photomatix
25th-jul-2008 - posted by dtra
i took my photo into the photo lab to get it printed yesterday, and the guy said it was too dark. i tried a few different things to get the shadows up without losing the rays of light, but i just couldn't find the right compromise. so i thought maybe i'd try exporting a couple of tiffs (one underexposed, one overexposed) and see if i could get some exposure blending or tone mapping with an hdr program. i tried qtpfsgui, but i just couldn't work out how to get it working (i'm not very patient), and didn't particularly like the gui anyway. i tried using cinepaint to just brighten the shadows, but i can't work out how to save a file (and the gui is crap). so having exhausted my freeware options (i didn't look too hard), i decided to see what photomatix could do, i've never been particularly impressed with what it could do with hand held bracketed shots (probably my fault), but i did like the results in terms of colour and contrast.
i was able to get something that worked well (i thought), so i decided to get it and get rid of the watermark, hopefully this printout looks good, it's getting to be a pretty expensive poster 
. i'll post a picture of it once it's done, all framed and everything. but i think it's not a bad investment, now i have the ability to really fix up under or over exposed pictures without working too hard or throwing away the picture. i'm not going to go back and fix all my other stuffed up pictures now though .
picture taken from the hdrsoft web site.
#33 dtra (david tran)
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grrr, the print out didn't turn out as well as i hoped (i blame teds), still i'll post a pic when i get it back framed.
dtra
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21:58 26th-jul-2008