HDR Artifacts

[Panoramiac]

Hi All,

I thought after using Affinity for a while it is time to register here and post about something I could not find anything on the net. I am got used to develop my HDR image using the manual process shown in the video tutotials from Affinity. I discovered artifacts in light areas of an HDR. Here is an example:

The source are these 3 images:

They are usually purple and I wonder if there is a way to avoid them or if it is something which could be improved in the future. I them also arround street lanterns in my picture from Frankfurt (my home town) Check the picture in the link on the left bottom. 

I really happy with Affinity Photo, but this together with the lags I sometimes have during image processing starts to get annyoing (I have a Ryzen 1600 with 16 GB and a SSD).

Thanks for your feedack in advance.

Edited October 12, 2018 by Panoramiac
Typo

[John Rostron]

Firstly, even in your darkest image, some of the highlghts are blown out. You might expect some blowout in specular reflections like this, but you should try to reduce it as much as possible.

Your second problem is that the water is moving quite rapidly, so that your image is going to be different in your three shots. This will exacerbate the first problem.

How you solve this is quite another problem apart from visiting on a very still evening and taking a wider range of exposures, very quickly. Does your camera have automatic exposure bracketing? If so it would help a lot. I would also advise taking exposures at 2EV spacing to minimise the time between shots. Even so, I would guess that even ripples would change faster than your shots.i

John

[Panoramiac]

Hi John,

But why I then have this also on street lanterns? I will recheck the raw data of my Frankfurt image. I did not see the artifacts in the water when I used the HDR tool from Canon -  which I used in the past before I had Affinity. Of course you can forget this tool, since it can not really merge the 3 images together. They were aquired by hand. I just think that there should be a possibility in the HDR persona to deal with such artifacts. 

I guess a ND gradient filter could also help. Since it would reduce the brightness of the sky and I might not need to use HDR at all. (I am thinking about to get one of these ;-) ).

Tobias

[John Rostron]

I think that you are referring to the purple fringing in your highlights. Are you getting these in your street lanterns? They are due to diffraction where different wavelengths of light are bent round the edges of the shutter. They are more marked with a narrow aperture. What aperture were you using. They are also exacerbated where you have strong conrrast, as with the specular reflections. 

Some raw processors automatically apply a correction (defringing). Maybe your Canon program does. Affinity does offer a defringing tool, but does not apply it automatically. This may be all you need to resolve your problem. Search for 'defringing' either in the program help or in these forums. You should apply defringing to the individual images, before your HDR merge.

John

[R C-R]

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

I think that you are referrijg to the purple fringing in your highlights.

If so, these two Affinity Photo video tutorials might be of interest:

Affinity Photo - Defringing and Chromatic Aberration

Affinity Photo - Flexible Defringing

[Panoramiac]

Hi John, 

 

I know these tut videos and used them usually on the combined HDR image before going into the tone mapping persona. Doing before on the separate images is new to me. 

When I am back at a PC I will post a screen shot of the problem of my Frankfurt image. I had also a link to it on my first post. Look at the street lights at the river on the left. 

The used aperture I need to check also when I am at my PC. 

 

Thanks 

Tobias 

[Panoramiac]

Hey Guys,

 

I found another issue which goes in the same direction, but is not HDR processing itself. Please check the screenshot below. On the left is the view of the same CR2 file in Irfanview. On the right the CR2 file in Affinity Photo in the RAW development tool. The pink light is burned out, but not in Irfanview. I can not fix this and if I would create an HDR with this as input the result is burned as mentioned above. No movement at all. Comments are welcome ;-).

 

[Panoramiac]

Direct update:

Saved the files as TIF in Irfanview and opened it in Affinity and it looks much better:

 

[All Media Lab]

Can you post 3 raw images? Then I can check it in Affinity vs Capture One & Photomatix.

Regards,

David

[Panoramiac]

Hi David,

I attached the one file I now used to finish the picture for the photo book I am currently working on. I processed it in AF over saving it as TIF from Irfanview. During my work here I also had some other samples. I will add them tomorrow. Now I have to sleep ;-).

 

Thanks

Tobias

Edit: RAW Image removed.

[Panoramiac]

Here is another example between Affinity Photo and the simple HDR toolk in Canon Digital Photo Professional 4 (left AP, right DPP):

Affinity creates here artifacts arround the sun, I would expect here something like on the right site (please ignore the colors, I am currently in the middle of the processing). I guess somethig is going wrong here. Will now save the result from DPP as tiff and will process it in AP.

@All Media Lab: Could you check the RAW file I uploaded last week?

[All Media Lab]

Hi Tobias,

Did not see your message earlier then this morning.

Processed your raw in Capture One, Canon Digital Photo 4 and Affinity Photo (looked on a EIZO calibrated monitor), exported as JPG (somehow I'm not able to upload large file sizes to this forum).

The results explain why I use Capture One! To test in Photomatix I need at least a 3 x bracketing for a good result.

I love Affinity, but it's not there yet with RAW development.

Regards,

David 

Capture One

Affinity Photo

Second test Affinity Photo with more sharpening that doesn't translate in the export results I think this is an issue!

It looks good and sharp in Affinity before develop, but after export it's not as sharp but the color definition is also not very good compare to Capture One :

 

[All Media Lab]

IMG_0553.tiff

And a TIF export from Affinity with different settings. Also uploaded the jpg for viewing on this forum.

Still not as good as Capture One. There is to much "saturation" in Affinity  even when I go in to minus with it.

 

This is with Canon Digital Photo 4:

 

[Panoramiac]

@All Media Lab Thanks for the help. I created a ticket in the bug section of the forum. Lets see what will happen. I checked the prices of Capture One and still this is incredible. This is my hobby. I do not like to rent software for private use neither spent so much money on a software :-(.

[All Media Lab]

Hi Tobias,

I think that Canon Digital Photo 4 does a pretty decent job, the Affinity ones are not to bad. But the problem that I see is to much saturation that translates in  blurry  and not sharp details of the image. Of the Affinity ones I created I like the one with the TIFF link above the image most. There I had to go in minus with saturation to get a better image.

Regards,

David

 

[Panoramiac]

Hi David,

I got some feedback on my bug ticket, but it did non solve the issue. So we have to wait for a fix:

Regards,
Tobias

[All Media Lab]

Hi Tobias,

Yes the next update seems to contain many RAW enhancements, I'm really looking forward to the release.

Regards,

David 

[Panoramiac]

 @All Media Lab I recently tested the Shanghai image with Lightroom and there also these artefact are visible. Also Luminar failed on them (I am thinking about to get the Luminar/ Aurora HDR package). It really looks that only Capute One could well manage it. In the bug ticket the guy mentioned that IrfanView just displayes the embedded JPG made by the camera. I tested this also and it is true. When I disable the loading of the embedded JPG, the loaded RAW image in IrfanView looks similar to the result in Affinity. So this seems to be a tough image. Means for Serrif if they can handle this well, they made a hughe step forward ;-).

Lightroom:

[All Media Lab]

Hi Tobias,

Did an other try with Affinity Photo and at the end Topaz Labs "All Clear" the artificial intelligence plugin. 

But stick with Capture One for RAW and Photomatix for HDR.

Regards,

David