HDR coming out with awful results - any help would be appreciated!

[Crimmy]

Hi There,

 

I recently got Affinity for its support of HDR, and photo stacking for star stacking (although this is a much lesser concern). I had taken some photos over the weekend, and wanted to try and edit them, so I loaded them up into Affinity's HDR function and let it have at it. I've attached a few photos - the initial result is the one called Affinity_tonemapNatural. Then I tried various things thinking it was the settings, and disabled tone mapping (the photo called Affinity_notonemap). It looked a bit better, as it didn't have the weird gradient off to one side, but the sun rays were still awful. I tried uploading JPEGs instead of RAWs, as I had seen some tutorials where people did that, but with no luck. Finally I thought I'd try a different piece of software, just to see if it would work, or if I had screwed up taking the photos - but it came out perfectly (or certainly good enough to edit further - this is the photo Photomatix_result). 

 

So, how can I get those kinds of results with Affinity? Any help would be much appreciated! My camera is a fuji X-T3, and I was shooting in RAW + JPEG. The attempts I have attached were done with the RAW files. The camera was on a tripod, and it was a merge of 3 photos - one underexposed by 3 stops, one normal, one overexposed by 3.

 

 

[Crimmy]

bump (now that the images have been approved)

[John Rostron]

It would have helped if you had uploaded the actual exported images rather than screenshots and you had labelled each image. As it is, the order seems to be notonemap, tonemapnatural and Photomatix. is that right?

You have made it hard on yourself by photographing directly into a setting sun. I would have probably taken more images,say one stop apart. Did you look at your images once you had taken them?  Did they encompass all the tones that you wanted to preserve?

You have tried two tone mapping variants. Have you tried to vary the sliders independently of the tone-mapping presets? It might be worth a try.

I would suggest that you upload the three files. You can upload jpegs, and they need not be too large for us to try. If you develop the raw files, use the same parameters when you develop, preferably the default.

John

[Crimmy]

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

It would have helped if you had uploaded the actual exported images rather than screenshots and you had labelled each image. As it is, the order seems to be notonemap, tonemapnatural and Photomatix. is that right?

Thats right - sorry, the upload didn't work quite as I had expected.

 

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

You have made it hard on yourself by photographing directly into a setting sun. I would have probably taken more images,say one stop apart. Did you look at your images once you had taken them?  Did they encompass all the tones that you wanted to preserve? 

Possibly - but other software is able to deal with it. The shooting conditions aren't the issue, I know that the results I want are obtainable and the files aren't lacking the data; its extracting it in Affinity which seems to be the problem. The photos did encompass the tones I wanted, yes.

 

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

You have tried two tone mapping variants. Have you tried to vary the sliders independently of the tone-mapping presets? It might be worth a try.

I've tried that - it can make it a little worse and a little better, but that sun halo is still present and blown out no matter what I try. Other tone mapping variants all have the awful halo, and the random gradient to white on the right hand side.

1 hour ago, John Rostron said:

I would suggest that you upload the three files. You can upload jpegs, and they need not be too large for us to try. If you develop the raw files, use the same parameters when you develop, preferably the default.

I will upload them when I get home. I went with screenshots because I was a little used to forums being limited in how large attachments can be, and only just realised that the upload limit is quite considerable! If I upload them into this thread, can people download them from here?

Edited May 20, 2019 by Crimmy

[James Ritson]

Hi Crimmy, nice shot, is that in the Peak District? I've shot plenty of HDR bracketed exposures pointing straight at the sun and Affinity Photo is definitely capable of merging them and producing good results. Not sure what's happened with merging your bracketed set, have you tried merging both the RAW files and the JPEGs? As an aside, I wouldn't merge RAW files at the moment—either use JPEGs or preprocessed TIFFs from the RAWs. Affinity Photo doesn't currently use its more advanced RAW pipeline for merge operations like HDR/Panorama so you won't be getting the most out of its conversion (we're aware of this limitation).

Does the white halo effect go away if you reduce compression to 0% when tone mapping? What happens if you only increase local contrast?

If you wouldn't mind providing your sample images privately, you could upload them to https://www.dropbox.com/request/6BFpR1crs5jTGb5BcXsx so we can take a look and see if we can suggest a solution—in this case, both JPEGs and RAWs would be ideal to compare them as well. The images are only used for support purposes and then deleted when no longer required.

 

[MEB]

Hi Crimmy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your report. Do you mind uploading the original images for us to take a look please? Regarding your question: yes, If you upload them to the forum they will be publicly available.

If you don't want to post them publicly please use this link to upload them directly to us.

[EDIT] James was faster. Upload link removed.

[Crimmy]

2 minutes ago, James Ritson said:

Hi Crimmy, nice shot, is that in the Peak District? I've shot plenty of HDR bracketed exposures pointing straight at the sun and Affinity Photo is definitely capable of merging them and producing good results. Not sure what's happened with merging your bracketed set, have you tried merging both the RAW files and the JPEGs? As an aside, I wouldn't merge RAW files at the moment—either use JPEGs or preprocessed TIFFs from the RAWs. Affinity Photo doesn't currently use its more advanced RAW pipeline for merge operations like HDR/Panorama so you won't be getting the most out of its conversion (we're aware of this limitation).

Does the white halo effect go away if you reduce compression to 0% when tone mapping? What happens if you only increase local contrast?

