Pics after suspension... weak HDR attempts

[Gray S.]

I jumped on the HDR bandwagon and decided to give it a first try. Im a terrible photographer and have no clue what I'm doing with HDR in CS2. Any tips on how to get the more CGI look would be appreciated. Heres a couple pics of what I put on the car and what it looks like afterwards.

Got the car back about a week ago and I am in love with it. So tossable.

This one is way over the top but I thought it looked kinda like an oil painting or something





Heres my best one, I didnt want the video game look for this one so I just tried to make it look like a really well taken normal pictures, I think it came out pretty decent.




This is a non-hdr, just putting it here so you can see how much the springs lowered the car. Before and After



Before:



And heres a picture of everything that went on the car (besides the RTAB's and subframe mounts).

[yberther]

the second one looks good :)
drop looks good too

[itsbrokeagain]

very nice. I like how you have everything laid out. Which springs are those?

Looks like the perfect drop for my car..when I get around to it that is....then the +2 or +3 wheels should be a perfect addition with that drop

[E30_fiend]

I'm lovin it. That last picture with all the parts is sick. I just wish I had the money to do it all at once. I need balljoints and tie rods right now, everything else is looking new and fresh.

Cool pics too. Work on taking pics and you will get better.




Taylor

[brandondan1]

Those shots look pretty cool. I need to try that myself sometime.

Nothing like fresh suspension parts, too :)

[brandondan1]

.

[Sean5294]

x2 about the springs, looks good

[Gray S.]

Thanks for the compliments. The springs are Vogtland. I am really happy with them so far. I think they are about 225lbs front an 315 rear, its great for a daily driver. Stiff enough that its fun and feels sporty but not bad enough to be annoying. Gotta be careful if you've got an m42 though, I had to get a skid plate because my oil pan is hanging way down there.

[JJe30]

Good stance.

[dinanm3atl]

When you HDR you don't wanna go for the 'over edit' look. Not flattering.

Car looks good :)

[Gray S.]

When you HDR you don't wanna go for the 'over edit' look. Not flattering.

Car looks good :)

Yeah, I just was playing around with it in photoshop while I was bored. I would like to know how to get the video game look just because it would be cool to have a pic like that of my car. Otherwise I'm just gonna use it to get the colors looking right.

[dinanm3atl]

Explain what you did to get the shots looking like that above.

[e30monsta]

theres alot of crap u can do in photoshop just mess with alot of the stuff.

btw whats ur gamertag gray?

[Gray S.]

For these I just merged about 5 pics to HDR and messed with the white point slider, then converted them to 16 bit and played around with Local Adaptation and the toning curve histogram. Thats about it. I have no idea what I'm really doing when I adjust the histogram etc, I just moved the curve a bunch of different ways till I liked how the picture looked.

e30monsta my gamertag is gray11g, have we played before?

[dinanm3atl]

I assume you are shooting with a camera you can exposure bracket? IE you shot at -2/-1/0/+1/+2? Then merged them into a single shot?

Here is the problem. It appears you shot in the afternoon sometime?

HDR = High Dynamic Range. It was 'created/used' when a single exposure will NOT get all the highlights/lowlights/shadows/etc exposed correctly in one shot. Thus you bracket and combine them all. If you can easily get the shot in 1 photo you are creating a more 'fake' looking HDR and you get the results above... Here is a shot from early in my career that are similar that I made 'fake' HDR and it doesn't look good because with a single long exposure I could have captured everything :)


"HDR"