Photomatix, Part Deux

PHOTOMATIX PROCESSED IMAGE100% DETAIL

Now that it is time to dig deeper into the two top candidates as my high dynamic range (HDR) image processor, I selected a different test image. This is the iconic windmill in Oak Harbor, Washington's Windjammer Park. Oh, the park name is part of the city's effort to rebrand itself as a tourist destination. In the same vein, the Pioneer Way shopping district (old downtown) is now known as Harborside Shops.
Anyway, I had a sequence of five images of the windmill taken with an interesting sunset behind it. This is an ideal challenge for HDR imaging since the subject is severely backlit. On my first attempt to use five images, Photomatix substantially misaligned one. I went back and used three images, with Reduce Noise turned on and Auto Align turned off. Success!
Then I turned to Tone Mapping the raw HDR image. It should be no surprise that the various settings interact with each other, but it did not take more than 2-3 minutes to bring out the best in this image. My Photomatix settings were:

• Details Enhancer
• Strength 94
• Color Saturation 73
• Luminosity 0
• Light Smoothing second strongest (second from right)
• White Point 1.799%
• Black Point 1.367%
• Gamma .81
• Temperature 6
• Saturation Highlights 5
• Saturation Shadows 1
• Micro Smoothing 3
• Highlight Smoothing 5
• Shadow Smoothing 13
• Shadow Clipping 42

I saved the resulting 16-bit TIFF, then opened it in Adobe Camera Raw. Here I made some small tweaks to maximize the histogram and reduce color noise, then reduced the size, sharpened, and saved a JPEG.
Pretty nice result, eh? The sky is reasonably free of noise. Halos are well controlled. And there is none of the "find edges" extreme look. I think this is very close to what one would want in an HDR image: you can tell if you know, but it's not freakish.
When I went back and created the 100% detail shot above, I realized that ACR could not eliminate all of the chromatic aberration evident along edges in the HDR-processed image. I suspect that the ideal workflow will involve processing the NEF images in ACR, then in Photomatix. That way when I return to Photoshop there will be less to clean up.
I would probably do some additional post-processing in Photoshop to optimize this image for printing. For example, I'd mask the windmill blades and give them a bit more snap. But I am quite happy with this Photomatix-processed image.