Today Unified Color released HDR Express.
http://www.unifiedcolor.com/hdr-express

It might seem like a watered down version of HDR Expose / 32 Float… and that would be true in terms of the tools to use in the user interface, but the underlying code is revolutionary in HDR Express (in terms of Unified Color’s family of HDR apps).

If you download the trial today and test it out… and you own HDR Expose / 32 Float, then your first reaction will be “bugger“.  Because you’ll want that wicked fast, halo free quality in HDR Expose / 32 Float.  Here’s the good news… unified color just put their own Expose/32 Float apps on the endangered HDR species list.  They have no choice now but to get the underlying code from Express into HDR Expose / 32 Float as fast as they can.  Its pretty obvious.  They have to. And when they do, those apps will be much better than they already are now.

My brief take away bullet points would be…

PROS

1.  HDR Express is easily 2 to 4 times faster than HDR Expose and/or 32 Float.

2.  Halo free tonemapping without the waiting times in HDR Expose / 32 Float.

3.  Dynamic Range Mapping by default (Express is idiot proof and auto tonemaps the range you feed it)

4.  Simple to use thumbnails to choose from over to under exposed starting points.

CONS

1.  Still does not allow me to pull in as much dynamic range as using my proprietary approach.

2.  HDR Express was built for beginners and lacks all the extra (and useful) tools available in HDR Expose / 32 Float for high end tonemapping.

3.  No batch processing (if its there… I missed it).

This offer expires December 1st!

Shooting and editing for real estate and architectural interiors is a whole different beast than landscapes and non-commercial work.  The list of gotchas is long, here’s the short one.

You know the culprits… mixed lighting, massive dynamic range scenes most HDR apps choke on, reflections and glare, shooting directly at glass/windows/mirrors where flash is not an option, regaining window frames from massive back lit situations where light wrap causes loss of detail, shooting real estate with live talent in frame (no strobes), and on and on goes the list of fun shooting interiors.

I’ve been getting emails asking if they missed the launch of my HDR Training for Real Estate and Architectural Photography.  You didn’t miss the official announcement… it’s getting closer, but right now only those in the initial beta group are getting the training videos.

Why is it taking so long to get the training finished? Simple,… because I am a working photographer.

Yes, it has been coming along slowly thusfar, but it is about to kick into high gear.  I’ve cleared the decks for December.  I am ONLY creating training during the month of December.  The official launch of the HDR Training and when the site will go live is now targeting January (URL to be provided at time of launch).

The training I’m providing allows you to have access to me to ask questions via email and even via phone if we can match our schedules.  Ditto via skype for out of the country english speaking folks.  Hence why this training is not dirt cheap.

In fact one of the training videos already created and available for download now was created because one of the photographers in the beta group asked me to show how to incorporate live talent with HDR for an architectural interior product shoot.  It is possible that one of your questions might end up turning into a video tutorial as well if I think it will benefit the group.

I’ve gotten emails from a few of you asking if you can join the beta now even though all the videos and training are not fully complete. The answer is yes, BUT only if you understand that there is no concrete date as to when all the videos will be done. The target is by the first week of January.  Currently there are over two hours of training finished and available for download.  They are 1280×720 hi quality H.264 movies for viewing on a computer.

Once all the videos are done it will encompass everything I do from capture to post.  What is complete and available now are a handful of techniques that will be used in the full workflow/pipeline.

What is being shot this week is …. what I take  to a shoot, do at a shoot (and why) and then I show you various workflows to edit in post. For post production, I’m showing various workflows that work on both Mac and PC.  It is important to reiterate that the training I’m offering here is ongoing… as in perpetual. I say perpetual, but a more accurate statement would be that the training will continue until I no longer need to implement a hdri pipeline simply because in 10yrs it will probably all be done in camera and in one shot anyway.

Until then, I can promise you that you’ll always have my best imaging pipeline for High Dynamic Range Imaging.  What I’m teaching will either slightly alter in the coming months or change completely.  That means in the future I’ll need to create new videos to replace the current ones as I improve my workflow or find cool work arounds.  Hence the reason this training is not dirt cheap.

