Does this need ND or HDR?

[digiman]

This is a four image Panorama I shot a couple of days ago. The foreground is obviously too dark, but I wonder, do I need to use a ND filter, (on my Christmas list!) or would I need to do an HDR process on it?


Cloudy Panorama by Garry Macdonald Photography, on Flickr

Any comments most welcome,
Garry

P.S. Now, I am going to hit "save" and see what happens.....

[Muscat]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

Garry for me the easy option would have been to use an ND Grad filter.

[Wayne Els]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

I actually say the sky is maybe a little under exposed too. I think a gentle HDR would work better than an ND because the trees silhouette would still be difficult to pull from the lighter sky. The shot is also all sky and would imho benefit with a bit more foreground/bottom interest.

[Stan]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

if you used an ND filter then as there is not a straight split between the horizon and sky the ND will affect some of the trees as well. I would probably try the shadow/highlight tool in PP to lift the shadows and bring the detail out and as overall its a little underexposed either a levels or curves adjustment layer

Stan

[digiman]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

Thanks for that guys. Maybe I will revisit it in Lightroom and bring the whole lot up a bit.

Wayne, regarding the foreground, the crop in the stitch wouldn't allow me to keep any more, but, next time I will pay more attention to that during shooting

[digiman]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

Cheers Stan. I guess I would need to do all this pre export, as individual RAW images. I don't know about curves, I will need to read up on that first!

[S_J_P]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

Looking at the picture I wouldn't have thought the tonal range is great enough to warrant HDR (which can end up looking artificial) and as already mentioned the scene doesn't lend itself to a grad as the horizon is of varying heights.

I'd be inclined to expose for the highlights (expose to the right of the histogram) using RAW which will maximise the shadow detail available and then use Lightroom's Shadow and Blacks sliders to bring-up the foreground, all in all 30 seconds processing time. I'm sure that using layers in Photoshop would yield a better overall result, but I'd save that for the images you're going to show/print. The free DPP which comes with Canon cameras will do something similar too with the adjustment of the black and mid points and a tweak to the curve (I don't think DPP has the equivalent of Lightrooms Blacks, Shadows, Whites, and Highlights sliders)

[Muscat]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

OK I took the question as should I use an ND Grad when taking the picture or multiple images for HDR rather than a query about how to adjust the image in PP. The guys have given sound advice on PPing the image.

[digiman]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

I was asking both really. I am desperate to get a set of NDs, and wondered if that was what was required here. So your input was not out of place!

[digiman]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

Here is a second stitch with a little more post processing, and a couple of extra images too! I should really stop being scared to experiment with Lightroom! It is so awesome!


Sky Panorama by Garry Macdonald Photography, on Flickr

Any further comments welcome,

Garry

[S_J_P]

Re: Does this need ND or HDR?

A couple of LR hints :

Set your exposure so your histogram isn't bunched-up at one end and then click the little arrows at the top of the histogram display to turn on clipping warnings, highlights will show in red and blacks in blue, you can use these to set the highlights and blacks (plus whites and shadows to a lessor extent) so that you're maximising the tonal range by just clipping at both ends - you may want to change this as you process further, but I find it a good starting point.

Use Clarity and Vibrance with restraint on colour images (B&W can benefit from higher settings though), and be very wary of Saturation increases.

Pulling-back the clouds may help give them more texture, you could try winding the Whites down a little (and possibly increasing Highlights to balance) but that may impact other areas of the image, so a grad (either linear or circular if you're using LR 5) over the left/top of the image with reduced whites, reduced exposure, and a slight increase in contrast may help. Alternatively, a nice soft-edged brush with similar settings across the area would do a similar thing, but more selectively.