07-24-2009, 06:28 AM
Hello,
I found a message thread on the old forums (here) describing the exact problem I'm having, didn't see a satisfactory solution so I thought I'd resurrect it...
Like the other user, I too have a Canon 40d, several bracketed shots with at least one with no blown-out highlights. It's a night shot of a house with a lighted window, and I'm unable to get a satisfactory result from Photomatix with that window.
In playing around with the tonemapping settings I can manage to get the window to look decent by setting the white point very low (0.02%), setting the microcontrast high (nearly all the way to the right), and setting the highlights smoothness high (also nearly all the way to the right). But this leaves me with 2 problems:
1 - the rest of the image looks pretty bad, mostly because of the white point setting. Don't see a way to compensate for that.
2 - I'm describing what I'm seeing in the tonemapping preview window. When I hit "process" and get the tonemapped result, it is VERY different than what was shown in the tonemapping preview - much much more gray, to the point of being unusable. This seems to be especially true with the white point set very low.
I'm truly hoping there is just a trick with the tonemapping settings that I haven't discovered, but it sure looks to me like a shortcoming with Photomatix. Any feedback appreciated!
I found a message thread on the old forums (here) describing the exact problem I'm having, didn't see a satisfactory solution so I thought I'd resurrect it...
Like the other user, I too have a Canon 40d, several bracketed shots with at least one with no blown-out highlights. It's a night shot of a house with a lighted window, and I'm unable to get a satisfactory result from Photomatix with that window.
In playing around with the tonemapping settings I can manage to get the window to look decent by setting the white point very low (0.02%), setting the microcontrast high (nearly all the way to the right), and setting the highlights smoothness high (also nearly all the way to the right). But this leaves me with 2 problems:
1 - the rest of the image looks pretty bad, mostly because of the white point setting. Don't see a way to compensate for that.
2 - I'm describing what I'm seeing in the tonemapping preview window. When I hit "process" and get the tonemapped result, it is VERY different than what was shown in the tonemapping preview - much much more gray, to the point of being unusable. This seems to be especially true with the white point set very low.
I'm truly hoping there is just a trick with the tonemapping settings that I haven't discovered, but it sure looks to me like a shortcoming with Photomatix. Any feedback appreciated!