I'm revisiting the photos I took in Chile in December, using LR5 instead of Aperture. Several have suggested that the best way to learn LR is to practice, practice, practice. This started with 3 bracketed shots because the lighting was so difficult to capture. This was early morning at Tatio Geyser, after a 3 hour drive that started at 5:00 a.m. We arrived before sunrise and were able to wander the glaciers as the sun rose over the mountain.
I exported from LR5 to Potomatix. Once combined, I imported back into LR5 and used sliders to tweak black & white, then fiddled with exposure and saturation to remove any unnatural effects I thought HDR processing might have caused.
Thank you for your visits, comments, and favs for the snowy dune image. I'm always appreciative of your support.
@dtigani And just as a PS -- the main difference is in the post processing after creating the HDR. LR and Aperture have similar options, but I'm finding that LR has a stronger set of tools to use and they tend to be more sensitive. But, I have very little experience with LR so far.
@taffy thanks. I was just curious if you had a similar result when edited in aperture. I guess the HDR in Photomatix would have had some added benefits also.
@dtigani I find a bigger difference between using HDR Efex and Photomatix, than I do in LR or Aperture when it comes to HDR. But the bigger thing for me is learning to use the sliders in LD to the most of what they offer. Aperture didn't seem to allow as much fine tuning - more was hidden, in a way. And you couldn't read the 'history' of what you'd done in the way you can in LR.
I really like the fact that the HDR processing in this shot doesn't feel "overwhelming" but, rather, it feels as if I could step onto that rocky outcrop and be there. Well done!
Wonderful steamy shot... I like your processing (and narrative) very much. LR is a journey, which I am still walking, but the path does seem more familiar as I tread it more often. The colors and textures here are very beautiful.
SO love this image. I admire your skills so much Taffy. I also admire your dedication and determination. This looks so beautiful to me and I can not imagine it being any better...
Wonderful shot Taffy and lovely processing!! That's what I do with my HDR shots - combine in Photomatix and them bring back into LR and do the editing. You can make more adjustments to make the shot look more natural if that's what you want. I love the way you can get rid of noise in LR - so clever it just disappears!! Fav!!
Beautiful shot. You have been to some of the most amazing places recently! I like the processing here. Sometimes I think the HDR look is so overdone the photo no longer looks real. But what you've done here is quite natural looking and it makes me feel as if I part of the picture. Well done!
@golftragic Marnie, I haven't been on Flickr yet today and don't know if you have reworked your recent HDR landscape, but this is really the look that you should aim for.
@olivetreeann I agree re HDR and overprocessing...it's so handy to get the lighting right, but it's a thin line between that and then looking like it was processed in HDR. I can't always get it right -- glad you thought it worked here.
I'm learning LR5 as well and practice makes perfect!
So much to learn.