Curves
 

I see Ron Bigelow has just posted Part 1 in a 5 part series on his web site.

Very interesting for learners like me. http://ronbigelow.com/articles/curves-1/curves-1.htm

Don

Don, it all seems rather a lengthy and wordy tutorial on the Curves tool. and its only number 1 of 5. I can't wait for the rest ;) :(

Frankly I would sooner get a decent book.

I knew you would ask which one ;)

The Photoshop CS2 Book for Digital Photographers by Scott Kelby. Without a doubt the best one around and by the leading exponent of the program. Its very readable and informative. Get over to Amazon and do yourself a favour :)

Thanks for the recommendation Stephen.

All a bit of a puzzler when you don't know the program and are trying to work out which is going to give the best info on features you are likely to use. Thats why I have been doing a bit of web trawling to get a bit of basic understanding of some of those regular features.

It will take me time to understand Tone Mapping for example, a feature from your critique post.

Don

Ah yes, I'm still experimenting with this, but its something I see great potential in. If you want to know more you could try here http://www.hdrsoft.com/resources/dri.html#tone_mapping

I personally feel that what I have done is more of a conceptual thing, I am not trying to play by the rules so to speak, rather I'm pushing the bounds of what the program can do, just to see what happens.

By the lack of comments it would appear that people here are not too keen, are not prepared to open their minds to it, or simply are being polite and not offering any input for fear of offending. Frankly I wonder if the critique forum is the best place, but thats another issue I'm struggling to come to terms with on this site :)

Just as a further offering though, this is another test with the tonemapping plugin from Photomatix, Ipersonally think there are great possibilities :)

Beautiful image, Stephen.
I'm still trying to work my way through the basics of my 20D + PS7 so I'm a long way from geting to Tone mapping or other exotic subjects. That doesn't mean that I can't appreciate the results though.
As an aside, I rather wish that some one would do a series on Sharpening.

I love this. Did you start off by generating a new .hdr with a few repeated and varied 'tweaked exposure' copies from the original - or did you do it purely by several repeats of just the one 16bit image (without the nedd/use of any further repeated copies and a new .hdr).

I haven't tried pushing the tone mapping on anything yet but I'm keen to give it a bash as soon as I feel i have a suitable image to work with. :)

Pol

Hi Pol, I simply used a single file converted to 16bit. I then applied the TM plugin 4 times, each time adjusting the strength and white/black point sliders to get a good histogram

Aha! Thanks for that! I haven't tried using the white/black sliders to any great extent so far - I've only been using them in tiny doses.

I feel some serious geekery sessions coming on in the very near future.

Wahey! :D

Pol

Stephen did you dowload the plug-in or is it with CS.

It's a download available from http://www.hdrsoft.com/download.html ...... scroll down and look for the "Tone Mapping plugin" - but I think it's only compatible with CS2. If you don't have CS2 you can still use the standalone "PhotomatixPro" programme which also has the same tone mapping functions. The trial software versions are fully functional though they leave a watermark on the final image.

Dunno about Stephen but I found the following link helpful and easy to follow as it's written in easier-to-follow terms. It explains more about high dynamic range (HDR) in photography.
http://www.cybergrain.com/tech/hdr/

Also see the homepage of the photomatix site at http://www.hdrsoft.com.

I'm just experimenting with it too - ain't done anything 'arty-clarty' with it yet, just testing it with regular photos, using the plugin to tweak highlights/shadows/colours and fiddling about with it using layers.

I don't think there are many 'expert' users about so almost everyone is just experimenting, having fun and seeing what they can achieve with it.


Pol