[HDR-photo] Re: Royce - RAW - Lightzone answer!

Sun Jun 8 16:16:12 EDT 2008

Thanks Royce for your time and reply. It was most helpful.
  Yes, I have just discovered HDR and I am researching it more. Some examples I have seen look very good and then others look more like illustrations.
  I would like to remain on this list for further knowledge and possibly help with Photomatrix if I decide to go in this direction.
  Thanks again ...
  Karen

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: HDR-photo Digest, Vol 19, Issue 2 (Poore Karen)
2. Re: Re: HDR-photo Digest, Vol 19, Issue 2 (Royce Howland)

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Message: 1
Date: Sun, 8 Jun 2008 04:14:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Poore Karen 
Subject: [HDR-photo] Re: HDR-photo Digest, Vol 19, Issue 2
To: hdr-photo at hdr-photography.com
Message-ID: <157625.75380.qm at web90602.mail.mud.yahoo.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

Good morning,
Hi, my name is Karen and last week I spent quite a bit of time on outbackphoto.com - lots of good information and thanks for that!
I assume this is not a normal Yahoo Group list. I forgot how I got on this list. 

I have a comment/question/response from the last digest I received.
I noticed in your workflow you say you use ACR to convert your RAW images and not say "Light Zone". I was thinking of trying this program since I am still using Photoshop CS2 and my newest camera is not included in the RAW list. I quess it is a question on whether I want to upgrade my photoshop and illustrator ($400) or go with a third party RAW processor.
What are your thoughts? I am an amateur. Does Light Zone appear to be around for a while?
It seems as good or better than ACR ...
Thanks for your time ...
Karen in Austin, Texas USA

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Today's Topics:

1. Re: A little help please (Royce Howland)

----------------------------------------------------------------------

Message: 1
Date: Fri, 06 Jun 2008 20:55:57 -0600
From: Royce Howland 
Subject: Re: [HDR-photo] A little help please
To: uwe at outbackphoto.com, High Dynamic Range Photography

Message-ID: <4849F8BD.9070104 at cospring.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Color management gremlins can appear, because historically a number of 
applications have not been color managed, or sometimes only partially. 
Plus, my understanding is that not all HDR file formats even have the 
capacity to be color managed in the way we understand it with 
traditional image files such as JPEG and TIFF and associated ICC 
profiles like sRGB, Adobe RGB 1998 and ProPhoto RGB. This is because HDR 
files are scene referred, rather than output referred. Thus HDR files 
don't contain the same kinds of presumptions about certain matters that 
we find in LDR image files -- limited gamut mapping, gamma curves, etc.

Right now, my workflow described below starts out using the ProPhoto RGB 
profile in step #1. As soon as the images get merged to HDR in step #2, 
that profile information is lost in the file formats... but I still 
remember it of course. :) What I do is simply proceed with step #3 and 
#4. With the resulting tone mapped TIFF, I assign it back to ProPhoto 
RGB at the beginning of step #5. (Note -- I assign the profile, I don't 
convert it.)

Doing this, I find color is essentially as I expected it to be when I 
began the process with RAW conversion. I have not performed any detailed 
analysis to determine whether color shifts that are significant to me 
could be happening, and if so at what stage. However, my gut says that 
if any color shifting is going on, it is mostly in step #4 (tone 
mapping), which is usually where we have the most color "problems" in an 
HDR workflow.

For best results, I think what we would want at a minimum is for the 
proper interpretation of things like profile color primaries and white 
point to be carried through all stages of the workflow. Right now there 
are points where this may break down. But as long as none of the 
intermediate stages impose a different interpretation that negatively 
affects the actual RGB numbers in the file, things may be fine. 
Assigning the same profile at the end, as was used at the beginning, I 
put myself into the same ballpark for color primaries and white point.

The main question might be whether I applied some settings during tone 
mapping that were inappropriate because the tone mapping preview was 
showing me an inaccurate representation of color based on a 
misunderstanding of the RGB color data.

Hopefully somebody familiar with inner workings can contribute on this 
topic...

Royce

Uwe Steinmueller wrote:
> Royce,
> 
> I tried this:
> 
> Right now my workflow goes like this:
> 1. Convert my original RAW files to 16-bit TIFF using Adobe Camera Raw.
> 2. Batch merge the TIFF files into HDR files (OpenEXR format) using
> Photomatix batch mode.
> 3. Stitch the HDR files using Autopano Pro and its Smartblend blending
> option, producing an OpenEXR (.exr) or Radiance (.hdr) HDR file as
> output. This is the entire panorama, my "master file" as it were.
> 4. Tone map the HDR panorama in Photomatix, producing 16-bit TIFF again.
> 5. Finish the TIFF in Photoshop.
> 
> I get some issues in terms of color management. What do you do to avoid this problem?

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Message: 2
Date: Sun, 08 Jun 2008 09:38:57 -0600
From: Royce Howland 
Subject: Re: [HDR-photo] Re: HDR-photo Digest, Vol 19, Issue 2
To: High Dynamic Range Photography 
Message-ID: <484BFD11.4040300 at cospring.com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed

Poore Karen wrote:
> Hi, my name is Karen and last week I spent quite a bit of time on 
> outbackphoto.com - lots of good information and thanks for that!
> I assume this is not a normal Yahoo Group list. I forgot how I got on 
> this list.

Welcome, Karen. I'm not sure if you know this, but this email list is 
aimed specifically at HDR (high dynamic range) photography. We do 
discuss other software like RAW converters and so on, but typically in 
the context of how these tools fit into an HDR workflow. :) I do have 
some basic info for you below, but if you need more detail you might 
need to explore the topic on another list or forum.

> I have a comment/question/response from the last digest I received.
> I noticed in your workflow you say you use ACR to convert your RAW 
> images and not say "Light Zone". I was thinking of trying this program 
> since I am still using Photoshop CS2 and my newest camera is not 
> included in the RAW list. I quess it is a question on whether I want to 
> upgrade my photoshop and illustrator ($400) or go with a third party RAW 
> processor.

I have an earlier release of LightZone, and like it for what it is. I 
hope the company does stick around, because this tool has some good 
things going for it. However, LightZone is not a RAW converter. Like 
Adobe's own Lightroom product, LightZone is an image editing application 
that happens to work on RAW images (as well as TIFF and JPEG). LightZone 
has some very nice and innovative things about it if what you want to do 
is edit your images without going to Photoshop.

But if your main goal is to use CS2 to work on images from your new 
camera, the RAW files of which are not supported by CS2/ACR, then I 
think LightZone would be overkill for that purpose. For my money, 
LightZone also is not as good at the basic function of RAW conversion as 
is the case with ACR. Especially with CS3/ACR, which is much improved 
over CS2/ACR.

There are of course many options and opinions. As you say, you could 
upgrade to CS3, or look at other third party RAW converters. Much of the 
decision is about your personal preferences and how you want to spend 
your money and time. :) If you were going to upgrade to CS3 anyway for 
all the other upgrades it has over CS2, then sticking with ACR likely 
would be the way to go. Otherwise if you're not planning to upgrade to 
CS3 and want to minimize your expenses, the cheapest route is probably 
just to use the RAW conversion software that came with your camera to 
export TIFF files, and work on those in CS2.

I probably won't go into more detail than that on this list, as far as 
general considerations of RAW conversion tools. If you need more detail 
on the pro's and con's of various RAW software, you could post at the 
DOP forums:
http://www.outbackphoto.com/tforum/

Or the Luminous Landscape forums:
http://www.luminous-landscape.com/forum/

Royce Howland
Calgary, Alberta

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