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209 Comments
- Raider007, on 11/15/2008, -40/+265those look awful... HDR is supposed to add little things to the picture, not make it over the top...ugh
- fotoobscura, on 11/15/2008, -24/+158Look, HDR is NOT meant to create artificial looking fantasy photographs. What people are digging are heavily shopped images and there is no photographic skill to it. HDR is meant to capture different exposures to balance out an image which would otherwise be too blown out, shallow, or lacking shadow or highlight detail.
Stop digging crappy HDR images. - Shinkaze, on 11/15/2008, -4/+122HDR is the new Lens Flare
- HeartbreakerSA, on 11/15/2008, -16/+85Most of these are horrible.
- theenginedriver, on 11/15/2008, -24/+90One of the things that I find most bizarre around here (on digg) is the massive intolerance towards HDR. Sure, your threshold of tastefulness may be conservative, but why punish people for exploring all the things that digital photography has to offer? I agree that some of these examples aren't fantastic, or even good with regard to the standard criteria for photography, but I don't think they deserve such a vitriolic response.
/2¢ - bxblox, on 11/15/2008, -7/+65It hurt my eyes.
- tehmewse, on 11/15/2008, -5/+50I absolutely cannot stand a lot of those HDR's, but maybe thats just personal taste. Here are a few that I've taken that I think you guys might enjoy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgower/2849927667/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgower/2823084972/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgower/2906345067/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgower/2895227962/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/rgower/2796146534/ - jggube, on 11/15/2008, -9/+51Here's a roundup of of High Dynamic Range (HDR) photography tutorials for those interested in the technique:
http://tutorialblog.org/hdr-tutorials-roundup/ - adverpart, on 11/15/2008, -10/+50The description is misleading, because it implies that HDR photographs look like the images in the link. They don't. There's a lot of misunderstanding of what HDR is.
These aren't HDR (high dynamic range) images, they're LDR (low dynamic range, i.e. normal) images converted from HDR images. HDR images can't be displayed on a computer monitor.
HDR images have a wider range of brightness vs. darkness. With a normal picture, if you have extremely bright light (e.g. the Sun) and extremely dark shadow in the same scene, there is no way to photograph it in a single exposure without all the bright values getting rounded up to pure white or the dark values getting rounded down to pure black. By taking multiple exposures, you can capture all the details, but segregated to different images. This is solved by combining them into an HDR image, which will have a high range of values from extremely dark to extremely bright.
The problem is that the high dynamic range is imaginary, and can't actually be captured in an image (neither photographic nor digital). To make an HDR image visible you need to shrink the values in such a way that they fit into a limited range of values (#000000 to #FFFFFF in a bitmap, for example).
Tone-mapping is the process that makes an HDR image into a normal image that can be displayed. Tone-mapping is an art in itself; there's no correct way to do it. If you just do a straight linear map, the image will have an extremely low contrast. If you increase the contrast, you will have washed out bright areas and dark areas—no different from a normal photograph. So you need to adjust different areas differently, which takes some creativity.
But tone-mapping details excessively (with a program like Photomatix, which is the source of most of these images) creates a bizarre look that causes each detail to have a halo and a perfect brightness level. Up the contrast, up the saturation, and you wind up with images like in the link.
I'm not being a snob, mind you. Pictures like this look awesome. They really do. I love looking at them. But there's actually nothing creative about it at all. This is the opposite of creativity. You can set the sliders in Photomatix any way you want, and it'll look awesome.
The truth is they have nothing to do with HDR at all. You can tone-map a normal image in exactly the same way. You get better results if you start with an HDR image, but calling this type of image "HDR" isn't really accurate. In reality an HDR image just looks like reality. You have to mess with it to make it look like an apocalyptic nightmare world. - tinkafoo, on 11/15/2008, -8/+47STOP WITH THE OVERLY PROCESSED ***** PICTURES.
- coheedcollapse, on 11/15/2008, -2/+36There's a difference between exploring venues and blatantly exploiting a method of processing. these guys take a mediocre or sometimes interesting picture and peg the photomatix settings to max to get this crap that everyone seems to love.
I mean Jesus Christ, look at this one:
http://www.toxel.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/hd ...
it's a ***** picture, taken *****, and processed *****. My sister could do that crap, but people online everywhere are swooning over it. Same with the portrait of Larry, that is crap, the guy is featureless and expressionless, and it replaces what should be the main focus of the portrait (the personality of the guy) with "OMG LOOK AT THE COLORS!".