As hot as HDR is currently and is getting, .. it virtually guarantees that new apps will appear or existing apps will get updated.  I test the heck out of them and many of the companies creating them invite me to their betas so I usually have an opinion or a leg up on the apps when they release.  I’ve found little workflow enhancements that you probably have not implemented yourself that will give you better results for editing in a HDRI pipeline. Some of what I’ve shown in the videos have already helped those currently in the beta group despite some of them being very experienced in HDR.

My current preferred pipeline for post production changed dramatically a couple of years ago and new ones have emerged as well.  I have a few post production workflows I’ll be showing.  One of which I use for what I call “quick turns“ where a realtor needs pics turned quickly and I have automation steps in that workflow.  (This is a video that releases in about mid December).

Another workflow is going to show my pipeline for HDR Timelapse sequences shot for architectural interiors.  And another two pipelines showing my highest level of quality for magazine level submissions.  Many of my approaches are specifically geared for dealing with the nightmares of shooting architectural interiors.

“Been there done that“.  I’m not bragging, just saying I’ve suffered more than you!!!

I’ve been shooting real estate using a high dynamic range imaging pipeline exclusively since 2005. I’ve run up against all the problems you likely already have yourself, or haven’t had the displeasure of experiencing yet. You don’t need massively expensive gear, but technique and post production are key.

I’m incredibly anal and I tinker with apps and new approaches all the time.  Always looking for a more efficient pipeline.  A few photographers that thought they had settled in for a workflow they created have either completely changed gears or implemented the tweaks I’ve shown them once I revealed some workflow enhancements.  You’ll see.

I had nobody to learn from when I started with HDR, I just tinkered with every app there was and found ways to get commercially viable images.  I never found anything online about HDR because in 2005 there wasn’t anyone using it exclusively for real estate.  So I never knew some folks had created dos and don’ts and rules about bracketing.  I would just test things out without fretting about what you are or are not supposed to do or how to treat RAWs or files in post.  I would just think about what I needed to do to best exploit the scene and best compress the dynamic range down.

The video training is currently distributed via temporary download links from YouSendIt, etc. You just click the link and download the hi res videos to your computer for viewing.  Eventually all of these will also be online once the website is live. The site isn’t online yet and as such neither is any online payment system.  So if you’d like to join the beta, you can send me a check, pay via paypal, pay me by sending me an Amazon Gift Card, or pay via visa/mastercard through my business merchant account (either with a form I’d email for you to fill in and fax back or I could take your credit card info over the phone).

The emails I use for PayPal and Amazon are not the same as the one you’d email me to join the beta.  So start by sending me an email asking about payment options to digitalcoastimage@gmail.com

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To join the training with the rest of the beta group now, is $499.

The price for the same training when officially launched will be $750 per student (that’s not a typo).

I’ve already found that the amount of time I spend answering emails and phone calls warrants the tuition to be as such. And it is worth repeating again.  The training is ONGOING.

Unified Color announced their entry level HDR application today which is HDR Express.  I am covered up creating training for my soon to launch HDR Training for Architectural Photography so I’ll simply link over to where I co-blog at HDRlabs.com for you to find other news Christian has linked up such as his review of Dolby’s Professional Reference Monitor the PRM-4200.

The training is specific to implementing HDR techniques.  It is in no way, shape or form about how to frame your shots or anything along the lines of the business of architectural photography.

I’ve posted a full 24 minute review of one HDR application that I use mostly for HDR Timelapse. The video is not as structured as my training course, but it at least lets you hear my voice and get a feel for a new application in the process.

I’ve been putting together video tutorials for the last two months behind the scenes and I’m creating more in the next few weeks as well.  All revolving around various workflows and strategies for capturing and editing high dynamic range scenes typical with shooting architectural photography (especially interiors).

Many of my clients are rental companies that rent condos and homes along the florida beaches where I live.  Some of my rental company clients encourage me to over crank their shots to brighten the rooms up as well as over saturate the scenes slightly to create an emotive feel (their terminology, not mine).  Hence why you’ll see some very heavily processed shots in this 120 image sample gallery of employing HDRI for Architectural Photography.

