number.) This way each layer is weighted exactly the same.

Now you will have a file with full tonal range with no clipping on either side. You can merge the layers and save as a separate file and do the rest of adjustments to this file to your liking.

I have been doing like this for a pretty long time primarily for landscapes. I haven't seen it elsewhere but probably not all that unique.

:Niranjan.

Thanks. Yes, I saw some US photographer doing that technique in interiors, i never tried that though, preferred another methods.
I think in my case and many others this still not solves the issue with long time consuming masking, which is a next step from this gradual division you wrote. I have dozens of glass pieces where highlights are and they are connected with metal parts the construction that holds all the glass pieces, and they are interior, but also lit be exterior light, as they are round steel column, so it's a ton of work afterwards masking, which is very time consuming, dozen of masks, which can take 1-2 hours just for one image and I have not one but many such images from different angles. steel construction patterns where there are so many of them, while between them there are highlights too, so this also comes to masking at the end. But still thanks for sharing your method.

nmp · Sep 22, 2024

Allthink said:
Thanks. Yes, I saw some US photographer doing that technique in interiors, i never tried that though, preferred another methods.
I think in my case and many others this still not solves the issue with long time consuming masking, which is a next step from this gradual division you wrote. I have dozens of glass pieces where highlights are and they are connected with metal parts the construction that holds all the glass pieces, and they are interior, but also lit be exterior light, as they are round steel column, so it's a ton of work afterwards masking, which is very time consuming, dozen of masks, which can take 1-2 hours just for one image and I have not one but many such images from different angles. steel construction patterns where there are so many of them, while between them there are highlights too, so this also comes to masking at the end. But still thanks for sharing your method.

My point was you do not need a mask when you have the final file that has the whole 0 to 255 range - there are no clumped shadows or blown highlights. Of course, if you want to fine tune further locally, you will need masks.

:Niranjan.

koraks · Sep 22, 2024

nmp said:
-Change the opacity of each level with the formula 100/(layer no. from the bottom). So the lowest layer would be 100%, next 50%, then 33%, 25% 20% and so on (to the nearest whole number.) This way each layer is weighted exactly the same.

That's pretty neat. Never thought of it! And yes, from this point you could very easily 'burn & dodge' by selectively (e.g. brush-)masking individual layers.
I think the main drawback would be that the interior in a typical architecture shot would end up pretty muddy. So you'd still have to 'boost' that in order for it to occupy a larger expanse of the tonal range.

My own approach towards avoiding any and all masking would be to just shoot in RAW, ensure nothing is blown out and then in the RAW converter increase exposure while at the same time dialing in highlight compression (I'm using RawTherapee, but AFAIK virtually all converters have an option like this). It'll look somewhat crude, but it'll work.

nmp · Sep 22, 2024

koraks said:
That's pretty neat. Never thought of it! And yes, from this point you could very easily 'burn & dodge' by selectively (e.g. brush-)masking individual layers.
I think the main drawback would be that the interior in a typical architecture shot would end up pretty muddy. So you'd still have to 'boost' that in order for it to occupy a larger expanse of the tonal range.

My own approach towards avoiding any and all masking would be to just shoot in RAW, ensure nothing is blown out and then in the RAW converter increase exposure while at the same time dialing in highlight compression (I'm using RawTherapee, but AFAIK virtually all converters have an option like this). It'll look somewhat crude, but it'll work.

Ideally you want muddy raw files as they come out of the camera so you have the full histogram in the original (like a foggy scene.) You can always add snap to them with the help of Contrast/Brightness, Levels, Curves etc. First globally and then locally with brushes and masks to make it look the way you want. For landscapes, lately I hardly ever have to resort to the latter. I imagine, that might be different for OP's architecture photographs.

Also, I figured out this process when I was using my first 10MP Pentax DSLR when the DR's of the digital sensors were rather limited. Currently I own a Nikon D850 (still hardly used) whose DR I believe is to the tune of 14-15 stops that makes HDR almost superfluous. It's amazing how much data can be reclaimed in Camera Raw from what you see in the jpeg on the camera display. I do something similar to you in ACR, move Black level all the way to +100 and White to -100 so the histogram is fully within the range. Then use the Exposure, Contrast, Shadows and Highlights knobs to make it look right. One may still do the stack/align/opacity process on multiple shots that can also improve graininess/noise if that's something one desires.

:Niranjan.

Allthink · Sep 22, 2024

nmp said:
My point was you do not need a mask when you have the final file that has the whole 0 to 255 range - there are no clumped shadows or blown highlights. Of course, if you want to fine tune further locally, you will need masks.

:Niranjan.

The technique you mentioned that I saw others do was still with masks, after doing what you described.
Can you link to some youtube video/source of that technique, that doesn't require masks and can give realistic hdr blending? I want to make sure if it's the method i know or different.

nmp · Sep 22, 2024

Allthink said:
The technique you mentioned that I saw others do was still with masks, after doing what you described.
Can you link to some youtube video/source of that technique, that doesn't require masks and can give realistic hdr blending? I want to make sure if it's the method i know or different.

Sorry no video or write-up of the technique (that I know of) except the one I provided. I came up with this myself some 15 years ago when nothing of this sort was available. If you like attach a series of bracketed shots and I can put it through the procedure and show you what comes out.

:Niranjan.

Best hdr look for high DR (digital)

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