Photo Art
McKaso
TM
Photography By: Steve Sullivan
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HDR (High Dynamic Range) has been around for a long time, but has really become very popular in the last few years and what an uproar it has been causing recently. Over the last several weeks I have come across a lot of articles and forums with debates on all sides for those who love it and those who hate it. All I can say is technology and advancement within the world of photography is great and wonderful. As an artist who captures my own moments in time I couldn’t care less if you hate HDR or love HDR because I have better things to do than waste my time arguing. Life is just way too short. Everything has its place and as an artist I have the freedom to choose how I develop my reality. If I put three photographers in a location and told them to take as many pictures as they wish from any perspective I wouldn’t see two photos that are alike because we all are different. What a fantastic and wonderful world we live in.
Personally I love the adventures being created from new technologies and those existing ones that we push to the limits. What a fun and exciting time to be a photographer. HDR has a place in my work flow just as the hundreds of other actions and plug-in software choices at my disposal. I know there are more vendors than the ones I’m going to mention but these are the ones I have personally downloaded and use. The three include Essential HDR, Media Chance and Photomatix. HDR was really a means to develop a scene to more closely resemble what the human eye can see, but it can also add another whole dimension to your work by creating pretty extreme changes. Each vendor seems to have a slightly different set of options in their software, so depending on what I want the final image to look like I choose the one that is best going to fit my needs for that image. Overall though they all process images well and each has its own set of controls. The best way to pick is to download any free trials and do some hands-on work to see which one best suites your needs. Below are several HDR images that I have created using each of the three software choices and I also used the basic image merge feature in Photoshop. All of the landscape photos are straight out of the camera with some basic, but similar adjustments made in the HDR software (tone mapping), The Photoshop image has no corrections just the merging of the same three photos. All were cropped somewhat. The second example of an HDR photo is one of a unique lounge located in a small town here in Western Nebraska. It was developed using a single photo in Media Chance’s Dynamic Photo HDR software and it really brought out the details in the scene and created the impact I was looking for.
I’m not going to go into detail about how to develop an HDR image as a quick internet search on this topic will bring up hundreds of resources explaining it much better then I ever could and I have included links to several resources below. You can do some HDR type effects using a single image and there are techniques to create a single raw image into several images and combine them in the HDR software to create the effect. The most usual way is to take a series of bracketed exposures normally 3 images (2 stops apart to 1.5 stops apart. See images at bottom of page.) or as many as 7 bracketed images. This series of bracketed images is then uploaded to the software of your choice and blended together. You will have the option of controlling brightness, contrast, saturation, color levels, alignment and the amount of detail to name a few. This is referred to as Tone Mapping. How you process your image into a final piece of art is your choice. Personally I found Essential HDR to be my preferred choice for more realistic results, but I really enjoy the options in Media Chance’s software Dynamic Photo HDR. Also Media Chance is very aggressive in updating their software. I personally feel for the absolute best results you must use a tripod or some other means of stable support to insure that all images align well. Also it is difficult to produce an HDR image with moving elements in the scene.
Personally I love the adventures being created from new technologies and those existing ones that we push to the limits. What a fun and exciting time to be a photographer. HDR has a place in my work flow just as the hundreds of other actions and plug-in software choices at my disposal. I know there are more vendors than the ones I’m going to mention but these are the ones I have personally downloaded and use. The three include Essential HDR, Media Chance and Photomatix. HDR was really a means to develop a scene to more closely resemble what the human eye can see, but it can also add another whole dimension to your work by creating pretty extreme changes. Each vendor seems to have a slightly different set of options in their software, so depending on what I want the final image to look like I choose the one that is best going to fit my needs for that image. Overall though they all process images well and each has its own set of controls. The best way to pick is to download any free trials and do some hands-on work to see which one best suites your needs. Below are several HDR images that I have created using each of the three software choices and I also used the basic image merge feature in Photoshop. All of the landscape photos are straight out of the camera with some basic, but similar adjustments made in the HDR software (tone mapping), The Photoshop image has no corrections just the merging of the same three photos. All were cropped somewhat. The second example of an HDR photo is one of a unique lounge located in a small town here in Western Nebraska. It was developed using a single photo in Media Chance’s Dynamic Photo HDR software and it really brought out the details in the scene and created the impact I was looking for.
I’m not going to go into detail about how to develop an HDR image as a quick internet search on this topic will bring up hundreds of resources explaining it much better then I ever could and I have included links to several resources below. You can do some HDR type effects using a single image and there are techniques to create a single raw image into several images and combine them in the HDR software to create the effect. The most usual way is to take a series of bracketed exposures normally 3 images (2 stops apart to 1.5 stops apart. See images at bottom of page.) or as many as 7 bracketed images. This series of bracketed images is then uploaded to the software of your choice and blended together. You will have the option of controlling brightness, contrast, saturation, color levels, alignment and the amount of detail to name a few. This is referred to as Tone Mapping. How you process your image into a final piece of art is your choice. Personally I found Essential HDR to be my preferred choice for more realistic results, but I really enjoy the options in Media Chance’s software Dynamic Photo HDR. Also Media Chance is very aggressive in updating their software. I personally feel for the absolute best results you must use a tripod or some other means of stable support to insure that all images align well. Also it is difficult to produce an HDR image with moving elements in the scene.
So get out there and have some FUN!! And don’t make me repeat myself or else! J
Photomatix Pro3
Dynamic Photo HDR
Essential HDR
PhotoShop Merge
Extreme HDR Adjustments made during the Tone Mapping process
Photo - Non HDR
Photoshop
© Stephen T Sullivan - All Rights Reserved
Target Exposure
Under Exposure
-1.5 stop
Over Exposure
+ 1.5 stop
Photo - HDR
Dynamic Photo HDR
Dynamic Photo HDR