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A Popular Science Guide: How To High-Dynamic-Range Photography
popsci.typepad.com — "Use our step-by-step primer to turn five humdrum digital photos into one stunning image via free software"
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- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -16/+3Buy Photomatix Pro.
End of...- Andross01, on 10/11/2007, -11/+5Shoot black and white or color negative film. If you really want the range (and believable results), then there's no better way . . .
- ubuwalker31, on 10/11/2007, -0/+10If you want to try out a decent linux based solution to creating HDR images, install Cinepaint, which has a built in HDR image creator. Once installed, go to the Toolbox window, go to the "File" menu -> "New From" -> "Bracketing to HDR"..."File" -> "Open". Then click on HDR...and ta-da! Its very simple.
qtpfsgui at http://qtpfsgui.sourceforge.net is also really nice - Sabin, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6"If you really want the range (and believable results), then there's no better way . . ."
You do realize that most HDR stuff you see looks the way it does because the photographer WANTS it to look like that. It is very possible (and actually easier IMO) to shoot realistic looking HDR. Film does have much better latitude than digital but it is really not nearly as practical as digital in most situations anymore. And now that Pentax has a CMOS sensor that does 22bit per channel film is losing its edge on latitude as well....just wish the camera didn't sample down to 12 bit per channel on the RAW. Kind of a waste. - FortyCaliber, on 10/11/2007, -2/+3AWESOME program...
However, the best key to HDR photography is getting the shot that allows the greatest range in the first place. I've found that overcast days are the ABSOLUTE WORST for HDR photos.
HDR can be rendered from 1 really good photo, but it's actually done with at least 3 varying expsoures and works best with 5 exposures.
HDR is good for maybe a few pictures only. Learn it, and apply it to everything you've shot that sucks.... then learn when to ACTUALLY apply it.
A great shot (composition, contrast, brightness, color balance and cropping) is far better than a ***** shot done in HDR.
The photography makes and picture, not the equipment and only the poor mechanic blames his tools. - ChocoMidget, on 10/11/2007, -3/+10Don't Digg this guy down Photomatix is the best software out there to accomplish HDR's. Now to quell a few incorrect facts that I've seen thrown around on this discussion.
1. THERE is an output for a HDR, or a 16 bit image, its called the Brightside Monitor and it is specially made to do this, its also costs 10K.
2. HDR was developed by in part by Radiance and ILM in 1985, thats Industrial Light & Magic, for use in guess what? Movies, specifically Jurassic Park is where it really shined for the first time.
3. HDR was developed so that you could create a realistic 3D lighting enviroment inside Maya or Lightwave which would theb be applied to a textured wireframe model giving it the appearance it was actually in the scene.
4. PHOTOMATIX is the best and that is the end of the story, its also only like $40 if you're a student.
5. No number of exposures will gurantee you a good HDR.
6. In face the guys at Photomatix told me that anything over 4 is really pointless, it depends more on how you space them out exposure wise.
7. HDR is not meant to make some pretty artist picture of landscape for which, it is meant to exactly replicate what our everyday eyes see.
8. DIGITAL does have more latitude than film, it has for the past 3 years so get over it. I'm sorry you have a consumer level camera, but professionals use big toys. H3D will spit out a 16bit file with as much as 18 stops of exposure latitude. Transparency has 5 stops, negative 8 stops, and a print has 4 stops so yes digital is better than film.
9. FILM is dead, Fuji is the last company producing it and they are stopping in 1 year, everything you see know is just stuff from wharehouse shelves, no new production runs.
10. What else can I yell about? Don't digg down a professional photographer who tells you the real facts just because you don't like the manner in which they are given.
Oh SINGLE IMAGES CANNOT MAKE HDRs - OBKenobi, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1HDR = Web 2.0 = cliche.
- darkcrunk, on 10/11/2007, -4/+2I dont quiet agree on that one really.
There are other methods of doing HDR photography with manual photography techniques.
anyway - even with Photomatix pro - its not that easy : )- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Its easy if you have taken a reasonable picture, that suits HDR.
You can't just slap HDR processing on and win an award.
But Photomatix is just about the easiest to use, it also works well with RAW too.
I take hundreds of pictures but only about 3 percent of them will suit HDR, and then I prefer mono-HDR to colour. - dscx, on 10/11/2007, -0/+8HDR != Tonemapping which is what most of the photos that have appeared on digg are processed into.
- FortyCaliber, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4HDR is High Dynamic Range... thats it.
