Retrieving lost details after tone-mapping.

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swiftmoonphoto's avatar
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I've been having trouble with running tone-mapping on infrared images. It makes for really good colors, but I'm losing too much detail in the highlights.

Then it hit me: do a 40%(ish) tonal-range selection on the original image, feather it by a couple pixels, copy it, and overlay it on the tone-mapped image.

Badda bing badda boom ... details are back.

I should probably be using frequency separation to create a selection, but for the life of me I can't figure out how.  

The internet is so bad here that I can't watch any tutorials and I'm forced to make up my own Photoshop techniques.




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The-Egg's avatar
I'm not sure what software you're using for tone mapping, but in photomatix using the details enhancer, turning the lighting adjustments slider down usually brings out highlight detail, although it also has a tendency to make them look a bit grey.  Turning up smooth highlights or white point will rebrighten them but at the expense of detail, so it can be a bit of a balancing act. ;p