Even though the various workflows I’ll cover will focus on architectural interiors, the techniques are applicable to virtually any high dynamic range scene.  I’ll also be covering landscapes and shooting / editing HDR Timelapse.  This is an example of some HDR Timelapse I shot over the last year.

If you are interested in receiving notification about the training when available, email me using the email at the bottom of this page (from my main site) and title the email HDR Training or something similar.

I’ll be covering various workflows using various applications so it would be helpful if you tell me what operating system you primarily work on (Mac / PC and what version of operating system like 10.6 for OSX or say Windows XP Pro for PC).  Also include what apps you currently use for typical raw processing workflow and what version of photoshop you are using as well as any 3rd party HDR plugins or applications you use.

Don’t buy 2 or more identical hard drives (exact same model) from the same company at the same time.  If the company received a batch of bad drives from the manufacturer, then you’ll be buying into that bad batch (this just happened to me). So either buy a variety of drives at once from one wholesaler or buy the same drive from multiple sites.

Lesson learned the hard way for me.  I lost my main OS drive a couple weeks ago.  I quickly ordered two highly rated hard drives from Newegg.com and had them rushed out to me.  I used one as new OS drive and one as new data drive (internal).  Both failed in the first week of use.  Lesson learned.  I should have bought two different drives at once as a bare minimum.

I have been told that most drives will either fail in the first 100 hours or after several years. I had heard various take offs of the early failures, but this is the first time it ever happened to me personally.  Never a new drive, its always been after I beat the heck out of one for years.

Good news is that when I tweeted this mishap, I found out about Macsales.com from a few folks who took the time to email me.  Because I’m both PC and Mac based I had always used Newegg for purchasing computer parts, but I’ll now try OWC out as well.

THE REAL RAW

I’ve ripped through close to 40 hard drives in about 5 years.  All but six drives are still alive and working.  They are mostly retired to USB external enclosure kits I’d put together and house them in for data retrieval once I’ve nearly filled them up as internal drives in either my MacPro or PCs. In the land of HDR, you’ll rip through hard drives.

For me personally, the true raw file is the merged .HDR/.EXR/.PSD(32bit) file.  This may shock some of you, but for all my architectural shoots I destroy the raws about a month after the shoot is delivered.  I usually do the following…

Merge all brackets and save as a 32 bit file.  I lean towards .EXR, but if I did the merging in Photoshop I’ll first save a 32 bit .PSD file and then save as to a .EXR file.  I do all my tonemapping and editing and about a month after the finals are delivered, I delete the RAWs from that shoot and keep only the finals the client got and the .HDR/.EXR/.PSD(32bit).  Those 32 bit files are my “real raws” which I can go back and reprocess again and again.

Sometimes I’ll keep a middle exposure RAW just as a reference file, but not always.  When shooting interiors even the middle exposure is not very worth while as a single raw because you’ll still have deep shadows and blown out highlights in that same file no matter how much you edit it in LightRoom or Aperture.

Click Image to View Larger Version

I’ve been using multiple applications to achieve the results I am getting with just PhotoEngine.  However, I’ve only run a few brackets through it so far and I’ve only tested landscapes, no architectural interiors.  I will report back what my results are for those much higher dynamic range scenes once I’ve had time to do so.  Here’s the biggest win using this app…

The slider to crush the dynamic range down does so WITHOUT introducing unwanted detail enhancement. So… You get to pull up shadows and bring down highlights with that slider and it has NO IMPACT on detail or sharpening.  Yipppeeeeeeee!!!!!

The slider just below the tonemapping strength slider is the one that seperately controls detail strength. Finally an application that gives you the results of Enfuse/Enblend without introducing unwanted detail cranking.  Oh, and did I mention halos?  No.  Because I’ve been unable to create any halos thusfar!!! Crazy!

I’m just addressing the default setting here which is the local tonemapper. There is also a drop down that allows you to switch to a global tonemapper or you could use the more detailed Advanced Local Tonemapper which has more controls surrounding how detail is enhanced.

