Machinery 2 HDR software

[sury]

Suggested by Ken, who has used it quite a bit, I got the software and reprocessed some of the
photos with it. The previous SW used was Luminance HDR (a freeware). I used default settings
on both SW and identical settings in LR. The first one was stitched using MSICE1.x and the second
one was stitched using MSICE2x.

With Luminance HDR.



With Machinery2:

[RareTA]

Glad it's working out for you. I just took a breath of relief. Buy the way the photo look great! I just used it with PS to do this pic of the 41 Plymouth.

[sury]

Nice PS job adding the headlight beam.

[RareTA]

Thank You! I worked on it quite a while. This is what I started with.

[sury]

Good effort Ken.

[aster]

Hi Sury,

I think you'll find this new software useful. Very promising. : )
I like your second shot, i.e. I like the extra vertical estate to the panoramic shot; the foreground that has the appeal of Moon's or an alien planet's trodden dusty surface; the gently curved horizon that imitates Earth's curvilinear shape.The vaguely human-looking dark silhouettes in the distance make this all very interesting.
(the horizon in the first may require some tilt correction)

Thanks for sharing,
-------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Ken,

What you did with that shot reminds me of what movie scene effects technicians do to create a dramatic stage from a normal shot in accordance with the actual script. Neat effort.

Thanks for sharing,

Yildiz

[sury]

Thank you Yildiz. The first one was taken with MS ICE1.x version and the second one was with MSICE 2.x I should auto crop the second one, for
apples to apples comparison. The extra real estate on the second one is due to "auto completion" feature in MS ICE2.x which worked very well
in this case.

With best regards,
Sury

[Birma]

Very nice HDR pictures guys

The new HDR feature in LR 6/CC seems pretty neat although it is just about combining for exposure, and no tone mapping. Might save a bit of time in my workflow when I sometimes combine bracketed shots instead of using ND graduated filters.

[sury]

Very true Andy. I debated between $80 for LR6 upgrade that has both HDR and Pano stitching and keeping my free Luminance HDR and free MS ICE.
I tried Machinery 2 and liked some of the extra features that it offered compared to Luminance HDR and decided to give it a try ($40). LHDR has about
half a dozen algorithms where as Machinery 2 offers only 3. The plus for Machinery 2 (to me) is some basic editing features that seem to be nifty. Also, the capability of program to handle underexposed images (single images) without introducing too much noise is very nice (at least on the images I tried so far). Consequently the work flow in LR has been reduced to tweaks. I should do a comparison of the treatment of an underexposed shot with LHDR, Machinery and LR, just for the fun of it.

With best regards,
Sury

[sury]

I was in the breakfast nook and saw the delicate pink color created by the sunlight coming through the doors.
I did not want to use flash and yet wanted to capture some translucence of the flowers. So I tried bracketing
and combined them with Machinery 2. I know there is clutter around and I could have done better job of composing,
but at that moment all I wanted was the fragile and delicate flowers captured.