Comments on: HDR Image Processing with Photomatix

By: Photomatix Batch Processing Tutorial | Alaska Photography

Photomatix Batch Processing Tutorial | Alaska Photography — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 18:59:12 +0000

[...] http://photographyforrealestate.net/2007/03/13/hdr-image-processing-with-photomatrix/ [...]

By: Laurent Saint Jean

Laurent Saint Jean — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 02:00:02 +0000

HDR has three major flaws for serious real estate photography:
Time Consuming
No Batch processsing or consistent results
Too much noise

Otherwise, one great technic that only needs to mature… if Nikon and Canon don’t make it available “on-camera” like the D300 Active D-lighting !

It still early to pretend replacing post processing hdr, but it might get there fast.

By: John Sembrot

John Sembrot — Thu, 05 Apr 2007 14:43:13 +0000

Came across this HDR Referrence today. The interesting part is not about th HD Photo format but the comment on in-camera HDR production. These would be awesome for Real Estate.

http://www.tgdaily.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31492

By: Mason Trullinger

Mason Trullinger — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 21:59:57 +0000

I have been shooting real estate for the last couple years and use Photomatix on just about every shoot. I only own a couple speedlights and wireless triggers which are nice for accent lighting but not powerful enough to light a full living room. I don't do any panos for real estate but have found that I get the best results if I shoot at least 5 images per bracket (-2, -1, 0, +1, +2). I only shoot raws and process with rawshooter. I'll usually make the hdr image and then process one of the raw files how I normally do and blend the hdr into the normal single exposure shot. This will usually eliminate the wierd color casts and wacky contrast that photomatix is known for. You can see some examples of my work here: http://www.pierpontblvd.com

By: larrylohrman

larrylohrman — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 18:08:26 +0000

Mvus,
Thanks for pointing out Jook Leung’s action. I think I’ve even downloaded this back when Jook first posted this but I completely forgot about it. I’ll check it out.

By: mvus

mvus — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 12:21:28 +0000

I too didn’t think the results looked natural for this type of HDR when blending a window exposure with the interior.
However, the other day a came across the HRD for Dummies free PS plug-in http://www.360vr.com/hdrfordummies/ which seems to work a treat if all you want to do is this type of hdr. It’s very quick and simple, you just open the dark image, drag the lightest image on top as a new layer and press the action. You can always drag the lighter copy on top of the (flattend layers) hdr image again and quicky mask out the main areas of the shot if it is still a little too dark

By: peaceseeker

peaceseeker — Sat, 17 Mar 2007 08:17:20 +0000

If you would like more info on HDR…Jack Howard from Popular Photography Magazine (Popphoto.com) has a new e-book available titled
“HDR: An Introduction to High Dynamic Range Photography”.

http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/9780596510176/

By: Cherie Irwin

Cherie Irwin — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 18:55:14 +0000

Thanks for the info about Picture Path. I’m not the kind of person that would usually climb atop a soap box, but I find it unbelievable that Realtor.com charges so much. When I was working as an agent, I got slammed with the annual NAR fees, as well as state and local Realtor board fees. Then, in order to just display additional photo content on Realtor.com (owned/operated by NAR), I was paying over $1500 annually…that was with my office’s huge discount. Now that I’ve left my real estate career behind to pursue something with less overhead, I find that Realtor.com is still reaming me. I should have known that it wasn’t going to be as simple as just signing a complaince document, as they describe on their website. I know I said this already, but UNBELIEVABLE! They are making millions off Picture Path providers alone, so I really don’t understand why they must charge their true supporters, the REALTORS, so much! Clearly, they are in it to make money, not to help Realtors sell their properties.

Isn’t it strange how many real estate agents cross over into the realm of photography & virtual tours. It appears that everything related to real estate is quite expensive.

By: John Sembrot

John Sembrot — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:44:44 +0000

I am a Realtor/VTour Producer in CT. I prefer the natural light pano. The HDR stuff is a bit artistic for my taste. Try this for HDR and see some amazing stuff. I tend to blow out the window to the point of bleeding if necessary to get the shadows with all interior lights turned on and any non auto WB setting, shoot in raw and balance what you can. Enough of that though you are right shooting pano directions are enough for a book. To the Realtor.com point Picture Path is not so much a format as subscription. Picture Path providers have a protected (somewhat) geography and pay an initial $5k fee (depending on the active number of listings in that area code) and then an annual rate. They host the media, the PP Provider, on their own servers. I use an organization called and they charge 9$ to host a tour and $20 to put it on Realtor.com, unless the Realtor subscribes to the Featured homes package whereby there is no additional charge. Now I say it takes a good 3 hours to produce these things. From first phone call to up on Realtor.com I get $150 but you can get it done for less with circle pix who charges $79, but they look like . I think mine have a better quality and of course offer the 360 vertical and 360 horizontal a second picture path provider is http://www.hometour360virtualtours.com/

By: Karl Hoelscher

Karl Hoelscher — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 13:46:47 +0000

I downloaded the trial version of Photomatix yesterday, and played with a couple HDR ready exposures. In all, worked pretty good, even though it needed some more work in CS2 with curves to get the contrast back. Much quicker, though, than doing it by hand! And, from what I’ve been able to detirmine, much better results than the built in CS2 HDR merge feature.

The one thing that you really need to watch on these auto HDR programs is the ‘gray out’ of the image. I notice it even on the above example image. These programs don’t know the only thing you want merged is the windows, and they tend to blend some of the 2 interior exposures together.

But, since I’m not entering these in a photo contest, I’d say it’s well worth the hour I save hand merging it!