Also, Oloneo PhotoEngine also has a very effective HDR DeNoise feature that reduces noise WITHOUT blurring/smoothing the image details.  Another major feature of PhotoEngine is that it is a very capable RAW processor.

And if that wasn’t impressive enough, the Relighting module allows you to take separate frames (that you took from a tripod) of a scene that was shot with different lights turned on/off for each frame.  On the merge PhotoEngine recognizes the different light sources and then get this…

… it allows you to control each light seperately for both white balance, hue and luminance controls.  FRIGGIN’ AMAZING!!!  It actually creates separate controls in the user interface for each light source so that you can control them all separately for lighting.  Its easier to watch it in action then explain so watch the YouTube video on their landing page for that Relighting module.

OK… so the app has some pitfals.  No mac version (that’s going to upset a ton of folks).  I don’t see any way to save recipes/settings and I don’t think it has any kind of batch processing.  I know it doesn’t have any ghosting controls either.  That said, there’s a lot to like.

Here’s the link again which has a gallery showing you various controls of the user interface and some sample images:

http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/photoengine/index.html

Oloneo’s Home Page:  http://www.oloneo.com/

Oloneo on Twitter: http://twitter.com/oloneo

I get emails weekly with questions as to how I’m achieving my results and about my HDR pipeline.  I always defer to just watch the blog for any information about workshops and/or any video training online or off.  That ends up leading to more questions about what kind of training I plan to provide.  One on one, workshops, online training, etc.

I also get asked what books I have read or who I trained under to learn what I know about HDR.  None and nobody are the answers, therefore I can’t point you in any direction to learn what I know.  Everything I have learned and will teach are techniques, tricks and work arounds that I had to figure out on my own.  When I started looking around at what others were teaching about HDR, that was when I first realized how little information there was about pipelines/workflows for commercial work.

If you are looking to just use HDR for artistic images or creating grunge, that is so easy.  Just use Photomatix and ramp up the sliders. There really is no hard core training needed for that genre if you are just looking to create grunge.  There are some teaching how to take it a step further in post, but from what I’ve seen they are actually teaching you photoshop techniques and most of the magic they are teaching are photoshop tutorials, not HDR workflows.

I have no issues with that look personally, but The Robb Report, Architectural Digest, duPont Registry and other publications demand realism.  And the first time you shoot for an interior designer, custom home builder or architect… I can promise you that they will NOT tolerate hue shifts and color saturation issues.  Your repeat business from them will largely be determined by how well you can represent their product.  My experience has been that they expect their work to be represented as precisely as they created it.

Most folks that tap my shoulder requesting training are looking for something different than what they have found out there already. So let me start by addressing interest and needs.  I get requests about my workflow from two sets of photographers.

The first is those that are INTERESTED in creating realistic looking images via my HDR pipeline, but it isn’t do or die for them.  Interests are everything from landscapes to HDR portraits. Most of these photographers who have emailed me are either advanced amateurs or shooting professionally part time.  In either case, they are serious about quality and want a more definitive recipe to get better results.

The other camp is comprised  of photographers either shooting full time and looking to add real estate / architecture to their current services or photographers that are already shooting real estate, but want to know  how I’m tackling all the annoying problems associated with shooting interiors.  This group NEEDS (and wants) all the little tips and tricks in my pipeline from capture to final image to better tackle exposure issues associated with shooting interiors.

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION

If you would be interested in attending a workshop covering any of my workflows, then shoot me an email and let me know what the nearest city to you is (with an airport).  I’m not against traveling abroad if there is enough interest.  However, if I’m going to fly into an area, I will do so only if there is enough demand in that region to make the time for a workshop.

The last time I posted my email here I got spammed badly so I’ll just ask that you use the email linked at the bottom of my home page http://www.digitalcoastimage.com/

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I live in North West Florida along the Emerald Coast. I’m a couple hundred miles from where the BP (British Petroleum) oil rig blew up. It has been spewing oil at an alarming rate per day and it is so deep it will take many weeks and possibly months to cap it.  Already predictions are saying this will dwarf the Exxon Valdez disaster. The big difference is the Valdez ship had a finite amount of oil on it.  This uncontrolled hole in the gulf of mexico is gushing many thousands of barrels of oil a day.

