Stack Transfomr experience

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MikeG
Posts: 243
Joined: April 25th, 2009, 4:36 pm
What is the make/model of your primary camera?: Panasonic G1
Location: Sydney, Australia

Stack Transfomr experience

Post by MikeG »

Not before time I decided to knuckle down and to use the HDR/Stack Transform PROPERLY.
This time I took seriously the part in the White Paper that says to use the same workflow for both the calibration images and for the HDR jobs. So I shot my IT8 target in RAW and processed with a workflow which I saved. One point to note is to ensure that the Dynamic Range drop box (under the Gray tab) is set to No Change.
The I generated the curves and saved them.
Next the images. Carfefully shot on a tripod mounted camera to include -3EV, -2EV, 0, +2EV and +3EV.
Then processed from RAW using the saved workflow. Well, not exactly the same, the same RAW settings but without the level and plumb, and crop, used for preparing the targets. And, of course, no gray or colour transforms.
Then the stack transform. In this case I used the -3EV, 0 and +3EV images and the appropriate saved curves. And, voila! good result This is a comparative statement because I'd experimented with a number of free, or trial, HDR programs and the PWP result is, to my eye, superior.
Now I'm a convert. Stack HDR gives a good result used PROPERLY!
Mike.

By the way I found that the Final Shaping Curve in the HDR/Stack transform caused the program to crash - repeatedly. Fortunately not using it is not a problem
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