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HDR (High Dynamic Range) Photography
Resources
HDR photography is a method used to produce images that try to recreate what the eye sees in a scene that has a wide dynamic range of light to dark tones that cannot be captured by today's cameras in one image. Even though the latest camera models do a great job capturing evenly lit scenes, there is still much room for improvement in high-contrast scenes. If you take many landscape or other high-contrast photos, you will immediately realize that you cannot capture very light and very dark tones in one image. You must expose for highlights or shadows at the expense of the other tone. HDR is a method of combining multiple exposures with software programs to produce an image which captures nearly the whole dynamic range of light to dark tones. Dedicated HDR software or Photoshop combines parts of each image that are properly exposed and produces a composite 32 bit image with a wider dynamic range, often with stunning results. They can be fairly realistic or overly dramatic "fantasy images" depending on how you process them and software used. To take photos for HDR, you set the Auto Exposure Bracketing to take three shots (with most cameras) with one press of the shutter at -2, 0, +2 exposure values. (See your manual for instructions on setting this.) You can take more than 3 exposures if desired using different settings for the others. The 3 or more photos are combined in Photoshop or HDR software to produce a 32 bit HDR image. Then you apply Tone Mapping to adjust the image to your liking. Below is a listing of HDR software, both free and commercial versions. Photoshop (CS2 and later) also produces HDR images but is much less effective than dedicated programs at tone mapping. I have listed some very good tutorials for Photoshop and for Photomatix Pro, one of the best HDR applications available. Photomatix comes as a stand-alone program, a Photoshop tone mapping plugin which is used after you combine the chosen images in Photoshop, and the Pro Plus version which includes the stand-alone and plugin. There is also a free Lightroom plugin now bundled with the Pro and Pro Plus versions which exports your chosen images into Photomatix in tif format and is very handy. Best
Free HDR Software Programs Qtpfsgui Commercial HDR Programs Dynamic
Photo HDR HDR-like images
can be created from one image with
these programs Tutorials and Resources
HDR Software Yahoo Group Flickr HDR Group Blogs on HDR Recommended Books and Video on HDR Coming in May: Rick
Sammon's HDR Secrets for Digital Photographers
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