That, and the beauty of photography is that what you see should accurately represent the beauty of real life. If you want to experiment every once and a while with HDR, fine (I'm guilty of screwing around with it myself when a photo is impossible without it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cityeyes/2336027201/i ... , but it pisses me off that pretty much the most appreciated form of photography online at the moment are these comically processed pieces of crap.
A final thing that I hate about HDR (when used CONSTANTLY) is it literally takes out one of the most important aspects of good photography - light and shadow. By evenly exposing every section of a photograph, the shadows are eliminated and thus a large part of what photography is about is eliminated.
I guess it's the photojournalist in me, but I really get pissed when 90% of well-viewed photos on the internet are of no relation to the real world. - misterparry, on 11/15/2008, -3/+27HDR is sooo last year.
- slothlovechunk, on 11/15/2008, -2/+23A lot of these pictures were probably not even captured in HDR.
I don't mind if people like this stylization of photos, but please call it what it is.
Some of these are HDR image that have been tonemapped in a very stylized way. Some of these are LDR images that have used the same tone-mapper for some exagerrated effect.
The problem here is calling these HDR images, when that is NOT what they necessarily are. It makes people think that this is the future of photography or something, when at lot of these images (to me) look like they took a good image and wiped their ass with it. - robertgilbert86, on 11/15/2008, -9/+29A couple of nice ones, a lot of bad.
- Murdats, on 11/15/2008, -14/+34that depends, if your goal is to use HDR to make it look over the top then hooray.
or are you next going to say picaso was doin it rong? who are you to determine the style someone chooses for their art? - Murdats, on 11/15/2008, -3/+18I am not saying this is the quality of picaso but picaso used some odd styles and techniques, as are the creators of these images, my point was when it comes to art you can not say you are applying a technique wrong.
if the goal was to make it look realistic then yes this is wrong, but I imagine the goal was a stylised effect that in some of these cases produces a result that looks better then a realistic image would, I would say that is a good thing and to say that because the technique was used in a manner not of its original purpose these images lose all merit is just wrong. - Mikey129, on 11/15/2008, -7/+21What the crap happened to Larry the Mechanic?
- mamboboy, on 11/15/2008, -12/+25*waits for usual digg-douche comment in the lines of:*
Breathtaking.
Speechless.
Beautiful.
Took my breath away.
Crying. - mwmccullough, on 11/15/2008, -3/+15I friggin' hate halo's on everything. How has this become exceptable? HDR has a lot to offer to artists, but this is overkill.
- Togusa09, on 11/15/2008, -3/+14That being half the point of photography...
- Elliuotatar, on 11/15/2008, -1/+12They get pissed off becuause they either assume that the artist didn't know how to use the tools properly, or they consider using it to be equivalent to using one of the built in Photoshop artistic filters... a cheesy effect which requires no real skill to create.
- lolroflmaoafk, on 11/15/2008, -3/+12"Amazing."
"The best I've ever seen."
"Excellent job on everything."
Really? These photos are terrible. Diggers will eat up anything featured in a top 10 list. - FoxOrian, on 11/15/2008, -0/+9I go to the Art Institute of Boston and we have a fairy large Photography program.
I'm an illustrator there, and based off of what I've learned from some of my photo-friends, they basicaly liken showing HDR photos in a photo critique to hanging up a bunch of anime drawings in an illustration critique. - FoxOrian, on 11/15/2008, -0/+9HDR photography is actually a wonderful thing, but I agree with you that these are "24 Downright Ugly Examples of HDR Photography" if anything.
HDR photography is supposed to simply show more than one entire exposure within the image at once. All the highlights and shadows are properly exposed [NOT necessarily brought to 0ev.] -- It's not supposed to be all this hyper saturation mega-glowy crazy-sharp low-contrast-with-black *****. Too many people use software that automatically generates HDR images, and generates them TERRIBLY, or some people try to create an HDR from a single RAW image instead of three or five.
If you really want to see what HDR is supposed to be, go to www.debevec.org and look it up. These photos in the article are merely over-worked, not truly HDR. - rheaume, on 11/15/2008, -0/+9Nice stuff there
- zynaps, on 11/15/2008, -0/+9I totally agree. HDR should be used to compensate for over/under exposure of the dark parts. For instance if you are taking a picture of a sunset, then you could use HDR to bring the sky and the ground into the dynamic range of the monitor. Otherwise the ground or the sky would have been to dark/bright.
This is just butchering of what might have been nice pictures.