NEARLY 40% of United States seafood is fished from the Gulf of Mexico.  Many of the bayous already being hit with oil are major migration points of birds that fly from Canada/North America down south for the winter.

So how is this HDR related?

Because it has already impacted my world and means I’ll be more active on this blog in coming weeks.  Why?  Unfortunately not for positive reasons.  Some background…

About 5 years ago when I was looking at how to best run a real estate photography business I was seeking ways to not have to re-create the wheel with marketing and the constant trolling for new clients.  So when I decided I was going to move from Atlanta to the Emerald Coast of Florida I looked at affluent areas that had expensive homes for sale and beach rentals (high end trophy properties).

I quickly connected with companies that rented high end properties.  These gulf front homes rent for $5,000 to $15,000 per week in peak season. That’s not a typo.

So for rental companies that are getting 20-40% of each weekly rental as a fee for managing the property for the owner (again, not a typo), they have money to spend on marketing (photography being #1).  And photography is absolutely critical when 90% of the bookings are coming from out of state and those folks are making their vacation decisions based on photos they view online.  So…

I decided to contact and work with many of the rental companies that rent the higher end homes and some of the more exclusive / high end condos.  I also contacted several of the top producing real estate agents and real estate companies that deal with multi-million dollar listings. Then slowly got around to contacting builders, architects and interior designers.  Again, my goal with the rental companies was to tap into the turnover that was inevitable with them and the new properties they’d need shot yearly or rooms of units to reshoot because beds/bedding, furniture or repainting took place.  How did my little plan work?  Perfectly until the oil spill.

Rental companies have been getting vacationers calling in to cancel their May/June bookings due to watching the constant coverage of the Gulf Oil Spill on CNN, The Weather Channel, FOX, you name it.  National coverage on every media outlet including print/web.  Even if the impact is not as bad as they are predicting now, the damage for me is done.  These rental companies are playing it safe and canceling/postponing new shoots, indefinitely.  Some have resorted to just grabbing point and shoot pics for now to “wait and see what happens” with this oil spill.  I’m not out for good, but the outlook for this oil spill is bad enough that it is impacting MY clients.  Shit happens.  To me in this case.

Since moving to the Emerald Coast I’ve shot over 1000 properties.  But I didn’t bracket all those properties to then merge shots to HDR and then tonemap.  I’ve “only” shot about 700 properties employing a full HDR pipeline.  I’ve averaged about 20 shots per property so I’m probably as I type this crossing the 14,000 mark for tonemapped images from HDRs merged from brackets.  I’ve learned a few tricks along the way.

Obviously these rental companies are savvy.  There are many photographers in the area that shoot real estate so the rental companies can beat me up to some extent on pricing.  However,  for the level of work that I deliver, they can’t get cheaper. I make more money than any of the other real estate photographers in the area not employing a HDR pipeline.  Likewise, there are amazing architectural photographers that live here who can blow me away , but they charge far more than I do and use lots of lighting gear and/or professional level flash units.  They also take all day to stage and shoot a trophy property.  I’m the middle ground option here.  Not cheap, not expensive and you get a high quality product.  HDR allows me to get in and out of properties with only a camera bag and a tri-pod and move quickly through a shoot.

Tapping into those rental companies meant a constant flow of properties and when I got emails from followers of  this blog asking when am I going to do some kind of workshop, video training, personal training, … my response has always been… “someday, but I’m too busy shooting/editing”.

It was a great run.  Its not over, but this oil spill has spooked all the rental companies. In the last few days I’ve had 27 shoots cancelled.  This is going to be a hell of a test on me.  I have savings I put away for retirement and will likely have to tap into those if I can’t re-market myself rapidly with new clients.  I’ll likely start considering out of state shoots as well given there is no telling how long this oil spill impact will linger.

