How do I avoid the white shadow effect in some HDR shots of old buildings?

How do I avoid the white shadow effect in some HDR shots of old buildings?

Answer:

The answer to your question depends on what type of software you are using to produce your HDR image. The white shadow effect is what is known as a “halo” and there are different ways to control the halo or correct it.

Some HDR software has adjustment sliders that let you vary the different effects on the tone-mapped image. For those programs correcting or reducing the halo effect can be as simple as fine-tuning the right adjustment sliders.

Other HDR programs seem to give you less control or are more prone to producing the halo effect and for those, you will need to use one of several techniques using blending modes in Photoshop or similar editing programs that will allow you to reduce or eliminate the halos.

When fine-tuning the adjustment sliders does not work or you lose some of the desired HDR effects you will need to do additional editing of the image in Photoshop or some similar editing program. There are a couple of different ways of reducing the halos on an HDR photo using Photoshop. Depending on your photo it might be as simple as using the clone tool to “clean up” the halo areas or possibly replacing the sky by using layer masks, etc.

In my opinion, probably the best technique to use in Photoshop for eliminating halos is to use the blend tool to effectively blend the sky from one of your original images with the sky of the HDR image. You can find this technique discussed here: Removing halos from blue skies

This same basic technique of blending two HDR images to reduce or eliminate the halo effect all within the popular HDR program Photomatix can be found here: Reducing the halo effect in Photomatix

I hope this helps answer your question.

Good luck with your HDR photography. I would love for you to share some of your HDR photos as well as the techniques used to produce them with my readers if you would like to.

About papixelhub

Hi there, I’m Prem Amrit ! I’m an entrepreneur and digital marketing consultant from Patna, India. I founded my own digital agency, where I help SMBs leverage social media, SEO, and content marketing to grow their traffic and generate qualified leads for their business. I started Papixelhub in 2019 as a side project to document all the strategies, tools, and tactics that I was using to grow my small agency. The goal was simple: to arm other solopreneurs with all the right information they needed to launch a successful business.