Jul 4, 2006, 11:32
The haloing occurs mainly on very high contrast edges and it affects the blue channel the most (at least in my images). I find you can reduce the haloing a great deal by playing with a combination of the white clip, luminosity, and strength settings (on the full package anyway - not sure about the freeware) and with the blue channel in curves (PhotoShop). So far, I can't manage to eliminate it on all shots - and when it is extreme - I don't use that technique. At PhotoMatix, they must *like* the effect, because they show it front and center on such shots as the tree one Zig is describing.
This software doesn't work well on "noisy" cameras like my A2 - it greatly enhances the noise as well as the detail - but works great on the D200. It also is not that great when your photo has large patches of sky and that sky is featureless - i.e. no clouds - just a blue expanse. This may be due to the blue channel issue I was talking about (but who knows? I'm no bloody scientist)
My newest workflow involves tone mapping using only a single RAW image - I read an explanation of how blending exposures of the same RAW image adds nothing when tone mapping - and that is probably true. The exposure blending software gives a much more natural look than the tone mapping, but the tone mapping is also pretty cool. The first 2 shots in this thread are exposure blending (you need at least 2 exposures of the same RAW image for this) and the rework of Central Park is done with tone mapping. You can see the difference in the techniques. As far as I can tell, exposure blending doesn't exhibit the same issues with haloing.
Like all Photo techniques, this is just a tool - not an auto generator of great photos. I always take the blended/mapped image into PhotoShop and do my own thing with it afterwards anyway. What this software does is really not that much different than what I have done many times by brute force in PhotoShop using masks, levels and curves. It is a huge time saver however, and time is (if not actually money) still worth something to me.
This software doesn't work well on "noisy" cameras like my A2 - it greatly enhances the noise as well as the detail - but works great on the D200. It also is not that great when your photo has large patches of sky and that sky is featureless - i.e. no clouds - just a blue expanse. This may be due to the blue channel issue I was talking about (but who knows? I'm no bloody scientist)
My newest workflow involves tone mapping using only a single RAW image - I read an explanation of how blending exposures of the same RAW image adds nothing when tone mapping - and that is probably true. The exposure blending software gives a much more natural look than the tone mapping, but the tone mapping is also pretty cool. The first 2 shots in this thread are exposure blending (you need at least 2 exposures of the same RAW image for this) and the rework of Central Park is done with tone mapping. You can see the difference in the techniques. As far as I can tell, exposure blending doesn't exhibit the same issues with haloing.
Like all Photo techniques, this is just a tool - not an auto generator of great photos. I always take the blended/mapped image into PhotoShop and do my own thing with it afterwards anyway. What this software does is really not that much different than what I have done many times by brute force in PhotoShop using masks, levels and curves. It is a huge time saver however, and time is (if not actually money) still worth something to me.