Tonemapping is the method that allows you to corral and wrangle that range into an appealing compostion.
You can't just Tonemap a regular picture and call it HDR.
Of course all of the submissions here are tonemapped... simple HDR from RAW photos looks like complete *****. - bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -0/+3the whole point of tone mapping (from what i understand) is to take HDR data and create a (hopefully) pleasantly viewable LDR picture. there isn't any digital output that supports HDR. while i agree tone mapping isn't HDR, it is a process in the field of HDR imaging. HDR is just extended file data that lies within the entire color spectrum and luminosity levels that are viewable by the human eye. we just don't have anything to view that file data with; we can only use clipped ranges within the data to (try to) produce the best LDR rendering of ANY picture possible. if you can see it with your eye, it's applicable as a picture for HDR.
that having been said, none of the pictures you see online anywhere are actually HDR images. they may contain HDR data (even though 99.9...% of the pictures on digg don't), but the viewable picture is NOT HDR; it's LDR.
- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3Its easy if you have taken a reasonable picture, that suits HDR.
- Lumiras, on 10/11/2007, -7/+8Wow, I just bought a digital camera yesterday, and I was looking for a really good guide for HDR photography. It's weird how things coincidently show up sometimes
- specialK16, on 10/11/2007, -1/+5glad is working out for you, for me, it's all *****.
- anewname, on 11/06/2007, -0/+47Sometimes I'll finish processing a 3+ exposure HDR image and realize it looks like complete ass; that sometimes one of the originals looks just fine.
Don't do HDR for the sake of HDR.- chris8535, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4YES! thankyou! I'm so sick of people using this as a parlor trick to try to make up for bad composition, crappy exposure and a generally boring subject.
- CaptSolo, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Indeed, often HDR pictures look so unnatural that it makes them look fake. Some, on the other hand, are brilliant.
The problem is - you can't really display this high dynamic range on a monitor - so you end up creating a HRD image and then "flattening" it so that it fit in 8bit/channel JPG and can be displayed on the web again.
- swavalier711, on 10/11/2007, -7/+3I think the title meant to say "how to photograph in high-dynamic-range"?
- sam991, on 10/11/2007, -2/+13To my knowledge you can't photograph in high dynamic range. It's purely a post-processing thing.
- napk, on 10/11/2007, -10/+6great, now we can find even more HDR ***** on digg
- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -0/+18Its like anything else, garbage in - garbage out.
HDR can't make a purse of a sows ear, but with a well taken picture, it can add a lot.- Sabin, on 10/11/2007, -1/+10And on a really well taken picture it's simply not needed.
- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2I suppose thats a matter of taste, direction etc.
If you take a really good picture, but want to take it somewhere else, why not ? - bieber, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Sabin: If the scene's dynamic range exceeds that of the sensor, then yes, it's very much needed.
- omarciddo, on 10/11/2007, -4/+8I can't wait until this HDR fad passes.
It is more than possible to take a quality image with a good subject, a good angle, and good composition without having to do HDR to try and create something out of nothing.- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -4/+21HDR is really about contrast.
It was conceived as a method for getting the same contrast ratio you get from good monochrome film in a colour picture.
The problem of course, is you get real artists exploiting it and plain snappers too.
Do search on Flickr for HDR and see 15000 terrible pictures and about 3 good ones. - bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -4/+4i'm pretty sure hdr was originally developed for computer generated images and had nothing to do with actual film. i'm pretty sure it came down to making cg images look better. in fact, you can nix myself being "pretty sure." HDR originally had nothing to do with traditional photography at all and was developed in 1985 in the 3d modeling program Radiance. so please Threlly, stop making up stories. it does a disservice to people all over...
- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -6/+1Nothing to do with 'making CG images look better", but please, don't let that stop you.
We can have a big discussion about the history of the process, but why don't you just Google it
and find out for yourself before trolling the thread.
Fill your boots, whatever. - bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -1/+8@Threlly
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hdr
HDR started with Radiance in 1985... for someone telling me to google it, i'm rather upset you didn't. it hasn't been until recently that the term HDR has been applied to photography. once again, ignorance abounds on digg. oh, and while i'm at it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_%28internet%29 just because someone has factual information pertaining to a subject that contradicts with your opinion does not constitute them as a troll... - DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -5/+1...
- EODMpink, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1 HDR is almost essential for modern high-budget VFX, but merely a stylistic choice for photographers. So whatever HDR's initial intended purposes, it's more important to the VFX industry than for photographers.
