HDR Improvements

[Mettsy]

The HDR Merge outputs results that are far to washed out/bright compared to Photoshop CC 2018.

Not only are Affinity's results poorer but it takes twice as long to merge and complete than Photoshop surprisingly.

 

I've attached both results below. Both are the default that comes from each only Ghosting has been removed from each. This doesn't have an effect on the dynamic range issue.

 

Pretty much all I'm asking is that the HDR Merge is improved to at least match Photoshops results.

[James Ritson]

Hey Mettsy, apologies if I'm missing something here, but are you just comparing the result you get straight after HDR merging (so no tone mapping)? What steps do you take in Photoshop, do you use 8-bit/16-bit adaptive tone mapping or complete it in Camera Raw?

 

After it's just been HDR merged in Photo, you'd really need to tone map the image before doing anything else. What you're seeing is simply the starting exposure or "point" that Photo has picked - notice the entire image is exposed brighter than the Photoshop result. If you went to View>Studio>32-bit Preview and brought the Exposure slider down by perhaps 0.5 or 1 stop, you might find the result looks more like Photoshop's (don't forget to reset it though before doing any further work).

 

The detail that looks washed out is there, the image just needs tone mapping via global compression/local contrast, both of which you can do in the Tone Mapping persona - top left of the interface, the fourth icon along. Let me know if this does the trick.