The point of HDR is to simulate the range of the human eye. These so called "beautiful" examples are frankly terrible! - 0biKwiet, on 11/15/2008, -3/+12A good HDR immage is one that you have to be told is HDR for you to know that its HDR.
- whitty, on 11/15/2008, -0/+8I think you're being too harsh. Yes, this isn't the point of HDR. HDR is used to level an image as the eye would see it vs as the sensor sees it. That said, these are all heavily tone mapped to give them a sense of surrealism. In that sense, I do like them. Esecially the ones that have been made to look like paintings done in graphic pen.
- Timmmm, on 11/15/2008, -2/+10I agree, although these weren't as bad as I was expecting.
Anyway this is a comment by one of the photographers: "It’s a single exposure hdr with lots of PS processing." Wtf? How can you have HDR with a single non-HDR exposure?
Also none of us have HDR monitors which kind of makes this pointless... How about we call these 'tone-mapped' images instead of HDR? - bj00rn, on 11/15/2008, -0/+8HDR shouldn't really be used for the sake of using it. That's just bad taste. Of course, I've done a lot of things I'm not proud of when doing experiments in digital photography, and some bad HDR was involved I must admit. But in the end I ended up using it as a expression tool instead of just for shock value and cheap points.
This is a HDR image done with 3 merged long exposures I did a few years ago.
http://home.online.no/%7Ebkmyskja/div/Planet_Explo ...
The blend/merge is not meant to be noticed. But that's just my opinion I guess. - theenginedriver, on 11/15/2008, -1/+9Though I should also mention I don't think this deserves to be on the front page of digg, since you can go to flickr, search HDR and sort by "most interesting" and you've pretty much got the same thing.
- iMelrose, on 11/15/2008, -3/+11I woul,d like to learn how to type.
- urby86, on 11/15/2008, -0/+8Very nice stuff. HDR shouldn't give you a headache like the ones in the digg link. I absolutely love what you've managed to do with the clouds in your pictures, and that Colosseo shot is....WOW. You could never get that shot without blending exposures b/c of all the shadows involved.
- Murdats, on 11/15/2008, -0/+8@theenginedriver
not to mention this exact list has been on digg quite a few times, I was hoping for some new material. imo half of these aren't very good either - WhoDoneIt, on 11/15/2008, -0/+8This isn't just a case with digital and it didn't start in the digital lightroom. Ansel Adams was a master at "HDR". I certainly wouldn't call it that with his work, but that is what he did so subtly that it pushed his photography through the next level.
By dodging and burning various parts of his photo he could push the shadows and pull the highlights overall creating a very deep and contrasting photo. By exposing areas longer or less long it essentially creates the same effect.
However today's HDR is all wrong. One should take the time to properly decide what parts should be enhanced, what parts should be left. The key to the "art" in photography is to engage the viewer. To take a great composition and then in the "darkroom" enhance it so the viewer gets the most out of it. Leading their eye around the photo to key spots and to invoke emotion.
They shouldn't be doing this using Photomatrix and plugins/programs. Instead they should be learning image masks, blending, dodging and burning, layer styles etc.. There isn't anything wrong to taking multiple exposures and using layer masks to merge them together. It's just that not EVERY part of the photo needs to be tonemapped so it looks like a young kid chewed 1000 crayons and vomited on the screen. - flashbangseer, on 11/15/2008, -3/+10how many times is this going to hit fp?
- coheedcollapse, on 11/15/2008, -1/+8Afski, the reason many photographers are so offended visually by HDR is that another photographer can take a perfectly good or even better of a situation, but almost always, a mediocre photographer with HDR in their hands will get more recognition on websites, social media, etc.
This proves to be a problem, because many IN the field pride themselves on the realism of their photos - the ability to portray a beautiful situation as it was to their eyes. They don't want to stoop to gimmicky crap such as over-done HDR to get views, so they remain ignored as people take photos of their desks and ramp up settings in photomatix.
Think of it this way. Say one guy plays the guitar incredibly well - like mindblowingly good. Now say some amplifier manufacturer puts out a box that automatically processes the sound of the guitar and turns it into something absolutely surreal. Now, as this one guy fades into obscurity even through his talent, thousands of videos are popping up on youtube of mediocre guitar players using this specific box to make their guitar sound incredibly surreal - even though that original guitarist might be the best out of the group.
