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I am really frustrated about hdr technology. I have been reading a lot for months just to make an hdr photo but I couldn't. The reason behind that I think is the ambiguity in explaining� how to make hdr photos�. Moreover, I think there is some kind of exaggeration in showing the results, because I don???t think that those photos displayed in some websites are results of those explanations and tutorials. There is some kind of photo processing and colore treatment that they won't tell any one about. Any way, maybe I didn???t understand the tutorials very well and I am putting the blame on people although I have been trying for months and I did a lot and a lot of trials. To be brief, I would ask some questions if you allow me: 1- What does it mean to take three photos with different exposures? Is it with different shutter speed or different EV values (+2/0/-2) or they are the same? 2- If it is three pictures with a tripod then how would they take hdr photos with moving objects? I have seen a lot of them. May be one raw photo?! I don???t know, but do you think that you may get such amazing photos with just treating this photo with some software. 3- I have Sony H50 and I want to use auto bracketing to take three photos, but the camera gives me(0.7/0/-0.7), I tried to change the EV value but I couldn???t, is there any way for that? 4- If I should use different shutter speed, what are the speeds should I use for the hdr? Finally, would any one please give me the short and easy steps for making hdr, I tried the ways mentioned in most websites but I failed. I don???t think that the whole issue would take more than three or four short sentences. Those websites make it longer just to see there ads. Sorry and Thank you so much for your time.
Some excellent images here, and most of them aren't too overdone. HDR is a technique that can be so easily abused.
Another method of converting a 32-bpc image into an 8- or 16-bpc image is to use third party software such as Photomatix or using a layered HDR tone mapping Photoshop technique.
Learn how to tone map with Photoshop CS3 to create beautiful high dynamic range (HDR) photos. The final result is exceedingly better than Photoshop's local adaptation and similar to Photomatix's tone mapping.
In picture 3 you see how the original HDR image looks like in Photoshop. Let's examine it a little and set some goals. There are obviously several problems: yellow cast, perspective distortion, some barrel distortion, and distracting elements on the left side. My goal is to fix all these and create a symmetrical and simple high contrast photo with completely black sky.
The next step was to open the three shots with Photomatix. I started to use this program to create HDR images a number of years ago and before photoshop added the feature but I like to stick with what I know so can't tell you how the two programs??compare. I'm sure that photoshop (and other programs) can create just as good tone mapped HDR images.??I never use an HDR image as my base image (this should make more sense if you read further) so I don't ever spend much time playing about with the settings on Photomatix.??For the avoidance of any doubt, I really don't like the images which come straight out of Photomatix - they look too fake and unnatural (in my humble opinion).
This post is part of an ongoing series at That INDIE Dude called ???Inspired???. ??True creativity and originality demand true inspiration. ??The point of this series is to help readers find new and fresh areas of inspiration in their lives, so as to help them find their most creative and original selves.
I've actually came to masterize a bit more graduated filters and local enhancement in Lightroom, and I've been quite amazed too! I'm even reconsidering using HDR in most of the time now. I've even made a quick comparison between HDR and graduated filter on my site: http://www.jhgphoto.com/photo-blog/2008/12/22/graduated-filters-in-lightroom-vs-hdr-jhg-photo-test-it-side.html Hope you find it useful Cheers Julien
HDR Photos and Photoshop Category: Photoshop Explore high dynamic range imaging in Photoshop. This Photoshop guide will show you how to photograph for HDR, view 32-bits/channel HDR images, and compress them into 8- or 16-bpc images. More about HDR and Photoshop after the click. Written by Denny Tang Views:
hey graham the video is down could you reload it on another site? i really need to know how to use that plugin in the way you use it.. so sick
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Give your photos a grunge look with this popular Photoshop effect. Although this Photoshop effect is commonly referred as HDR photo effect, it is it can be done with regular, non-HDR photos.
This HDR tutorial shows quite easy way to fake HDR photos in Photoshop. You don't need to shoot into RAW or take multiple photos - one JPEG file is enough. Tut gives a cool painterly effect to your photos.
