Originally posted by angkymac You did some great post processing to make these come out so striking!
I use ACDSee as my DAM, but I haven't tried to learn its processing capabilities; maybe I should give it a try.
Angky.
I've tried it off & on over the years but never really liked it until I spent time (and money) on the Alex Watson videos (portrait orientated). Then more time on their YouTube Channel (it's free so I recommend trying this first). Photoshop does better in some areas but ACDSee is so much better for my workflow.
Set the camera to bracketing (I used 5 shots & 1 stop separation on the K3 III). Adjust contrast, color, etc. on the base photo. Copy adjustments to the others. Select all 5 and press CTRL-ALT-H. For HDR, I think there was 4 presets but no adjustments. One thing to avoid is adjusting brightness on each photo, you need underexposed & overexposed for the process to work.
I tried HDR PRo in Photoshop and thought the results were worse. PS does have a few sliders so technically there's more adjustments but it didn't work as well on this set.
10 years ago I did play with trials of a few HDR packages which worked better. Never purchased one so I don't have those at my disposal anymore.
Apparently we're going out again tomorrow. Sunsetwx.com says the colors will be about the same as today so I may use the built-in HDR on the camera this time. I used PhotoPills to confirm sunset will be over the water assuming we'll be able to get to the edge.