[HDR-photo] HDR from raw or processed TIFFs?

[Terry Wyse]

I want to touch on something that Jack Howard eluded to:

> I still recommend the X3F>16-bit TIFF conversion via Sigma Photo Pro  
> for source files into HDR merge.


My question is more about if *generally* should one do the HDR merge  
from raw or post-processed TIFFs? It seems logical to want to merge  
from raw but I can say that I seem to be getting better results from  
processing TIFFs from raw and merging those rather than merging  
directly from raw.

What got me thinking about this was when I was working with a bunch of  
raw files that I'd done some minimal work with in ACR where I was  
simply setting white balance, overall exposure corrections etc. and  
noticed that Photomatix did not seem to be honoring the raw edits I  
had done. I can say with some certainty that it was clearly ignoring  
my custom white balance adjustment in ACR and was apparently using the  
"As Shot" white balance. I guess what I'm to take from this is that  
Photomatix either ignores or can't read the ACR adjustments tagged to  
the file. Once i discovered this, I started prepping my raw files in  
ACR and then saving them as 16bit TIFFs and then merging those. It's  
not conclusive yet but I feel as though I'm getting better results.

Anybody have a similar experience....or not?

Regards,
Terry Wyse
Pentax K20D
Pentax DA 70mm f/2.4 Limited
Pentax DA 12-24mm f/4
Pentax DA* 50-135mm f/2.8


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