Are the blue lines fringe or chromatic aberration? These can be amplified when blending multiple exposures. I find batch correct CA before going to HDR.

Best,
Djuna

Thanks

On the upside, this has certainly introduced an interesting LR workflow/ best practices conversation.

1) The beauty of LR is that it doesn’t care about RAW, TIFFs, PSDs, etc.. Neither do I. I want my final image in Lightroom, regardless of anything else. That’s where I’ll print, go to web and slideshow from. And I don’t want to have to do anything to get it there. That’s what software is for.

2) Frankly the separation is just something I don’t need. Again, LR is my catalog. Backup is a totally different topic. I’m talking about managing my library. I don’t want to complicate things by making separate folders (who likes more folders to be confused by?) for different files for my backups. I’m a HUGE member of the keep is simple club and keeping it all in one folder let’s me backup, manage, archive, move etc… all in one shot.

3) I totally agree. But let Photomatix take it back to LR for me and then I’ll go to Photoshop if I want to. Or better yet, I’ll do most of my adjustments with the Adj. Brush in LR like I do now. It’s no better the other way. I go to Photoshop from Photomatix or I go there from LR. I’ll take the route that keeps my stuff organized for me.

Geraldine…
Again, I agree. I think every one of my photos will go to Photoshop after Photomatix. But do it from Lightroom where it belongs (remember, that’s why we’re using Lightroom). If anything, just give us the option to do it this way, or the other.

In the end, this topic came up not from my own personal angle to get it this way. I literally teach thousands of people during the year about Lightroom and whenever I show how to go to HDR from Lightroom the first question people ask is “Why won’t it just save the file back to LR like Photoshop does” and “How do I get the file back into LR?”. And then when I try to show them to save the file back to the original folder (people generally don’t like multiple folders all around) and then to re-import I can see their eyes glazing over. I know it seems simple but trust me, it’s confusing. It’s confusing to me to have to explain to people and they shouldn’t need a tutorial to show how to get their HDR’d image back into LR. The way it is implemented right now, it will require a tutorial. Me personally, sure it’s only a few more clicks and I have it the way I want it – no sweat. I’m worried about the folks out there that are not as savvy and just want it to be simple.

Finally, take a look at my website and see for yourself. I created this post only a few hours ago and it’s already got 38 comments and I keep getting more.
http://www.lightroomkillertips.com/2008/we-have-an-hdr-crusade/

Thanks for listening.
Matt

If you feel that images produced by Photomatix never need post-processing in Photoshop, then I agree with you that the way it is implemented in clunky. However, users who have both Lightroom and Photoshop (and many Photomatix users do) often prefer to further process their blended or tone mapped images in Photoshop — they use Lightroom to organize and render their RAW files, but use Photoshop for post-processing.

We believe that most of our users will appreciate the ability to open in Photoshop the image produced in Photomatix, which is why we chose this implementation. Moreover, this implementation also makes it possible for users to reimport in Lightroom if they prefer to do so.

Geraldine Joffre

Anyway, I posted on my Lightroom site about this. Leave a comment. Tell your friends to leave a comment. Tell your friend’s friends to leave a comment so I can send them all to HDRsoft and hopefully get this implemented in a better way.

Thanks,
Matt K

Why?

1. RAW files are like negatives to me and TIFFs more like prints. When I browse a folder with RAWs (negatives) I don’t want to see the TIFFs and vice versa.

2. I backup my RAWs and TIFFs in different folder structures and mixing RAWs and TIFFs would blur this seperation

3. I hardly ever think a picture just tonemapped in Photomatix would be ready for a final print. There is always something left for Photoshop:

- Sharpening
- Lens correction
- perspective corrections
- tonality fine tuning
- Dodge & burn

If now the tonemapped images are stored in the same folder as the RAW files I would add temporary images to the RAW file folders. Cleaning up that mess requires a lot of extra work.

Uwe
http://handbook.outbackphoto.com/section_hdr_and_tonemapping/index.html