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DPChallenge Forums >> Tips, Tricks, and Q&A >> Come someone please explain HDR to me?
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01/04/2010 10:20:37 PM · #26
OMG Juliet, you don't mind if I send you the optometerist's bill, do you?

[/quote]
01/04/2010 10:41:48 PM · #27
Originally posted by spiritualspatula:

Originally posted by JulietNN:

I used to know , what I thought was HDR.

Then two of my friends 'went' on an HDR course, and this is what they where taught


I sure wish I could get paid for standing on a pulpit ranting...

Having said that... whatever. If it sells, it sells. Some people buy Thomas Kinkade paintings too...

Doesn't mean I have to like or agree with it.


Had a demo of HDR last week at my camera club. The HDR guy was critiqueing our electronic show and he did a great job, showed off his knowledge of composition, DOF, colors, etc.. He was generally very impressive and I looked forward to seeing a subtle, measured presentation of HDR. Instead he ruined some good photos and then turned some bad photos into weirdly lit and colored craziness. He called it his art and stated that he knew most photographers were apalled by it. He said that photographers were not his intended audience and that his best sellers were these "other the top" HDRs that made me cringe. It kind of reminded me of when I was playing around with posterization and thought everything looked cool all posterized. Then some real photgraphers told me it looked like someone playing with Photoshop for the first time.

I think of it being Digital Art when the HDR-look becomes the goal rather than a technique. I kind of like looking at Digital Art, but for me it ranges too far from what I want to do as a photographer.

01/04/2010 10:55:34 PM · #28
Originally posted by JulietNN:

Here is another. Just to tip you over the edge!!!

And for these shots, I was called an '''interfering, jealous, do not want to see them go ahead in photography, spiteful, do not know what I doing in photography, putting them down, negative, the teacher knows more than you do' interfering stupid woman. And this was from my """best friend"" who is now a "professional photographer who just got a camera 4 months ago :"expert":

I felt like shit for saying anything



Don't worry about it Juliet, it's not you.

There isn't anybody here on DPChallenge with enough sense skill to pull off a halo like that.
01/04/2010 11:01:09 PM · #29
Originally posted by bobnospum:



Had a demo of HDR last week at my camera club. The HDR guy was critiqueing our electronic show and he did a great job, showed off his knowledge of composition, DOF, colors, etc.. He was generally very impressive and I looked forward to seeing a subtle, measured presentation of HDR. Instead he ruined some good photos and then turned some bad photos into weirdly lit and colored craziness. He called it his art and stated that he knew most photographers were apalled by it. He said that photographers were not his intended audience and that his best sellers were these "other the top" HDRs that made me cringe. It kind of reminded me of when I was playing around with posterization and thought everything looked cool all posterized. Then some real photgraphers told me it looked like someone playing with Photoshop for the first time.

I think of it being Digital Art when the HDR-look becomes the goal rather than a technique. I kind of like looking at Digital Art, but for me it ranges too far from what I want to do as a photographer.


We're all entitled to our opinion on things, and as photographers define the nature of photography. If you don't like it, don't do it and don't support it. Nobody here is required to support that which they disagree with.
01/04/2010 11:24:12 PM · #30
My buddy has dedicated a site to this which you can check out @ //captainkimo.com
01/05/2010 07:32:21 AM · #31
Just Topaz the crap out of your images, you'll end up with a ribbon sooner or later. :D
01/05/2010 11:00:16 AM · #32
Wow! Well pretty much every question I ever had about HDR has been answered, I guess I just have to get out there and go take some pictures!
I agree with what a lot of you are saying how people tend to think just because an image is HDR it makes it an amazing photo. This is the same phenomenon when people who never used to be photographers but a DSLR and make a few business cards and call themselves a photographer... this all sort of reminds me of that... but anyway.

Thanks everyone, it's raining like crazy here so I don't think I'll be outside today but I'll post something soon enough!
01/05/2010 11:19:36 AM · #33
Originally posted by Wildfire9:

Thanks everyone, it's raining like crazy here so I don't think I'll be outside today but I'll post something soon enough!

