chillywilly Posted October 27, 2021 Share Posted October 27, 2021 As you'll guess, I'm new to working with HDR/EDR. The quick version is I need help understanding the best workflow to go from HDR to SDR output. The longer story is... I merged to HDR from five bracketed RAW images, and because I had checked the box I went straight into tone mapping. I created a pleasing result as viewed on my 2018 Macbook Pro. After applying the changes, I saved the Afphoto document and a layered TIFF file. I did not realize is that, by default, Affinity has Enable EDR turned on. So I made all my adjustments with the extra dynamic range of my Macbook's screen (a.k.a., 500 nits brightness, P3 color gamut) not realizing that I was working outside of the gamut of other screens. I want a JPG for the web, but I want it look like the image I see on the screen in front of me. It seems like this should be possible since I'm looking at it on a computer screen, but no — saving to JPG creates a file lacking all the detail in the highlights. The horror. I've since learned about the 32-bit Preview panel. My settings are still default: Enabled EDR, Exposure 0, Gamma 1, and ICC Display Transform on. I assigned the sRGB color profile to my image. (I know this makes the image slightly larger, but the color accuracy improvements are important to me.) When uncheck Enable EDR in the 32-bit Preview pane, the image on screen looks as bad as the exported JPG. The truth hurts, but at least now I can try to make it work. In Adobe Lightroom, there's a "Recovery" slider that does a great job of reigning in highlights and bringing back detail. I want that slider here. Curves and Levels aren't working too well for me. What do you suggest? The screenshot file looks like the JPG. On screen, however, I can see all the detail of the door. Nothing is blown out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff Lee D Posted November 1, 2021 Staff Share Posted November 1, 2021 Would you be able to provide a copy of your .afphoto file so I can take a look? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chillywilly Posted November 2, 2021 Author Share Posted November 2, 2021 Unfortunately I'm not at liberty to share my client's photography. Do you have any general workflow advice on HDR processing? My client is doing bracketed interiors, and that means a huge dynamic range with overexposed artificial lighting in the shot. I made a new HDR merge from the original photos and during tone mapping I ticked the "SDR clamp" on and off to check the differences. Having this awareness I was able to get a better result, but I'm still really missing the "recovery" slider that I have used in Lightroom. It seems to pull down only those really blown out areas, and it does it gracefully. With tone mapping in Affinity Photo, I've tried the Highlights slider, and it's just not that great and handling these problems. Reducing exposure does a better job, but then I have to crank the brightness to the max, which at +25 is not nearly enough. I'd love to hear what others do with HDR/EDR interior photography. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Staff James Ritson Posted November 2, 2021 Staff Share Posted November 2, 2021 Hi @chillywilly, as you've discovered, JPEG is a bounded format and so your HDR values above 1 will be clamped. We are waiting for some kind of standardisation of HDR image formats on both Windows and macOS before implementing a suitable export format. At the moment, the only formats you can really use to keep those HDR values are EXR, HDR and TIFF set to 32-bit in the More options on the export dialog. There are various approaches you can take to tone mapping. After doing your bracketed HDR merge, it sounds like you have tried using the Tone Mapping Persona and experimenting with the tone compression, local contrast and shadows/highlights sliders on the Basic panel? That is usually sufficient to get a tone mapped result where the highlights are no longer out of displayable range, but if it's not working for you there are a couple of other options you can try. Within the main Photo Persona, we have a live Shadows/Highlights filter located on the top Layer>New Live Filter Layer menu. You can drag the Highlights Strength slider all the way to the left, then increase Highlights Range gradually—this works quite well for Archviz HDR 3D renders so you may want to try it for your photography (I presume real estate/architecture from the image you've attached?). There is another option, which is to use a live procedural texture filter to perform a logarithmic transform, then shape the resulting tones using adjustment layers or 1D shaper LUTs. I'm slightly nerdy (🙃) so I dabble in a bit of macro creation in my spare time and provide some free macro downloads that may help you out here: HDR Tone Mapping macros: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xa5gfxwup9uzhr9/AACTWvndBbY4FhTLQ9cGS3_na?dl=0 Blender Filmic Transform macros: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q5b2zlwytd3slr0/AADYfcI6JykHfn4w3NR3279za?dl=0 The Blender Filmic macros are actually designed for HDR 3D renders so users