Create an HDR fake in Photoshop - Roman Fl�sser An easy way to simulate High Dynamic Range (HDR) in a photo to create a hyperrealist painting effect. This tutorial comes with a Photoshop action.
One of the most common problems photographers face is taking pictures with both a very bright and a very dark part in the image. In these cases, we usually end up sacrificing the brightest or the darkest part, leading to disappointing results. There is a technique, however, which can work out this problem, and it is called High Dynamic Range Imaging (HDRI). Think of all the situations where you as a photographer face a little dilemma. Your shot has both a very bright and a very dark portion in it. An example of this might be when your subject is backlit: the subject is dark and the backdrop bright. You cannot accommodate a correct exposure of both the subject and the background. Another example might be a landscape picture with a very bright sky. Again, you cannot render properly the fine details in the white clouds and simultaneously the shadowy details of the landscape. A beginner might underestimate the problems posed by situations like these, because human eye adapts itself automatically (by changing the pupils diameter) to any lighting condition. So, when we look at something dark, our pupils dilate, allowing us to see it clearly; whilst when looking at something bright our pupils shrink, letting less light thorough, permitting an optimal vision, as well. This is not the case when taking a picture. The equivalent of pupils in our camera is the diaphragm. For a given photograph, we must choose a certain fixed diaphragm (aperture) setting. Therefore, when photographing in situations like these, we must choose one of the following: - Sacrifice the brightest parts by exposing correctly only the darkest ones. This way, we loose all the details in the brightest parts, which will be completely overexposed, but retain the details in the dark parts. - The opposite of the above, with obvious advantages and disadvantages. - Compromise, trying to average the exposition, but this will yield a loss of details both in the brightest and in the darkest parts, even though at a lesser degree. From a technical point of view, this problem arises because the image sensor -be it an electronic CCD or a standard film- has a finite brightness resolution. For instance, a CCD has typically a maximum of 12 bits per RGB channel. If the differences in brightness within a specific scene need more than 12 bits, the sensor cannot accommodate the entire range in brightness. This leads to the technique we want to describe: the High Dynamic Range Imaging. The dynamic range is defined as ...
HDR is important because real world scenes contain light ranges usually exceeding 50,000:1 dynamic range. For the last thousand years, media has been limited to around 300:1 dynamic range. HDR imaging allows the photographer to replicate the tonal ranges available in real life. Photographers and artists alike from El Greco, Monet, W. Eugene Smith and Ansel Adams have been trying to reproduce the tonal ranges of images. But, with the evolution of digital HDR an even greater range is possible without nearly the effort. The transition to HDR imaging will affect all aspects of image creation, including capture, storage, editing and output. Capture: The most common way for photographers to capture high dynamic range images is to merge multiple images into one to increase the dynamic range. This is done by taking multiple photographs at different exposures and merging them together to create a single high-dynamic range image. The product, HDRCapture simplifies this process by taking up to 15 exposures at the same time. Storage: Traditional image storage formats such as JPEG and GIF provide only 8 bits/color channel and less possibility for tonal range, making them unsuitable for HDR photos. However, newer formats such as JPEG2000, RAW and PNG offer 16 bits per channel. HDRCapture stores images automatically in RAW format. Editing: There are three main issues photographers must consider when editing images: representing brightness levels, creating graphical user interfaces for HDR editing and image size. Currently, it rendering images in a brightness level that is too great for the monitor to show is an unresolved issue at many times. Representing graphical images for editing can be difficult because the color ranges can go from 0 to several million making it difficult to graphically represent the middle ranges. HDR imaging also creates images up to four times larger then normal images. This makes editing very time consuming. Photographic technologies will have to be adopted to help deal with these issues. Output: Today, some digital displays have up to a 2,000:1 dynamic range. This trend of increasing dynamic range will continue. Benefits and Uses of HDR Photography: Today, the majority of HDR users are specialized professionals in film, animation and virtual reality industries. HDR imaging is very useful for turning graphic computer objects into images in real scenes. Creating panoramic images with wide dynamic ranges is another great use for HDR imaging. Anoth...
