its not HDR, more like DHP, and I would guess dave hill does some other minor effects as well and the fact that his resolution is prob amazing + his lighting as mentioned before. I threw this together, not the greatest shot but it somewhat demonstrates the effect
Do you have a link to the process or a site with more info on "How To"?
DHP is Differential Hysteresis Processing it is also used in scientific imaging. The plug in from the above link is for PS it will let you mess with it but you can't apply it to the image without buying it. Looks cool but $170 is kinda pricey.
ok heres my analysis of the DHP artistic effect using dave hills photos as references:
I'm almost certain he uses the DHP effect as mentioned above (regarding lucisarts is correct), I would assume he also uses some other filters/effects to compliment the DHP as well (I did the same image I posted with the plastic wrap filter on low and it came out surprisingly well, same with the accent edges filter).
The only downside with using the effect is the more cartoon/drawing/photorealistic effect you go for, the more noise is generated too WHICH would explain the reason why dave uses so many lights and such a high resolution camera (an H1 was stated earlier and I would assume he would use the 22MP digital back for it).
Another side-effect from using this photographic technique is that faces in general are lightened to the extreme while everything else stays in a decent range, you can see it in some of his shots (look at the faces)
As for my own experimenting, I'm trying to deal with the noise and that white-out of the faces...maybe an overlay on top of the original and under-exposure on the faces to compensate? if anyone else has anything to add let me know! sorry if any of this doesn't make sense, ask me questions and i'll explain to the best of my ability, I just kinda threw these thoughts together.
side note - yea the plugin from lucisart is kinda pricey to just gamble on, I have the old version from a couple years ago
As for my own experimenting, I'm trying to deal with the noise and that white-out of the faces...maybe an overlay on top of the original and under-exposure on the faces to compensate? if anyone else has anything to add let me know! sorry if any of this doesn't make sense, ask me questions and i'll explain to the best of my ability, I just kinda threw these thoughts together.
I'm not sure how relevant this is, but we tend to have the opposite problem with tone mapping: when the overall tone mapped image looks the way I want it to, the brightest areas get a dingy, muddy gray cast to them that's quite unappealing. I have found that if I take the original image (from which I generated the tone mapping) and overlay it on top of the tone mapped image in layer mode = lighten, the bright areas pop right back up and everything else stays the same as tone mapping.
So something like that may work with the lucis filter, except darkening, not lightening?
ok, i played with tone mapping a bit and tried to compensate the noise with noise ninja, in the future i think if you were to take shots with the intention of using this effect on them you could compensate for most of the problems i'm running into (maybe with a sweet lighting setup *cough* :). I'm also using an image thats 1280x768 as my workspace so it doesn't really leave me much room for compensation.
anyway heres the image, uncropped but resized for viewing on here.
ahh and thankyou Bear Music for pointing out the relation with tone mapping, i just got the photomatrix demo plugin so i'll have to mess around with it, feel free to modify it in any way.
ok, i played with tone mapping a bit and tried to compensate the noise with noise ninja, in the future i think if you were to take shots with the intention of using this effect on them you could compensate for most of the problems i'm running into (maybe with a sweet lighting setup *cough* :). I'm also using an image thats 1280x768 as my workspace so it doesn't really leave me much room for compensation.
Can you provide me the original out of the camera so I can compare tone mapping with what you have done? My e-mail's in my profile...
Another interesting thing that I think is key to dave's is his lighting...duh right, but I think more key than at first glance. I took a look at the videos on his sight and almost had a "duh why didn't you think of that earlier" moment. He uses softboxes/lamps from every angle at his subject (even on a bright sunny day) AND he uses a ringflash which already has a unique quality in removing shadows. the ringflash combined with the lights from the sides and back make his scenes shadowless which gives helps greatly with the quality we see in his work.
Bear, i'll send you the straight-from file in the morning, i don't have it on this laptop :/
DHP is Differential Hysteresis Processing it is also used in scientific imaging. The plug in from the above link is for PS it will let you mess with it but you can't apply it to the image without buying it. Looks cool but $170 is kinda pricey.
Yes, I agree. I was interested, but don't want to spend that much cash (especially after just buying the tone mapping and HDR filters)! What we need to find is a substitute, open source or less expensive filter!
DHP is Differential Hysteresis Processing it is also used in scientific imaging. The plug in from the above link is for PS it will let you mess with it but you can't apply it to the image without buying it. Looks cool but $170 is kinda pricey.
Yes, I agree. I was interested, but don't want to spend that much cash (especially after just buying the tone mapping and HDR filters)! What we need to find is a substitute, open source or less expensive filter!
It sure seems to me that Tone Mapping is very close to the same thing, if done properly... I agree that $170 is a huge hit to take for that set of filters, especially since most of what comes with it is of absolutely zero interest to me...
you're gettin there grandwazoo, the challenge is getting the image to retain a high level of detail while still attaining that effect.
I'm still getting the little things worked out, heres one i did a couple minutes ago...i'm now working on lighting as i'm positive the dave hill photos are hugely affected by his lighting and its placement...although his ringflash alone costs more than my entire lighting studio i'm tryin to make it work ;)
What I'm interested in seeing is the original before ANY processing is done to it. I want to see how closely I can emulate the effect from scratch. Assuming you don't mind, of course :-)
ETA: never mind, now it pops up; it didn't before...
I'm still getting the little things worked out, heres one i did a couple minutes ago...i'm now working on lighting as i'm positive the dave hill photos are hugely affected by his lighting and its placement...although his ringflash alone costs more than my entire lighting studio i'm tryin to make it work ;)
To me this looks the closest to his style. What lights did you use? One on each side, slightly behind face?
