Photoshop + Fake HDR = Sweet Lamborghini Wallpaper

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SpdKilz

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Here is a couple pictures showing how I messed with a photograph I took a couple years ago can really enhance the final outcome.

The past few weeks I have been messing around with HDR and figured out how to incorporate “fake hdr” within some of my pictures (like the one I am about to show you).

I normally do not like doctoring up my photos a ton (may add a bit of contrast/saturation here or there to show what the conditions really were like at the time I took the photograph) but with this picture I felt a lot could be extracted from it if I took the time.


The first photograph shows the original shot. It is very busy and was taken at a car meet in Calabasas, California end of April 2006. It was a SICK Lamborghini and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to snap a few pictures.

After looking at it, I knew I had to get rid of some of the miscellaneous poles and what not so I used Photoshop to clone them out. (This is the second picture shown) Not the best job in the world and it still needs work for some of the cars on the left side but it is a start for now. Definitely makes the car pop out more. Also added just a bit of saturation to liven the picture up. I did this photoshop literally a year ago and stumbled upon it tonight.

Tonight, I went through and did the “fake hdr” effect and honestly am pretty happy with the outcome (This is the third picture shown). It is a TAD bit grainy I admit…but I did use photoshop again to denoise/blur out some of the pixilation that occurred in the clouds during the fake HDR process. Overall, I am very excited about HDR and can’t wait to use it in the spring to try and get some crazy looking photographs of the TT Z06.

Anyway, at the bottom of the page is a link to a 1280 and 1600 size version of the picture if you are interested in the wallpaper. You can tell I was bored….haha.

- Carleton


lambooriginal.jpg


lambops.jpg


lambopshdrps.jpg


1280 SIZE WALLPAPER

1600 SIZE WALLPAPER
 
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SNCBOOM

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I don't get the HDR pictures I like the second picture the most.
 
Steve@TF

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you should photoshop some nicer looking wheels on that thing :poke::p
 
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SpdKilz

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Smokey1226 said:
I think the car is sex. Wheels + deep dish, plus all black Lambo = HAWT SEX
Click to expand...

COMPLETELY agree. That is why I love the photo in general...it is a SICK setup on that car... "drool" There was a similiar looking Lambo running around there that was TT. Now THAT would be a sick car to have :D
 
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Raymond

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Care to explain the fake HDR process? I can't do it with my camera and would love to try it out on photoshop. Thanks!
 
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SpdKilz

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This is where I read up on HDR - http://www.naturescapes.net/072006/rh0706_1.htm

A long read but worth it. I used the Photoshop CS2 method but did not get the results I wanted. A fellow member on here (Rken) was kind enough to introduce me to photomatix which I really like as a program for HDR. Simple to use and the more you use it the better you become at manipulating photographs.

Normal HDR essentially is taking at least 3 pictures two stops from each other. You have a "normal" picture (most likely one that one would just point and click...often over exposing the sky and/or having too dark of background objects but overall the best composition the settings alow for). The other two pictures would be two stops from that base picture, one being underexposed the other being overexposed all around.

What this does is allow different parts of the picture to be shown...when you underexpose you will get, for example, more definition from the sky (i.e. clouds, color, contrast, etc). When you overexpose you will lighten up areas that are dark (in the above picture, it was difficult to see the lines on the bottom of the car).

When you combine the three pictures you can overlap them and highlight different areas you want to increase/decrease aspects. Thus, you get a very neat, almost "fake" looking picture that would normally not occur if you point and shoot.

Fake HDR consists of taking your original picture (raw format perfered...though mine was def. just a large sized JPG for this example). I personally increased the gamma to brighten the picture up, saved that as a seperate file. Then did the opposite and decreased the gamma to darken it. I then used the photomatix to combine the three "fake" hdr pictures to create the one above.

The problem with fake HDR is it sometimes tries to bring out highlights that are not there (the clouds were a difficulty I had to get through). When it made the clouds have more contrast than the original it pixelated it a bit...as stated before I overcame this with a bit of photoshoping the picture (denoised the picture and then blurred the cloud coverage just a bit and it came out pretty well).


[edit] You can see here how different a "point and click" photograph is when compaired to a HDR photograph. First picture is what a lot of normal cameras would have taken and then called it a day. The second picture is a true HDR I made using photomatix.


What a "normal" exposure would have been without using HDR

Z063Original(small).jpg


Here is a real HDR I made of the Z06

Z06HDR.jpg


You can see just how dramatic the difference is when you combine the pictures.


Hope this helps!

- Carleton
 
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