Great Photography by Dave Hill + Quick Tutorial
When I take pictures, I usually adjust them in Photoshop, giving colors some life, working in contrast, applying some color curves. Dave Hill is a great photographer who's developed a great effect for his pictures.
Take a look at this work and don't forget to visit his personal website.
After looking at these pictures, I started to wonder what I could do to achieve this effect. So I began to experiment a little bit, trying to find a similar result. This effect looks to me like a combination of an HDR picture + Unsharp mask. Again, this is how it looks to me. So I made a quick tutorial on how to achieve something close to an HDR + Unsharp Mask Picture.
STEP 1 - HDR it.
There are so many tutorials on how to create a nice HDR picture that I won't be talking about how to achieve it. For my examples, I've used Photomatix. You may visit our tutorial on it. If you don't have Photomatix, visit this Photoshop one.
I chose this original picture for this experiment.
Now it looks like this after making an HDR image from a single shot.
STEP 2 - Unsharp Mask.
The second step is just applying an Unsharp Mask to our new HDR picture. In Photoshop, go to Filter > Sharpen > Unsharp Mask.
The amount must be 50%, but the Radius depends on the size of your picture. Since I was using a 600px picture for the example, I've used a Radius of 5. That did the trick just fine.
FINAL RESULT.
I think my final result is nice; not close to Dave Hill cool, but nice. I really wonder what Dave's workflow was like. I'll go a little further and ask you: What would you do to achieve that effect? Drop a comment telling us!! We'd would love to hear from you! And to finish, two more experiments on my technique. Cheers! ;)
Original picture.
HDR version.
HDR + Unsharp Mask.
Original picture.
HDR version.
HDR + Unsharp Mask.
Editor: David Parrott
About author
Hello, everyone! I'm Paulo, a 24 years old designer from Porto Alegre, Brazil. I work as a webdesigner since 2006, but websites and blogs have been a hobbie for me since 1999. At Abduzeedo, I try to bring only the hot stuff for you guys... and hope that all of you enjoy my posts! Cheers! *Now on Twitter.
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http://www.dzoom.org.es/video-t-o-r2VTyNA.html
Here's a nice tutorial.
Hermosos Trabajos
Te felicito por tu técnica en edición HDR, los invito a que vean este grupo HDR Perú (http://flickr.com/groups/hdrperu/) y de paso algunos de mis trabajos (http://flickr.com/photos/paulovicente/)
Saludos desde Lima – Perú
... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ... ...
Beautiful Works !
I congratulate you on your technology in HDR edition, invite you to see this group (http://flickr.com/groups/hdrperu/) HDR Peru and see some of my works (http://flickr.com/photos/paulovicente/)
Regards from Lima - Peru
perhaps oneone can translate this tutorial?
http://www.diegomattei.com.ar/2008/08/25/efecto-highlight-en-photoshop/#...
it look's good too :-)
I feel like ther is also some surface blur on it, high pass filter to overlay, i have to try this sometime, then ill let u know
W.O.W.
REALLY NICE THATS EFFECT, TRY IT AND IS TO EASY
Someone once told me that HRD images were accomplished by using adigital SRL camera, with specific settings, and photoshop. Its good to know that I can take all of my images and convert them into HRD images.
As always thanks for your help, and your fantastic tutorials. Appreciate the help!
http://www.davehillphoto.com/behind_the_scenes/ap_comp_cover.mov
check this video. there you can see how dave does it with the flash etc.
Hey i don know why i love this abduzeedo.com WOW man great collection of pics. Hope everybody enjoyed
This reminds me roughly of High Pass filter blended with the original image. But of course there is extra work here and a a lot of effort by combining various options. It may seems easy but it's not. Nevertheless, I'm not excited about the result, no offence :)
this is weak. dave hill is not that good, and this is an even less good imitation of his overplayed style.
Sorry but this tutorial is nothing near close to what Dave is doing.
Lots of hours of dodge and burn.
LOL Overdone HDR> i dont like your tutorial at all. IMO
lol at 1picture HDR, this tutorial is horrible.
next up: how to make a 3d render from a single image using photoshop!
Does anyone know a similar tutorial for GIMP, the open source tool? I don't have Photoshop and I'm really interested in producing this HDR effect on my photos.
Thanks!
RA
I find it funny.... 80%+ of the world doesnt seem to understand about the bracketing 3+ shots together to get a true HDR shot... not just applying filters to a single image.