can match the filmic output they get in blender when saving directly to gamma-encoded formats like JPEG/TIFF etc, but they work very well for HDR photography as well. Don't tone map your HDR merge output at all (uncheck the option on the HDR merge dialog or cancel out of the Tone Mapping Persona), then run the appropriate macro from either of the two macro sets above and you'll be able to tone map your images with a more natural result. Don't forget there are PDF manuals available via those links too which will explain how to install and use the macros. Hope that helps! somnolentsurfer and 413x 1 1 Quote Product Expert (Affinity Photo) & Product Expert Team Leader @JamesR_Affinity for tutorial sneak peeks and more Official Affinity Photo tutorials Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chillywilly Posted November 3, 2021 Author Share Posted November 3, 2021 Hi James. Thanks so much for response! 18 hours ago, James Ritson said: Hi @chillywilly, as you've discovered, JPEG is a bounded format and so your HDR values above 1 will be clamped. We are waiting for some kind of standardisation of HDR image formats on both Windows and macOS before implementing a suitable export format. At the moment, the only formats you can really use to keep those HDR values are EXR, HDR and TIFF set to 32-bit in the More options on the export dialog. I understand. It's just disorienting to be looking at an image on the screen that can't actually be represented in an SDR format. 18 hours ago, James Ritson said: There are various approaches you can take to tone mapping. After doing your bracketed HDR merge, it sounds like you have tried using the Tone Mapping Persona and experimenting with the tone compression, local contrast and shadows/highlights sliders on the Basic panel? That is usually sufficient to get a tone mapped result where the highlights are no longer out of displayable range, but if it's not working for you there are a couple of other options you can try. Within the main Photo Persona, we have a live Shadows/Highlights filter located on the top Layer>New Live Filter Layer menu. You can drag the Highlights Strength slider all the way to the left, then increase Highlights Range gradually—this works quite well for Archviz HDR 3D renders so you may want to try it for your photography (I presume real estate/architecture from the image you've attached?). There is another option, which is to use a live procedural texture filter to perform a logarithmic transform, then shape the resulting tones using adjustment layers or 1D shaper LUTs. I'm slightly nerdy (🙃) so I dabble in a bit of macro creation in my spare time and provide some free macro downloads that may help you out here: HDR Tone Mapping macros: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/xa5gfxwup9uzhr9/AACTWvndBbY4FhTLQ9cGS3_na?dl=0 Blender Filmic Transform macros: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/q5b2zlwytd3slr0/AADYfcI6JykHfn4w3NR3279za?dl=0 The Blender Filmic macros are actually designed for HDR 3D renders so users can match the filmic output they get in blender when saving directly to gamma-encoded formats like JPEG/TIFF etc, but they work very well for HDR photography as well. Don't tone map your HDR merge output at all (uncheck the option on the HDR merge dialog or cancel out of the Tone Mapping Persona), then run the appropriate macro from either of the two macro sets above and you'll be able to tone map your images with a more natural result. Don't forget there are PDF manuals available via those links too which will explain how to install and use the macros. Hope that helps! HDR merge with Tone Mapping unchecked is interesting. I haven't tried this before. I now see a medium tone pixel image layer in the Layers panel and a Sources panel with HDR on top of four sources. I tried the first suggestion with the Live Filter, and at first I was excited thinking it was doing exactly what I wanted, but then I realized that I was viewing the image with 32-bit Preview enabled. When I unchecked that, the image went back to looking just as blown out as it did with Tone Mapping. I've downloaded your macros. Thank you for sending those! I'll give them a try soon and let you know how it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chillywilly Posted November 3, 2021 Author Share Posted November 3, 2021 Wow! I got what I wanted on my first try with a single click just using your HDR macro: Bright Highlights. I'll attach a screen capture showing what it does with the light source. Note that this file has no other adjustments. I just want to show your macro helped me retain the wall around the light source. It seems crazy, but I just could not achieve this any other way I've tried. Of course I still have some processing to do, but I can work with this! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chillywilly Posted November 3, 2021 Author Share Posted November 3, 2021 I'd love to learn more about how these filters work. Do you have any tutorials explaining the math filters? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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