HDR

ranarama · 25 Apr 2006 at 00:30

Seeing some recent threads about HDR and all the wow factor that seems to be surrounding it at the moment it made me think...haven't we all been doing this for ages?

I don't have photomatrix but have been producing a similar (if more subtle) effect for quite a while now in Photoshop. From a single RAW file using two different exposures I've been creating two or more layers and erasing selectively or using the gradient tool to keep details in highlights and shadows (and therefore a creating a greater dynamic range) and just assumed it was normal PS practice to do that.

As an example, this is one of my more recent efforts in PS using one RAW file:

and ofter a bit of work I ended up with this...

It's not the greatest effort in the world but I can't see what the recent fuss is about when I thought this was normal practice. :confused:

glitch · 25 Apr 2006 at 00:57

Used to be called stacking, didn't it? Take three shots, one for highlights, one for shadows and one for mids, stack the three results and erase away to leave the one 'perfectly' exposed shot.

I guess HDR is the new name for it and the software that has been written to do the job goes a lot further than you'd really want to by hand. HDR hass a certain feel to it that I can't say I always like. Maybe it's down to the user to create that feel from the software - can't really comment as I don't use it.

cyKey · 25 Apr 2006 at 01:12

There are some differences. Exposure blending doesn't have the same range of a HDR shot. HDR shots can be a 48bit image compared to an 8 or 16bit one. More info can be found here.

Gregeff · 25 Apr 2006 at 11:12

I was thinking the same ranarama. For example here is one i did a year or so ago, which looks to me very much like the 'new' HDR effect

ALthough i only had one jpeg to play with, not a RAW file or multiple exposures.

From this:

To This:

Greg

Simmy · 25 Apr 2006 at 13:44

that's down by morrisons isn't it? Nice shot

What did you do to it exactly?

Gregeff · 25 Apr 2006 at 14:52

I'm not actually sure where it is, i was just passing by on bike along the Bristol-Bath cycle track just to the left of the photo

what i did was, using the histogram tool and three layers produced three exposures from the one shot, one for the sky, one for the ground and one for everything else. Then erased the right parts of each layer to that for example only the clouds where visible on the layer exposed for the clouds etc. Finally i expect i did some kind of Saturation boosting! Then merged all the layers.

I may actually have had four layers, another one for the windows...

themask70 · 25 Apr 2006 at 21:00

I love it mate, it's absolutely brilliant

ranarama · 25 Apr 2006 at 23:14

cyKey said:
There are some differences. Exposure blending doesn't have the same range of a HDR shot. HDR shots can be a 48bit image compared to an 8 or 16bit one. More info can be found here.

Cheers for the link, explains it quite well thanks. Still not sure I want to spend all that money on the Photomatrix softare though. I'm quite happy with the effect I get from PS.