Get off the fucking HDR bandwagon already, geez
Sorry, but I really hate HDR!! It ruins photography for me. In fact, it makes me want to return to the darkroom again.
Sorry, but I really hate HDR!! It ruins photography for me. In fact, it makes me want to return to the darkroom again.
Ive been trying to get the dave hill effect...but nothing compared to his. DOes the HDR effect/tone mapping, works with an image downloaded from the internet???
Here is my version of the Dave Hill effect. Below is the link to the original file:
http://i382.photobucket.com/albums/oo262/threads13/BeautyCollection.jpg
No no no no no , HDR - maybe, but just a little.
Main effect is done by drawing colors with brushes and unsharp + removing the noise using colored brushes.Thats what I would have done :)
While I admire his ability to manipulate photographs - I think it's overdone (as with 99% of HDR images). It just looks _TOO_ fake.
I tried out the process used in the flickr Link by Gabi Jguma and it gave some great results with a little extra help from LucisArt. :o)
Good work.
I recently studied a studio lighting course and we analysed some of his work as part of an exercise.
As a few people have mentioned a great deal of the output of his work is down to the lighting setup used on the shoot.
He uses a lot of hard lighting with extreme lines created by snooting certain areas.
I would imagine there is a degree of work performed in photoshop after but possibly with a few actions and them tweaked after.
There is definately some hi pass filter or some kind of 'over sharpening' performed somewhere.
.....so nice.....a very creative work...I Love This Type Of Photography..
Indeed your tutorial is too simple to be that effective as Dave Hill's technique. I'm pretty sure there are tons of hours involved in his work, most of it in the initial light and environmental setup, and probably a lot in post processing (not just a couple clicks).
This was discussed a while back on Scott Kelby's blog too:
http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2008/archives/1094
nice post, its great to learn how they work. even if its in a quick tutorial :)
Very good photos and a great tutorial.
Indeed your tutorial is too simple to be that effective as Dave Hill's technique. I'm pretty sure there are tons of hours involved in his work, most of it in the initial light and environmental setup, and probably a lot in post processing (not just a couple clicks). As you can see, the level of detail in his images is remarkable.
Here's a much more complex tutorial on achieving a similar effect (quite impressive, IMO): http://www.flickr.com/groups/strobist/discuss/72157594577686705/
Unsharping seems too strong for my taste.
Looks like a high-pass overlay to me...of course could be wrong
Looks a bit like lucisArt, but according to him he doesn't use it.
I guess he just has really creative lighting techniques
Dave Hill uses a lot of off camera flash and tonemapping.
dont think that hdr is necessary for this. check google for paint with light, or pwl. there are also photographers who made such pictures before anybody talked about HDR.
Abduzeedo should release an action for this :)
Thanks Paulo for this nice technique. I think you can do that in Photoshop using more than one photo with different adjustments and then mixing them like erasing the areas that are not good in some pictures... also the High Pass filter and the Blend Modes would do the job....
Of course David's work is beyond cool...
Best ;)
I think he uses something like the tonal contrast after making an HDR picture.
Tonal contrast is a bit more than an unsharp mask and a bit less than an HDR, I usually do this with color efex pro
Don't mean to diss your work, but the effect on your pics looks nothing like those Dave Hill photos.
I think there's an element of LucisArt in his work. Check out the images made at Blue Hour Photo (http://blog.bluehourphoto.com/secretweapon.html). He work is VERY similar to Dave Hill's and he uses LucisArt. He even has video tutorials up describing his workflow.
I really don't know why everyone is mad about HDR. I mean, it's only a process among a hundred others. Maybe it's just because I don't like it too much. A lot of saturation and a "plastic" feeling all around. People looks like plastic dolls. I don't get it. There's a lot of filters better than HDR. Cross processing is in fact better than that. It's the "new thing" I supposed.
Better things will come :)
I'd prob play around with the cutout and poster edges filters in photoshop and blend them with the hdr somehow, to get the clay/cartoon look he has.. maybe we can hear from David Hill, himself..
brinxx.redbubble.com
I'm not so sure about your way to achive his effects. As I look an this pictures the key things is the situation- mostly very expressive, very dynamic compsition and then hdr by photomatix using detail enhancer- and that mode uses sharpening so you don't need to unsharp-mask it. So hdr in this case is just postprocess to already good dynamic photos. Your examples look better at the beginnig then at the end IMHO.
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