If you wouldn't mind providing your sample images privately, you could upload them to https://www.dropbox.com/request/6BFpR1crs5jTGb5BcXsx so we can take a look and see if we can suggest a solution—in this case, both JPEGs and RAWs would be ideal to compare them as well. The images are only used for support purposes and then deleted when no longer required.

 

Its the Lake District, northern end

I've tried JPEGS too, without much success.

Good to know about the raw pipeline, thanks.

I will do so, thank you - I'm guessing thats a private moderator dropbox or something?

1 minute ago, MEB said:

Hi Crimmy,
Welcome to Affinity Forums
Thanks for your report. Do you mind uploading the original images for us to take a look please? Regarding your question: yes, If you upload them to the forum they will be publicly available.

If you don't want to post them publicly please use this link to upload them directly to us.

Thanks for the welcome

I will put them up in the drop box when I get home, thanks - is it the same as the one James posted?

[MEB]

Hi Crimmy,
Yes, those dropbox links are private. I've removed the upload link from my reply to avoid confusion. Please use James link instead. 

[Crimmy]

7 minutes ago, MEB said:

Hi Crimmy,
Yes, those dropbox links are private. I've removed the upload link from my reply to avoid confusion. Please use James link instead. 

Ok, thanks!

[Crimmy]

6 hours ago, James Ritson said:

Hi Crimmy, nice shot, is that in the Peak District? I've shot plenty of HDR bracketed exposures pointing straight at the sun and Affinity Photo is definitely capable of merging them and producing good results. Not sure what's happened with merging your bracketed set, have you tried merging both the RAW files and the JPEGs? As an aside, I wouldn't merge RAW files at the moment—either use JPEGs or preprocessed TIFFs from the RAWs. Affinity Photo doesn't currently use its more advanced RAW pipeline for merge operations like HDR/Panorama so you won't be getting the most out of its conversion (we're aware of this limitation).

Does the white halo effect go away if you reduce compression to 0% when tone mapping? What happens if you only increase local contrast?

If you wouldn't mind providing your sample images privately, you could upload them to https://www.dropbox.com/request/6BFpR1crs5jTGb5BcXsx so we can take a look and see if we can suggest a solution—in this case, both JPEGs and RAWs would be ideal to compare them as well. The images are only used for support purposes and then deleted when no longer required.

 

Hi again James - I've just uploaded them to that dropbox link, the RAWS and JPEGS, SOOC.

[James Ritson]

Hey again, the issue appears to be specifically with how the RAW images are aligned and merged in Photo 1.6—notice on your screen grab (and mine) that there is a column of black pixels to the right of the image. If I merge the JPEGs I don't get any issues and can effectively tone map the image.

Out of interest, I tried both the RAWs and JPEGs in our current 1.7 public beta and both were fine. I believe 1.7 includes some improved handling of RAF files. I would still either use JPEGs or pre-process the RAWs to TIFFs, since merging the RAW files directly results in some discolouration around the sun—plus you don't get automatic lens distortion correction.

Can I just double check that you've tried merging JPEGs in Photo 1.6 as well? As mentioned above, I had no issues when doing so, and I'd recommend trying that if you haven't already.

Another option is to download the latest 1.7 beta (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/34-photo-beta-on-windows/ - look for the stickied thread at the top). It sits alongside the release build and doesn't interfere, but I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at the improvements, particularly with the speed of tone mapping.

I've attached some screen grabs to this post to illustrate the results I'm getting. Hope they're of some help!

In order, they are:

1.6 RAW files tone mapped

1.6 JPEG files tone mapped

1.7 RAW files tone mapped

[Crimmy]

On 5/21/2019 at 12:05 PM, James Ritson said:

Hey again, the issue appears to be specifically with how the RAW images are aligned and merged in Photo 1.6—notice on your screen grab (and mine) that there is a column of black pixels to the right of the image. If I merge the JPEGs I don't get any issues and can effectively tone map the image.

Out of interest, I tried both the RAWs and JPEGs in our current 1.7 public beta and both were fine. I believe 1.7 includes some improved handling of RAF files. I would still either use JPEGs or pre-process the RAWs to TIFFs, since merging the RAW files directly results in some discolouration around the sun—plus you don't get automatic lens distortion correction.

Can I just double check that you've tried merging JPEGs in Photo 1.6 as well? As mentioned above, I had no issues when doing so, and I'd recommend trying that if you haven't already.

Another option is to download the latest 1.7 beta (https://forum.affinity.serif.com/index.php?/forum/34-photo-beta-on-windows/ - look for the stickied thread at the top). It sits alongside the release build and doesn't interfere, but I think you'd be pleasantly surprised at the improvements, particularly with the speed of tone mapping.

I've attached some screen grabs to this post to illustrate the results I'm getting. Hope they're of some help!

In order, they are:

1.6 RAW files tone mapped

1.6 JPEG files tone mapped

1.7 RAW files tone mapped

Hi! Sorry, been a hectic week.

 

Thanks for the advice and help - I had tried JPEGS too, but with less success than you, I have to say. I will give it a go with them again! Thanks for all your help

[firstdefence]

I still prefer the Photomatrix version, especially regarding the sun, it's handled that very well, the grass and the cairn are also more in keeping with the scene, although my personal taste would be to lighten them a bit to gain some foreground interest.

Affinity Photo βeta 1.7.0.x is OK but that sun is just way too blown out.