EOS 5D Mark IV Any remedy for HDR mistakes?

[Zbadger]

I probably committed 2 or 3 cardinal sins in using HDR and now wonder if there is any remedy.  I paid for and went on a special photoshoot tour of Canyon X in the Page AZ area and used HDR exclusively on my Canon 5D Mark IV  during the shoot with my sturdy Bogen tripod. I also set my camera for a 2 second delay.  I used HDR +1  and sometimes HDR +2.  It was also set at Art Vivid and for some strange reason, I did not have it set at autoalign within the camera and I unfortunately never set the setting to keep the original images - only the autoaligned jpg image.  Now, thousands of mile of driving home, I find that my best light beam shots have an extra line mirroring the edges of the canyon walls and even the light beam on the floor of the camera.  Yikes - what a disaster.  Is there anything I can do at this late stage - after the fact?  It's not like at my older age, I am going to get this opportunity again.

[p4pictures]

Unfortunately the JPG image from the camera is all you have, there's no magic way to recover the individual frames or make a raw from them if they weren't saved at the time. Pretty much the only solution is editing of what you have with Photoshop. 

[Zbadger]

Thank you for your reply.  Yes - that is what I was afraid the response might be.  And I do not know of any way to get rid of those lines in PS that are so prevalent around the images.

[stevet1]

Zbadger,

Well, maybe you can go through your pictures and pick out some aspect or interesting feature in some and crop to that.

You won't get the entire canyon, bur you might get a collection of interesting features.

You might be surprised in the end.

Steve Thomas

[Zbadger]

Unfortunately it is the light beam that steals the scene and is what I needed to capture.

[p4pictures]

Can you share an example so people can see, and maybe offer some help?

[Zbadger]

[p4pictures]

This one is quite cool as it is, but I can see how the outline around the white spot on the floor is a problem. I think that this would be a straightforward fix for that using some cloning too to remove the extra white section and clone in the sand from the floor. The ghosting on every other line on the rocks is possible but maybe not needed.

The second example image is in my view a little less salvageable. But there are surely people on here with better photoshop skills than me.

[stevet1]

Zbadger,

I see what you mean.

Please take what follows with a grain of salt. I don't have Photoshop and have never worked with it, but I did a little bit of reading in trying to research your problem.

Apparently,, there is a way to edit jpgs in Photoshop, with a lot of the tools you might have at your disposal, as if you were editing RAW files.

You load up your jpeg, and then go up and click on the Filters tab at the top, scroll down a little bit and choose RAW filters. This will open up a bunch of editing tools.

I do not know if the Cloning tool or the Healing tool are included.

I hope this helps.

Steve Thomas

[Zbadger]

Here is another one