- Threlly, on 10/11/2007, -4/+21HDR is really about contrast.
- Vinhdicated, on 10/11/2007, -6/+3Is there a way to take DSLR-quality photos just using a digital camera and without doing any editing?
- viet10, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2if there was, why would people go through all this trouble?
- webbery, on 10/11/2007, -0/+4@ mattmollysdad
You're not going to get the compressed depth of field you can achieve with a DSLR and good, fast lenses, but there's no reason you can't get excellent images out of pretty much any camera. It's more about recognizing what would be a good photo, lighting, timing and composition - remember, some of the best photogaphs of the 20th century were taken with pretty rudimentary gear. Having said that, you should turn off the flash, use a tripod and if you have one, an incident light meter. Set your ISO to it's lowest setting and the white balance to "cloudy." Good luck! - DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1"Is there a way to take DSLR-quality photos just using a digital camera and without doing any editing?"
In certain instances you can get very close. The advantage of a DSLR is versatility. You can take low light photos without flash, for instance.
http://www.pbase.com/eclecticphoto/image/53758497
I took that photo on the balcony of a cruise ship. It would have been completely impossibly with a digicam.
Another example: http://www.pbase.com/eclecticphoto/image/39865105
Is impossible to take with a digicam. Sure, you could use flash, but that would ruin the appeal of the natural light. As for processing, you can see how some work can improve a photo.
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -5/+3isn't this what level tweaking in photoshop is about? seriously, myself and plenty of other people have been doing "hdr" images for a while now...
- Sabin, on 10/11/2007, -1/+3HDR refers to working beyond the 8bits per channel that you are used to. With digital you don't have the same range that film allows so a lot of the time you will see images with blown highlights or shadows that are completely black whereas on film you would still have setail in the dark and light parts of a photo. Currently the only way around this is to do an HDR render taking multiple exposures and them merging them in software so that you are able to get the same results that you would get from film. Even shooting camera raw (12 bits per channel) doesn't afford you the lattitude that film does so HDR is the next best thing.
- bIuebonics, on 10/11/2007, -2/+2i'll concede on one point, up until recently photoshop only had 8-bits per channel. it currently supports 32-bits per channel, which exceeds the visible color range of light...
- DaffyDuck, on 10/11/2007, -2/+1You can achieve a similar effect with tweaking a single image. The shadow/highlight tool is a simple way to do this. The disadvantage is an increase in noise where the shadows are.
- mattmollysdad, on 10/11/2007, -3/+8Question?
1. Photographer I know does fantastic California seascapes using a Nikon D2X (12.4 megapixel) camera. His printed finished product pop like nothing I've ever seen before.
2. Recently I read that the human eye can only see something like 4 megapixel if we could make conversion.
3. So question to you knowledgeable photo people is: What I am seeing in my friends pictures, is it real or crafted by the system?
thanks- ninzoris, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11There are two parts to this.
1. Sharpness - It depends on lens focus, the quality of the lens and post proccesing. If you have a blurry 12mp and a sharp 4mp, guess whats going to look better.
2. Print size - yes at 4" x 6" you will not notice a difference between 4mp and 12mp. The resolution of the camera almost has no bearing on the image until you want to print it larger. A 12mp will allows you to print to a much larger size compared to 4mp without noticing artifacts and pixelation.
- ninzoris, on 10/11/2007, -0/+11There are two parts to this.
- mattmollysdad, on 10/11/2007, -1/+6thanks for helping me understand.
- LowFuel, on 10/11/2007, -2/+10Ahh HDR, the Lens Flare for 2007.
- gr4yscale, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Why oh why does this image need to be HDR'd?!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/versatile-aure/491533680/in/pool-qtpfsgui/ - chakalakasp, on 10/11/2007, -2/+6I've done a bit of work in HDR ( http://www.flickr.com/photos/digicana/sets/72157594345135413/ ) and a while back I wrote a tutorial about it ( http://backingwinds.blogspot.com/2006/10/how-to-create-professional-hdr-images.html ) that was subsequently Dugg. There are some misconceptions about HDR that I wish would be cleared up:
1. There is a bit of a semantic problem going on here. HDR images refer to the 32 bit floating point files that are created by either assembling a brazillian images taken at different exposure values or by using a really expensive camera with a huge dynamic range capturing capability. You do no typically see HDR images on the intarwebs, and even when you do, the best that most of us can do is load them up in Photoshop and slide the EV sliders around to see the scene at different exposure values. Current monitors simply cannot display the infinite dynamic range that can be represented with HDR images. For example, when you go outside and stare at the sun for long enough, you will end up burning the hell out of your retina. When you stare at a picture of the sun on your computer monitor, you don't have this problem. The monitor essentially clips the high-end light values down to a lower light value, since the high-end light values can't be reproduced. A well-shot HDR image of the sun will actually contain information in the file that would tell a compatible monitor "display this so damned bright you'll need sunglasses". HDR monitors exist right now, but they currently cost more than a case of Guinness a week for the next ten years, and I know which I'd rather have.