It rains crazy on this forum as well. Glad to know that the rants and debates were able to answer all your questions instead of confusing you further!
01/05/2010 02:28:45 PM · #34
I have to admit that all of my attempts are either cartoony over the top haloed crap or bland flat images with no contrast. I have Photomatix but I am either doing something wrong with the software or my shots aren't setup right. (I tried to use three shots with two stops difference between each one.)
01/05/2010 03:38:30 PM · #35
Originally posted by Citadel:

I have to admit that all of my attempts are either cartoony over the top haloed crap or bland flat images with no contrast. I have Photomatix but I am either doing something wrong with the software or my shots aren't setup right. (I tried to use three shots with two stops difference between each one.)


That shouldn't be happening. But you gotta work the sliders when you use Photomatix. Work 'em properly and you should be able to find a middle ground.

R.
01/05/2010 03:55:04 PM · #36
I've been using the freeware version of Photomatix basic. It doesn't have all the extreme tone mapping features of the pay version, but I find a modest amount of Topaz adjust and sometimes some of PSP's clarify on top of that gives me a good HDR-ish looking image without being over the top rip-your-eyes-out. (Your mileage and opinion may vary.)
01/05/2010 04:32:53 PM · #37
Originally posted by Citadel:

I have to admit that all of my attempts are either cartoony over the top haloed crap or bland flat images with no contrast. I have Photomatix but I am either doing something wrong with the software or my shots aren't setup right. (I tried to use three shots with two stops difference between each one.)


Hey Craig, try toning down your use of the Gamma slider. My Photomatix always insists on starting me off with it applied, but it produces an incredible amount of noise in the image. I try to get the results that I am looking for without using it at all, bit if I need to use it I'll only slide it to the right a little.

This won't be the answer all to your problems producing the results that you are looking for, but I know that this little bit of info went a long way for me once I figured it out.
01/08/2010 12:46:24 AM · #38
I just read about one thing I haven't been doing. I guess the HDR image is just one step along post-processing path. Such as in this tutorial:
//beforethecoffee.wordpress.com/hdr-post-processing-tutorial/

The author also has a book.... (ponder ponder ponder)
02/19/2010 08:06:46 AM · #39
There must be countless threads on HDR, but this the most recent I found so I'll ask this here.

I'm trying to play around a bit with HDR and I recently posted an altered photo on another site and a dude took me to task for calling it HDR, as in his mind it was a tone-mapped, compressed, Large Dynamic Range image. I asked him what the difference was, but he never answered. The image was a blend of three different exposures (and captures), converted to HDR and then tone-mapped. As far as I knew it was HDR. (I honestly don't care what you call it. I wasn't trying to achieve an "HDR" image, rather just a good one.)

But someone else mentioned HDR has to be 32-bit per channel. I used GIMP (on mac) for the final touch-ups, so I was limited to 8. But a jpeg's got 8 anyway, so sooner or later the compression has to occur. Am I missing something here?

I certainly understand why more color information is desired, but does it define what is HDR and what isn't?
02/19/2010 09:16:29 AM · #40
Originally posted by bohemka:

I certainly understand why more color information is desired, but does it define what is HDR and what isn't?

I consider something made from multiple images to be an HDR and a something created from a single exposure using HDR techniques to be a false HDR or just tonemapped. My entry in the most recent HDR challenge was created from 3 JPG exposures. I think the other opinion you received was an extremely narrow technicial interpretation. By my definition, If you have used multiple exposures to bring in more dynamic range than normally possible, that's an HDR.

The Wikipedia entry on HDR Mentions the higher bit depths, but does not exclude lower bit depth source images from the definition.

HDR images often use a higher number of bits per color channel than traditional images to represent many more colors over a much wider dynamic range. 16-bit ("half precision") or 32-bit floating point numbers are often used to represent HDR pixels. However, when the appropriate transfer function is used, HDR pixels for some applications can be represented with as few as 10–12 bits for luminance and 8 bits for chrominance without introducing any visible quantization artifacts.

Message edited by author 2010-02-19 09:21:47.
02/19/2010 09:27:34 AM · #41
Well, if all these responses weren't enough...LOL... Figured I'd add my blog which I just started... My last update was an HDR- Photomatix intro tutorial...
www.SLR411.com

Best of luck and let us know how it turns out

Message edited by author 2010-02-19 09:29:11.
02/19/2010 10:22:38 AM · #42
I have messed around with HDR quite a bit over the past 6 months or so. My best effort so far is this image



Most of the others were either not really suitable images for the HDR process or I just flat out blew the processing. I have had a bit of luck though and sold a few prints of the image shown above.
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