Weird looking photos.

[Dirt_Diver]

Not sure if it's the picture itself I am using but I am getting some weird looking pictures.  What type of picture should I be using when creating an HDR image? Could someone post an original image of what they are converting to HDR? Or are you using "ANY" picture and trying to convert it to make it look like an HDR?

[Bear_Music]

For an example of an image that NEEDS the HDR processing, see my recent post in the "Post Your Creations" thread. But you can apply the tone mapping to just about anything. Some images will give strange results, sure, but you never know what's going to happen.

One thing I have noticed is that with Photomatix, which is extremely customizable, you can work very precisely on images that actually don't "need" HDR or tone mapping and produce specific effects that work very well. At this point, Wukong seems to be geared towards images that really have a difficult, broad tonal range and it is very smooth with those, but so far it doesn't seem to be providing the tools for "HDR as a special effect" on images that otherwise don't have a wide tonal range. I am not having much luck using Wukong "for effect" so far, but it's EXTREMELY smooth on difficult, detailed images with strong backlighting, for example.

[wukong dev team]

Well said, Bear_Music. It's amazing to me how people uses HDR tone mappers in non-HDR situations. We should build a software for that purpose alone! The MDR/LDR tone mapper can be created in a very efficient way without the burdens of HDR.

[Bear_Music]

Well said, Bear_Music. It's amazing to me how people uses HDR tone mappers in non-HDR situations. We should build a software for that purpose alone! The MDR/LDR tone mapper can be created in a very efficient way without the burdens of HDR.

You'd have a HUGE market if you did that :-)

R.

[mjwood0]

Perhaps this is my problem... Perhaps I'm trying to use HDR techniques on images that don't need it.

What characteristics should one look for that make an image a good candidate for HDR?

I was looking for images were a mix of blown out highlights and underexposed shadows.  I guess I figured that merging three exposures in this instance could give some details to the shadows and bring out details from the highlights.  Is this thinking wrong?

[Dirt_Diver]

I have noticed that if I pull a RAW file into Wukong as a single RAW file it is a bit different as if I use that RAW file and pull out say 3-5 different exposures and then import them into Wukong.

I'm thinking this is true because I can actually see parts of my image that I want to expose more or less. Wukong does a pretty good job of determining which parts of the image should be considered HDR.