Originally posted by Tarragon I hate to say it, but if this stuff is popular and sells loads then who is to knock it??
Agree. With growing popularity (and ease of use) you see more and more of this. So long as artist and customer are happy with it, well... to each their own.
And just like any other trend it gets overdone until, eventually, it recedes again (anyone tried counting lens flares in the latest Enterprise movie?
). At first I liked this surreal look one could get with HDR, albeit nowadays I prefer a more subtle use.
But you can't argue with taste and neither with art. Who is to decide what is art, or to dispute it in others' creative work?
At least he classified it as steampunk, so there's no claim to it being realistic. But the halo around the edges is a dead giveaway. It wouldn't have taken too much effort to clean that up, though admittedly more than just combining HDRs.