Introduction There are times when it is impossible to capture the entire dynamic range of a scene in a single image. Recently I ran in into this problem during a short trip I made through a beautiful farming valley. I found a lovely old shed and decided to stop and photograph it. After securing permission from the landowner I reached into my car to grab my gear. It was at that moment that I realized that I didn't have a tripod with me. Holding the camera in my hand, I dialed in the exposure for the scene. I quickly realized that the intensity of light was just outside the dynamic range of my camera. Normally if I had a tripod, I would shoot the scene several stops over and under without too much fuss. Later I could then combine the images in Photoshop using layer masks or the Merge to HDR feature. The histogram below shows the exposure of the image as I saw it. As you can see, the exposure is slightly outside the dynamic range of my camera. The histogram is slightly blocked on both sides of the scale. Important shadow detail resides on the left side while the hightlights are located on the right side of the scale. Without a tripod, I was left to decide if I wanted to expose for the shadows (where all the little details were) and blow out the sky or expose for the brightness of the sky and allow the barn go dark. Is there way to get the best of both worlds in a single image? Sure there is! That's what I love about digital photography (and shooting RAW images)! Fortunately for me, the light falling on the scene wasn't too far outside the dynamic range of my camera. The sun was high and to my left. I kept a close eye on my in-camera histogram as I photographed the shed. Since I shoot everything in RAW, I knew I could recover a stop or two in both directions later on in processing. With this in mind, I made sure my exposure curve was as close to the center of the histogram as possible. In this quick tip, I am going to show you how to extend the dynamic range of a single image by processing the shot several times in Photoshop. Understanding how to extend the dynamic range of an image using layer masks has been the bread and butter of my landscape photography. Watch Your Exposure in the Field The process starts in the field. If you know you are facing a challenging lighting situation, consider exposing for bright side of the dynamic range. It is difficult (and sometimes impossible) to recover detail in underexposed shadow areas (especially if they have gone comp...
This post is part of an ongoing series at That INDIE Dude called �Inspired�. ??True creativity and originality demand true inspiration. ??The point of this series is to help readers find new and fresh areas of inspiration in their lives, so as to help them find their most creative and original selves.
High Dynamic Range images are a fairly recent subject matter. It is fair to say that HDR should be an area of Photography all to itself. In case you, the reader are not familiar with HDR, I will be sure to give a recap. While HDR is primarily photography, I consider it to be a mixed medium art, because of the digital processing which takes place after the images have been captured. An HDR image is of course only as good as the sequence of images captured to produce the final image. There are several considerations that have to be made, before capturing any images for HDR post-processing. Let's jump into it and address all aspects of capturing a successful set of images for HDR. What is HDR? First and foremost, let's talk about what HDR images are. Because this is a fairly new subject in photography, the term may not be known to you yet; however, the concept behind it is rather old. Dynamic Range simply put, is a measure of how many levels of light an image capture device, such as your digital camera, or film can capture. Think about shooting a bright sunrise. Why is it that when the sun is exposed properly, the rest of the image appears dark and underexposed? Simple, because the camera used to capture the image has less Dynamic Range than the scene being captured. A sunrise is a high-contrast situation. The rising sun and the surrounding sky are hundreds of times brighter, than other elements in the image. While digital sensors are extremely sophisticated, and so are film emulsions, some scenes are still too much for them to render for bright highlights, and deep shadows. This is where the concept of an HDR image comes in. You know that if you shoot a sunrise, and meter for the sun, the rest of the scene will be dark, likewise if you meter for the rest of the scene, the sun and the sky will turn into a sheet of white. What if you could bracket your exposures, but later take properly exposed portions of each exposure of a particular scene, and put them all together into a single beautifully exposed image? That's what an HDR image is. Software Using special software, Photomatix is what I find to be best, you merge the exposures together, let the software generate a 48bit image, and you then tone map the image, or in plain English, you adjust the image to make sure that both highlights and shadows are represented correctly. Capturing Photos for HDR Let's talk about the details of capturing an HDR image. First and foremost, unless you can shoot very still, and...
