Week 10 - A Castle in HDR

The HDR plugin I use for Aperture - Photomatix Pro - has been updated to 64-bit, so I thought I would give it a try with a series of photos I made this morning of our local castle - Dundonald castle in Ayrshire, Scotland.

Bye the way, having a local Castle is no biggy here in Scotland - they are everywhere :-)

Right, here are the originals, taken from -2 to +2 exposures:







And here is the finished article:


I used almost all of the sliders in the Photomatix Pro plug-in, but it is not necessary to do that, if you don't want to - good results can be had just by using the presets.

While this Castle is not the most photogenic, it does have some advantages - it is quite high, and it overlooks the village of Dundonald which, if you get it at the right angle and the right light, can look quite charming - but that's for another day :-)

So, does the 64 bit plug-in improve things for doing HDR from with-in Aperture? Well, Photomatix are going to hate me, but I didn't notice any vast improvement over the 32-bit plug-in. But what this plug-in does, it does well, and well enough to fit pretty much seamlessly into my Aperture workflow for HDR sessions. The resulting .tiff files are large, but Aperture just gulps them in and continues on with only a small pause in processing to indicate a larger than usual file.

The upgrade to 64-bit is free, the installation can be manual or via a supplied installer. All-in-all, this upgrade went smoothly, the plug-in worked flawlessly and the result was a smooth production of an HDR photo. Next time, I'll choose something a bit more photogenic!

Week 9

As anyone following this "Project 52" will know I am about 8 weeks behind.

While I could just take any old snap and post it up here, I do not think that would be right - I would rather go after a shot and not get it than post something that was just a "fill".

Todays pic is one of what I hope will become a set - "New Growth" is how I think of it and it is all mixed up with changes taking place in my life just now and springtime and natural progression.
Don't worry, I am not going to go all David DuChemin on you guys, but things are changing for me and I am spending more time contemplating everything than I have in many years.

Enough of the navel-gazing - here is this weeks simple image, entitled "Potential"



Taken while I was walking in a small nature reserve about 3 miles from my house, I was concentrating so hard on getting the shot I missed a couple of potential images that could have been the subject of a post by themselves.
Rest assured I will try for them again....

Post processing was done in Aperture and was mainly a levels adjustment (RGB), some exposure compensation, a push to the contrast, some minor saturation increase and some burning of the flash highlights to tone them down.

Here is the original so you can see for yourself.


To my mind, this is "washed out" by the fill flash and needs the boosts given to it in pp.

If you disagree, or would like to say anything - leave a comment - all are appreciated.

Till next time.... oh, by the way, this and a couple of others I took today are in the "Project 52" gallery - perhaps you would like to check them out?

PS: I am trying out some techniques put forward in this book