HDR fix: Lucis Art+Shadow/Highlight

plugsnpixels · Post by **plugsnpixels** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 6:30 am

I've got a nasty example online (link below) of an extreme lighting situation: Lunchtime at the famous Farmer's Market in LA (where James Dean ate his last breakfast...). Shot with no fill flash on auto-exposure, the original is either too dark or too light with little middle ground.

I knew Lucis Art could pop open the shadows, which it did to a great degree.

Photoshop's native Shadow/Highlight also did a decent job on its own, but with less contrast/color and detail.

So! I applied Shadow/Highlight to the Lucis Art version, and got an excellent final result.

See a large version of these examples here.

Download the original unretouched camera image here.

See more Lucis Art corrected and creative-effect images here.

Post by **HaraldHeim** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 2:07 pm

Lucis Art turns the image into a graphic whereas Photoshop's S/H tool still kept the photographic quality. So as a photographer I would never use Lucis Art, but as a graphic designer I would use it for that effect.

plugsnpixels · Post by **plugsnpixels** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:37 pm

Hi Harald,

That "look" is part of Lucis Art's charm, and is usually applied for artistic reasons

. Of course I could have backed it off by blending back the original (or even using the Exposure option instead of Sculpture).

Post by **HaraldHeim** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:44 pm

Sure, but you should not compare Lucis Art with Photoshop's S/H tool if you want to create artistic effects. Photoshop's S/H tool is primarily designed for photographic and not artistic results.

plugsnpixels · Post by **plugsnpixels** » Thu Oct 26, 2006 5:49 pm

True. So let's open one of those challenges where The Plugin Site members download the original and apply different techniques to it to achieve a tonally balanced result. It should be interesting to see the different workflows.