High Dynamic Range editing
HDR in Monochrome imaging
Many scenes you will photograph will have a range of brightness that is greater than either the camera can capture in one shot or can be shown on a computer monitor or in a print. HDR techniques go some way to addressing this.
For further reading Wikipedia
HDR techniques are another tool to use to produce an image. Some can be found here www.paddle.shetland.co.uk
What do I need?
The obvious, a camera, a way of getting a digital image into a computer and software to manipulate the digital image.
What software?
A list and comparison of software for HDR can be found at Software overview
How to do it
A good article showing how HDR is done in Photoshop is Backingwinds.blogspot
Myself, I am a Photomatix fan so this demonstration uses that software.
Yes, I know this is a monochrome article but the colour image needs to be sorted out first
Taking the images.
A tripod is a good idea, as you need to take three images at +2, 0 and –2 stops on the exposure. Many cameras will do this automatically with exposure bracketing.
These are just plain 8-bit jpeg images and were taken on a ‘point and shoot’ compact.
The three images are loaded into Photomatix and the HDR Generate dialog started. This then produces a HDR image and gives a reasonable display on the screen.
This HDR file has too much information to be fully displayed on the screen or printed out. The file needs to be mapped into an image in which the information it contains can be seen in one image. The way to do this is to tone map the image. This tone mapping is done differently in different software products.
The tone mapping can be subtle
Or you can get quite aggressive
Which works best for you depends on the effect you want.
HDR is just another way to develop your image prior to conversion to monochrome.
Save the output from Photomatix and then process it in your usual image processor to get the tones you want.
This tutorial was written by Chris Brown forum member
Thanks Chris
Many scenes you will photograph will have a range of brightness that is greater than either the camera can capture in one shot or can be shown on a computer monitor or in a print. HDR techniques go some way to addressing this.
For further reading Wikipedia
HDR techniques are another tool to use to produce an image. Some can be found here www.paddle.shetland.co.uk
What do I need?
The obvious, a camera, a way of getting a digital image into a computer and software to manipulate the digital image.
What software?
A list and comparison of software for HDR can be found at Software overview
How to do it
A good article showing how HDR is done in Photoshop is Backingwinds.blogspot
Myself, I am a Photomatix fan so this demonstration uses that software.
Yes, I know this is a monochrome article but the colour image needs to be sorted out first
Taking the images.
A tripod is a good idea, as you need to take three images at +2, 0 and –2 stops on the exposure. Many cameras will do this automatically with exposure bracketing.
These are just plain 8-bit jpeg images and were taken on a ‘point and shoot’ compact.
The three images are loaded into Photomatix and the HDR Generate dialog started. This then produces a HDR image and gives a reasonable display on the screen.
This HDR file has too much information to be fully displayed on the screen or printed out. The file needs to be mapped into an image in which the information it contains can be seen in one image. The way to do this is to tone map the image. This tone mapping is done differently in different software products.
The tone mapping can be subtle
Or you can get quite aggressive
Which works best for you depends on the effect you want.
HDR is just another way to develop your image prior to conversion to monochrome.
Save the output from Photomatix and then process it in your usual image processor to get the tones you want.
This tutorial was written by Chris Brown forum member
Thanks Chris