That's sort of how I feel. People who use HDR as a crutch to support their decent photography are getting much more recognition than some unknown gems that I have seen. A guy who takes a photo of his foot and pegs the settings to max in photomatix will get more votes than someone in a village in Africa documenting the people there beautifully without any gimmicks. - egeniuses, on 11/15/2008, -3/+10I think the photographers wanted to make their pictures look surreal. Not everyone wants their photos to look "accurate". I think that a lot of HDR photos do a good job of communicating the feeling at the expense of accurate color saturation and contrast. Isn't the point of photography to communicate a feeling?
- coheedcollapse, on 11/15/2008, -9/+16I think it's the photojournalist in me, but when I look at a photo, I WANT to see real life, not this comic book crap always featured in HDR imagery. The sad thing is, if done right, Tone Mapping is a great tool used to make a photo more like what the human eye is really seeing in a situation - balancing out exposures without freaking the photo out beyond comprehension. Unfortunately, it's become popular for people to take photos of beautiful or otherwise interesting scenery, open up photomatix, peg all of the tone mapping options to max, and profit (because, for some reason, people eat the crap up).
- IglooFu, on 11/15/2008, -0/+7I agree about the over use of HDR. I only very rarely using it, and if it's done right it should be noticed much. I took http://snowdenimages.zenfolio.com/p199605170/h175f ... with 3 frames manually set.
Personally, I feel that HDR is best used when creating an truer to life photograph. - doleboy, on 11/15/2008, -5/+12you're comparing picasso to a transient fad in digital photography?
- BrianOl, on 11/15/2008, -2/+8People shouldn't be digging him down, hes right. It doesn't mean that the photos aren't interesting though.
- thesonofdarwin, on 11/15/2008, -0/+61) Hosting large image files isn't cheap, especially with high traffic. 2) Most photographers keep the high res files on their computer to thwart would-be thieves.
So I don't have to add an ugly copyright to my images before uploading them, I always resize first to a size that is good for viewing, but a size someone wouldn't be able to upscale for sale with good result. - createcontent, on 11/15/2008, -1/+7If I took a hundred thousand dollar Bentley then wrecked and called it art,would you also say that I am exploring possibilities? These photos are terrible examples of HDR.Digital art,maybe,but definitely not proper HDR.The reason people get irritated about this is because our time is valuable
/$1.50 - sassafras1232, on 11/15/2008, -2/+8I'm going to say you're spelling it wrong.
Also, Picasso put down every part of every image by hand. He didn't just find some new technique, crank it to 11 and call it art. - cezx, on 11/15/2008, -2/+7I dont like HDR, just not real photography anymore. Sure SOME images are nice, but theres a very thick and obvious line between suttle and overdone hdr-ing
- adverpart, on 11/15/2008, -0/+5No, it's like how you can't display a circle on a computer monitor, just a collection of rectangles small enough to approximate a circle.
Crappy analogy? OK, better one:
It's like how an ultraviolet image can't be displayed on a computer monitor.
I can take a photograph of the sun with ultraviolet light, and I can store it in some kind of data format that represents ultraviolet light if I want to.
But ultraviolet light is outside the range of what a computer monitor can display, as well as outside the range of what humans can see. So to display it on a computer monitor I have to tone-map it to visible color.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/0/00/Blue ...
It's a representation of a theoretical ultraviolet image, but it's not ultraviolet light. It's blue. No way around that. - phantom5691, on 11/15/2008, -3/+898% of all HDR pics i see are overdone and cartoonish. i am all for using photoshop to improve an image, but this stuff is just too much. when HDR is misused, it is an easy way to embellish and improve an otherwise completely dull image in the eyes of people who don't know any better. people who know NOTHING about photography tend to have the strongest positive reaction when they see this stuff. whatever happened to good composition, rule of thirds, perspective, using a "decisive moment" and the like to make a good picture??
i really believe there will come a time when this style will become so played out that anyone still using it will be looked at as amateurish and silly.
good riddance when that day comes - Murdats, on 11/15/2008, -8/+13what you fail to realise is everything is terrible.
notice how there are always 500 comments on how this picture/web comic/whatever is terrible and the worst thing ever? its pathetic isn't it? - fromantis, on 11/15/2008, -1/+6There are basically three types of opinion about HDR on digg:
1. It's an example of overcompensating for a lack of real photographic skill.
2. This isn't real HDR now let me tell you why in no less than 500 words.
3. Ooh pretty!
Number three gets buried along with the submitter because they are fools. Number two gets buried for being pedantic. Number one makes comments like this because they are real photographers offended by bad taste and don't care what anyone else thinks. -
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