Artifacting may occur at some point while working with jpeg format instead of raw - not alot we can do if the picture did not choose to work with us that well during the course of this tutorial. Using a photoshop filter such as "Neat Image" or even using light amounts of blur may help clean it up - but this is one of the perils of "Faking It" so to speak.
Select two sequential exposures, one for highlights and one for shadows. Open them both in Adobe Camera RAW. (Note: CS3 Camera Raw is now an option for both TIFF and JPEG files). Select your shadows exposure and make adjustments that enhance the shadow details. Then select your highlights exposure and make adjustments that enhance your highlight details. Once you are happy with these adjustments save them and then open both images in Photoshop.
This option is a bit more involved, but Photomatix makes it as easy as it can get. Simply go to HDR -> Generate and select your images. In the next dialog photomatix will ask you for the exposure values (still remember the settings from your RAW converter?). Press OK and Photomatix will generate an HDR image for you. HDR files contain far more information then your monitor possibly can display, so don't worry if the image doesn't look good (yet). This is where the Tone Mapping comes in. The Tone Mapping is the real strength of Photomatix. It can be bought as a Photoshop Plug in (I bought the bundle, but I use the standalone program most of the time). On the left you can see the HDR file (linear light levels). On the right you can see the Tone Mapping Window. It applies a linear curve to the image mapping all brightness levels into the bitmap image space. The Window is very intuitive. You can simply hover with your mouse over any of the sliders to get a short explanation. Play around with it for a while and save settings you like. Load the default or older settings and compare the results. When you are ready, simply press the OK button. Photomatix will output a TIFF file of chosen output depth (I went with 16-bit in this example). Don't worry about what you pick here. You can always save the HDR (.hdr) and come back to this step again and again until you are completely happy. I have not modified the standard settings much for this example, however the results are already very impressive: The picture on the left uses my standard Photoshop settings for processing images (they are already better then in camera JPG settings, since they tend to recover some of the Highlights and Shadows). The picture in the middle was generated with the Automatic Highlight and Shadow settings. If you look closely, you will find that some of the shadows of the roof have been brought to live and that the building (outside in the bright sun) now looks better (not over exposed). With the HDR image, we were able to pull the structure of the wood out of the shadows (the roof looks way better) and even the distant building has regained a lot of its texture. The Original Image in this example already has some detail pulled out of the shadows and highlights.
High dynamic range (HDR) images enable photographers to record a greater range of tonal detail than a given camera could capture in a single photo. This opens up a whole new set of lighting possibilities which one might have previously avoided�for purely technical reasons. The new "merge to HDR" feature of Photoshop CS2 allows the photographer to combine a series of bracketed exposures into a single image which encompasses the tonal detail of the entire series. There is no free lunch however; trying to broaden the tonal range will inevitably come at the expense of decreased contrast in some tones. Learning to use the merge to HDR feature in Photoshop CS2 can help you make the most of your dynamic range under tricky lighting�while still balancing this trade-off with contrast.
Then change manually the exposures of each virtual copy by adding/reducing by -/+ 3EV. I'm playing by range of 3EV (on total, this makes 6EV scope), but you can play with lower range if you have some burnt zone in the original picture.
This tutorial explains, step by step, how to achieve HDR pictures using layers and layers mask in Adobe Photoshop. It is the method I use and prefer and Daniella did a amazing job writing down this tutorial. ***Disclaimer*** All images in this tutorial are copyrighted to Daniella, and I am using them with her permission.
Seems like people either love my HDR or hate it.
The solution is to take more than one photograph and bracket the photos. Shoot normal exposure, then under-expose a shot to capture highlights and over-expose a shot to capture shadow detail. Finally, merge these photos together to produce a single image with a larger range of tones that can now show all the details in the shadows and highlights. This tutorial will show you how to complete this process with the minimum fuss.
You start the process by navigating to File > Automate > Generate HDR. This will open a dialog box that will allow prompt you to add the files you want to merge. Browse to the folder where your files are and select them.
So today I'll show you how to go from this: