gekko513 said:
I like that image, freebooter, and I find the techniques you're describing interesting. What's the high dynamic range program you used? How does it work? Is the halo around the things that silhouette the sky a result of the process of combining the 9 photos, or is it something you added later?
I used the application, "Photomatix", although similar results can obtained from within Photoshop. A slight halo effect was formed in the HDR process, and then was exaggerated by the Flaming Pear, Aetherize filter.
I want to go running now, so tomorrow I'll post some of the original shots to show the difference between conventional and HDR imagery, and thus how useful HDR can be.
Being a novice to HDR (the posted image is one of my first attempts), I copied this information from the "Photomatix" website. It explains HDR imaging very well.
What is Photomatix?
Photomatix enables you to get the best possible results out of images of the same scene taken with different exposures. The software works with images taken with digital cameras and images scanned from films.
There are basically two ways to obtain an image with increased dynamic range out of a sequence of differently exposed images:
1. Exposure blending
Differently exposed images of the scene are combined into an image with details in both highlights and shadows.
2. Tone Mapping
A High Dynamic Range Image (HDRI) is created from differently exposed shots. The HDR image is then tone mapped in order to retrieve the image details in highlights and shadows. The tone mapping process results in an image with 8 or 16 bits per color channel that can be properly displayed on standard monitors and handled by printers.
Why would I need to shoot the same scene with different exposures?
A general problem in photography is the rendering of scenes presenting very bright highlights and deep shadows. The problem exists with traditional silver halide photography and is more pronounced with slide films. In digital photography, the problem is made even worse as the linear response of the sensors imposes an abrupt limit to the dynamic range captured once the sensor capacity is reached.
This is why you can not get what the human eye is seeing when viewing an HDR scene on common devices. If you capture details in the shadows thanks to long exposure times, you then get blown-out highlights. Conversely, you can capture details in the highlights with short exposure times, but you then loose contrast in the shadows.
Creating an HDR image from differently exposed shots is a way to solve this problem. However, HDR images present a major inconvenience for photography: they can not be displayed correctly on standard computer screens and can even less be reproduced on paper.
What we call Dynamic Range Increase is the process of correctly reproducing the highlights and shadows of a high contrast scene on common monitors and printers. That is, producing a standard 24-bit image that represents the original high dynamic range scene as the human eye has seen it.
What is the added-value of Photomatix?
The process most commonly used for Exposure Blending consists in manipulating the images in image editing softwares such as Photoshop, using multiple-steps masking techniques.
This process is complex, time-consuming and may lead to disappointing results. Moreover, Exposure Blending alone may not be sufficient when the dynamic range of the scene is particularly high. This is why we have designed Photomatix, a software that blends exposures hassle-free and processes High Dynamic Range images with a tone mapping technique that preserves local contrast.