How this relates to HDR is that I will now have more time to spend testing all these apps for merging/tonemapping and review them.  I’ll also likely setup some kind of weekend workshop for those interested in learning how to shoot/edit high contrast scenes employing a High Dynamic Range Imaging pipeline.  I’m only 3-5 hours from Atlanta, Jacksonville, Birmingham, New Orleans and Mobile as cities go, but only a 3/4 day’s drive from Orlando and Tampa.  Those would likely be cities I’d hold a workshop in.

I’ll also be thinking long and hard about online training options.  Currently I”m assisting with a few of the Background Fundamentals Classes covering HDR basics over at http://www.FXPHD.com and I’ll be thinking about expanding my online presence to more online training for sure. I’ve never written a book and I have no contacts in that industry so I’m not sure that will be an option unless I decide to self publish.  Lots to think about in the coming days, but I won’t drag my feet.

Regardless.  The Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill means I’ll be spending more time yapping about HDR both online and off.

I’ve already downloaded Photoshop CS5 beta and have been using it to test out the HDR Tools.  I’ll have more to share once I’ve used it more in depth tomorrow and Monday.  More to come…

Just a first run using it.  It is so very different from any other HDR/Tonemapping app I’ve used.  The color fidelity is tremendous.  It took me an hour to really figure out how to tame the app.  At first the windows/highlights were blown out and I could not figure out how to clamp down the exposure.

Full review once I have run it through its paces.  Here’s a sample from my first attempt using it.

I often get emails asking about which app to use for merging to HDR and/or which app to use for tonemapping.  That’s not an easy one to answer given I use various apps in my pipeline for various reasons.  It really varies (slightly) on what I’m shooting.  Pools, Interiors, Exteriors, etc.  My answer may change soon so I’ll let you all know once I’ve played with the new Photoshop CS5 HDR Pro tools and other apps I’m going to test/try again.

I won’t be reviewing all the apps out there, but I am about to explore the various HDR/Tonemapping options for mac/pc over the next 30 days.  For selfish reasons.  I want to see if there is a better way to do what I do right now to get better results.  Better for me is faster, more natural or both.

I’m happy with my current workflows (yes I have more than one).  But I know a lot of releases of various applications have occurred over the last 1-2 years.  Even though I keep an eye on what is out there I don’t test and play with all of them.  I’m about to start doing just that now to see if I can refine or improve my current somewhat proprietary/unique post workflow.

I definitely get the feeling that folks think I hate Photomatix Pro.  I don’t hate it folks, I just struggle with the amount of saturation and hue issues it creates during the merge/tonemapping process.  It is a very stable app and probably the best app to use for artistic and surreal images.  But something else about it makes it a no go most of the time that I don’t talk about much…

Photomatix Pro will CHANGE the pixel dimensions of your image depending on what camera you are using.   This makes it impossible for me to then bring in one frame from the capture later and overlay it in photoshop if I want to mask in something.  They don’t match.  Photomatix Pro does some kind of voodoo in the merge/tonemapping that causes the image to grow in width.  Now it’s only a couple of pixels, but it is just enough that even if you use Photoshop to try and align images…  they never will.  Because the pixels are added on one axis, not both.

Now if you have a camera like an origianl 5D or otherwise, you may not have experienced this issue.  With the D3 and other cameras I have… this is a problem for me.  It adds pixels on one axis when I save images from tonemapping.

Even with that downside, I have used Photomatix Pro and have delivered nearly 1000 commercial images using it.  If you wrestle with the sliders long enough you can get decent results for commercial work.

This gallery is from one shoot… not the whole shoot, just a handful from the shoot.  They were all merged/tonemapped in Photomatix Pro.  Probably more saturated than a lot of my work, but that was why I moved away from this app a few years back.  This particular builder liked the look he saw from another builder’s website that I had used Photomatix Pro on, so he asked for the same “results”.  So be it.  I also shot many other properties for him after this one.  So much so that he put up a new website last year and pretty much every gallery on the site I shot for him.  His website  is linked below as well.

PHOTOMATIX PRO EXAMPLES (GALLERY)
11 tonemapped images from one shoot (1200px wide)

Builder’s website (nearly entire site I shot for him)