What you see on the internets are tone mapped downsampled HDR images. Basically, you take all the photos, create an HDR image, and then downsample that image to something that will display on current monitors (and photographic paper). In the process, you lose most all of the dynamic range, but you get to CHOOSE where you lose it. If the sky is bright and the ground is dark, you don't have to choose between a photo of a well-lit ground and a white sky and a photo of a completely black ground and a well lit sky -- you can have a well lit ground and a well lit sky. This is essentially what "tonemapping" is, which is what most people have come to associate with the idea of HDR.
2. Tonemapping does NOT have to result in insane acid-trip images. It does not have to look surreal or impossible or overdone, and there do not have to be halos around every object. The reason that this has become synonymous with "HDR" is because the most popular program, Photomatix, makes images look like this out of the box and most users do not have the image processing skills to make anything other than what Photomatix will make out of the box. Other programs, such as Photoshop CS2 or CS3, will create images that look god-awful out of the box, but then that's because Adobe figures that anyone using their $800 program doesn't care what Adobe thinks their image ought to look like and is going to actually change some settings (such as curves, local contrast, etc.) before they click "execute". Photomatix doesn't even offer curves, probably because it's hard to code and because it would confuse the hell out of most users. I'm not really knocking Photomatix; it's a hell of an HDR assembler and does a good job of downsampling some images if you turn all the tonemapping crap off, but it doesn't allow for much fine control -- which is why most stuff that comes out of it looks the same.
3. The idea that a "well shot image won't ever be improved by HDR" is absolute nonsense. This is like saying that a well-shot black and white image could not be improved upon with the addition of color. While this is true in some instances, in many others, the addition of color will add, not subtract to the photograph. HDR allows the artist much, much finer control of the photographic exposure than is possible with standard photography. This fine control is not always NEEDED and there are certainly downsides to the process, but there are certainly images in which the exposure latitude offered by HDR is a massively useful tool. Ansel Adams would have creamed himself with glee if he were alive today.
I have found that people who think that well shot photographs need to be perfect right out of the camera usually don't really understand how a camera works nor do they know much about the science or art of photographic processing, be it chemical or digital. Currently, most consumer digital cameras assume that the end-user knows nothing at all about photography other than pushing the button, and as such they apply a ton of post-processing on the fly before writing the JPEG file. I think people don't realize that it hasn't always been this way -- people used to manually set settings and shoot film, which had a pretty predictable response curve, and then process the photos with chemicals, which were pretty predictable as well. Any post-processing required a change in chemicals or time in chemicals or literally cutting out crazy masks out of paper or literally waving your hand over your print as your enlarger projected an image onto it. Photos were never perfect out of the camera because you didn't have jack squat until you ran the stuff in the back of your camera through a set of chemical baths and then (in the case of print film) projected light through that stuff onto photo sensitive paper and then ran that paper through another set of chemical baths. The choice of film or chemicals or process or paper could entirely change the kind of photo you ended up with.
Photography is going through a sort of renaissance right now, as computers allow techniques that were never even dreamed of in the past to be executed fairly easily by people with limited technical skills. These new techniques are not perverting photography, they're expanding it, and people who really understand them are doing some very incredible things with the art form.- mattmollysdad, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1amazing stuff... as only an observer (I went to your links and to flicker and put in HDR and looked at many HDR photos and they were beautiful as were my friends seascapes) my question is when u show a group of photos can u mix HDR's with regular non assisted ones. The HDR's are so different don't you either have overkill or if included with regular ones don't you take all the energy out of the room with the HDR's?
- wedesoft, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1ILM has released a library as open-source: http://www.openexr.com/
There is also a viewer. You can view HDR images like this: exrdisplay -1 filename.exr
As mentioned in other comments already one can use cinepaint to merge an exposure series into an HDR image for further processing. - paulocon, on 10/11/2007, -0/+1Thanks for that open source option/
- www.photographyvoter.com
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