Hello Rudolph,

I checked your workflow and I have a small recommendation for you since you're using 1 RAW file to create 3 exposures (-2, 0 and +2) and that you're using photomatix to merge them together.

I assume that you're using the "Load bracket photos" in photomatix. Have you tried the "Batch single photos" option? This one will creates your 3 exposures for all the listed photos and then merge them into HDR. What I mean is that it saves you the trouble of creating all the 3 exposures yourself and saves you a lot of time.

Using this, your work flow would look like this:

1.Import the raw files to a folder in Lightroom and name the folder “Raws”.
2.Sharpen the first image to your liking and save the develop settings as a preset.
3.Crop the first image to your liking.
4.Apply the preset to all the images.
5.Sync all the images (that way they are all cropped the same).
6.Save the metadata to all raw files.
7.In LrTimelaspe, navigate to the "Raws" folder and open the raw images. Apply the necessary adjustments such as deflickering etc. and save the changes.
8.Back in Lightroom, read the metadata from the files.
9.Export the files as 16 bit tiffs
10. Run a photo through photomatix to create your "preset" and save it. (Use File->Open, then Process->Tone Mapping.)
11. Run your whole folder of photos through Photomatix with the option "batch single photos". Use your preset made it step 11 …
12. Import all the HDR photos into Lightroom and adjust them to your liking.
13. Use LR, QT or AE to produce your timelapses!

If you shoot in bracketing mode with your camera, the you won't have the choice to get through the real HDR process. It is better to capture 3 or more exposures using your camera instead than creating 3 exposures from one raw file. But I know that it'snot always possible, especially with fast moving object.

Good luck.

I see no sense in making pseudo HDR from one RAW file. In my opinion thats a lot of work for either an artificial looking result or a result that you can as well get by editing the RAW properly in Lightroom. Only my opinion.
If you shoot timelapses in HDR, it should be for a well chosen scene that you can't capture otherwise - than you should make real HDR. But to be honest: I don't have the need for HDR too often...

Hi Djinge,
I am very sorry for not being clear about the begining of of my workflow. When I said

Just as a background, I use 3 different exposures to create a HDR image so that is why I create 3 EV folders

, I meant that I use three diffrently exposed raw images (bracketed with the camera) to create one HDR image.

Have you tried the "Batch single photos" option? This one will creates your 3 exposures for all the listed photos and then merge them into HDR.

Thanks for the response because I never knew there was a "shortcut" in Photomatix to create three diffrently exposed images from one raw file since I have always just used the "Batch Single Photos" option.

Thanks for the infomation,
Rudolph

Thanks Gunther for making us the video tutorial. I understand the process now but I have another problem. When following the video, I compared your curves on the thumbnail in LRTimelapse, to my curves and they were very different. Below is the workflow I followed with screen shots of what my thumbnails and curves look like. The workflow I used should follow what you said in the video. Can you look at it and tell me why I have totally different curves compared to the thumbnail and curves in the video?

1.Sharpen and crop the first raw picture.
2.Save the sharpening as a preset and select all pictures and apply the develop preset to all of them.
3.Select the 3 bracketed pictures (first 3) and sync the settings to apply the crop to all three.
4.Crop the last picture and select the other two bracketed pictures, and sync them to apply the crop to all three.
5.Select all the images and save the metadata.

In LRTimelapse
6.Load the folder with the bracketed time-lapse pictures.
7.PIC 1    
8.Select every nth+m and enter 3 for "n" and then 0 for "m"
9.Apply a Linear transition (for panning)
10.Do the same for the other 2 sets of bracketed images (1 and 2).
11.PIC 2    
12.Activate Deflicker
13.PIC 3    
14.Select every nth+m and enter 3 and then 0,1, and 2
15.For each time you do nth+m, Select “recalculate flicker for selection.” I should be doing this 3 times.
16.PIC 4    


Rudolph

Rudolph, you have done everything perfectly - and thank you for the great screenshots, that illustrate the procedure with a larger sequence of images.

And that's also the reason it looks a bit differen than in my screencast, you have a lot more images, so the oscillating curves are skewed.

I might introduce a new feature that allows to only see the curve for every nth+m image, that would make the curves appear like on non HDR sequences. But for now that looks very good.

BTW: The narrow red curve in the middle is the exposure compensation for deflickering. Since it's relative (difference between blue and green curves) it is narrow and doesn't oscillate.

Could you post the rendered Video here?

Best regards
Gunther

Hi everyone,
By using Gunther’s proposed workflow and new HDR feature in the program, I have created a 10 second test video below. The link to the video is http://www.vimeo.com/26496682 but it should be embeded into this post as well. Sorry about the quality, its my first time posting a video on the internet so I have to figure out what went wrong and it wasnt a good day to take a timelapse because it was really windy but the video still serves a good purpose as a test.

[Video: http://www.vimeo.com/26496682]

Overall the workflow and new feature in the program works great and seems to successful. I have one suggestion that would improve the process greatly.

---When adding deflicker to the bracketed images, it was very difficult (and I basically just had to guess) to see how the deflicker strength and Avg. smoothing were improving the timelapse because there were a lot of lines on the thumbnail due to the amount of pictures I was deflickering (720). For more about the lines, see the screen shots from my previous thread.

I might introduce a new feature that allows to only see the curve for every nth+m image, that would make the curves appear like on non HDR sequences.

Gunther, I think that your idea would fulfill my suggestion and I think it would be extremely helpful.

Rudolph

Hello Gunther,
I wanted to say thank you for the new HDR feature you have created and taking the time to explain how it works. This is a great program that just got better!!

I just finished another HDR timelapse using the new feature and it worked just as well as the last one. It's much faster than the previous workflow that I used.
Thanks Again,
Rudolph

P.S. When I did the process again with the same amount of pictures, understanding all the curves was much easier to interpret after playing around with them a bit longer.

Hi Rudolph, you are welcome. Good idea, glad you get the results you expect now.
Best wishes
Gunther

Gunther, your latest build also works pretty good for HDR panoramics if they were taken with auto exposure accidentally enabled. :-P

Hello All!

So far I haven't done any bracketing on my timelapse shots. I'm not sure if my remote timer can handle it (my camera - eos 550d- will only shoot a single picture in bracketing mode when triggered by the timer).

Isn't it a problem to combine shoots of (fast) moving clouds (e.g. 3 images -1/0/+1 EV)? I mean: The content of the images while change because of the movement.

I worry that my camera processor is not fast enough to write 3 images in RAW format every 1 sec. Haven't tested it. Does anyone have experience with the 550d?

As I don't like the extreme HDR look I use LR Enblend/Enfuse for my "regular" images. It offers a batch mode but this is very time an memory consuming. I didn't meassure but I assume that the process for a set of 3 pictures will take more than 2-3 minutes. In the batch mode it seems even slower. Processing 500 images from a HDR timelapse shooting would take ~16 hours... My hardware is proper I guess: i7 processor, 6 GB RAM.
What software do you use?

Oli