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HDR or tonemapping

Diane Fields

New member
I'm curious how many are taking advantage of HDR or tonemapping software and learning how to use it creatively? I've been doing masking, adjustment layering, etc. after RAW conversions for a number of years but just starting to actually explore it with software/plugins.

Diane
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom,

I respect those who eschew Photoshop or other digital ways of altering tone distribution, relying instead on what comes from clicking the shutter.

However, there's nothing "pure" about this either. The choice of lens and the assumptions of particular RAW conversions, if examined, unmask any pretensions of real differences. While some methodologies invoked by Diane may be labeled "tone mapping" because that is what they do so well, all RAW conversion, setting B and W points, curves, level and even color correction, actually involve tone mapping.

It is therefore, hair splitting to consider that one does not use tone mapping, since, otherwise we can't do anything at all with the image delivered by default (i.e. RAW conversion by one selected genuine Canon software) and that would exclude SilkyPix, Rawshooter or anything else.

The real difference is that tone-mapping software requires an understanding, need and purpose to explore this area of possibilities.

In wet dark room photography, we had all grades of paper to print on and many different cocktails, all to redistribute or accentuate particular tones. So these B&W photographers really knew what they could get. These very photographers, such as Michael Reichman know what they can get this and more today.

For gritty street pictures you like, with the denizens in their interesting locations, tone but is not a dominant on your mind. Also, if you take pictures where you'd be master of the light, you may be perfect from the get go.

However, to print museum quality black and white pictures with subtle tone for experienced collectors, you might find P.S. and other tone mapping software very useful.

Still, I like your style of pictures very much just as they are expecially that guy with the white shirt and dnet on his head! I'd like to see that 10 foot hight: no tone mapping needed!

Asher
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom Yi said:
Like I said, it's all shades of gray, since we are shooting digitally, it's all digital graphics to some point.
My personal decision is to mainly stick with curves, contrast, crop, level, dodge, burn, and adjusting colors.

If I take images from another photograph and place it onto a different photograph, I consider that more digital graphics rather than photography. If they did the same in film, I'd consider it more graphics design, rather than photography. I think personally for me, if you introduce things not in the original shot by taking it from another photo, that is a line for me where digital photography becomes digital graphics.

Both are art forms to me, but different forms. I don't think one is better or worse, just different.
I realize that for landscape with very dynamic scenes, only an ND filter or HDR/Layers will do to properly expose the shot. Like I said, it's just a personal distinction. Nothing more, nothing less.

Tom,

You covered a lot! Let me break it up into two parts, 1. you don't do tonal mapping and 2. composites are not photography, (a new but interesting topic you have introduced).

1. Tonal mapping: This you ARE routinely doing anyway, since you use a lot of PS tools! Your permitted tools are really no different, except in degree and finesse, from those used by experienced, especially B&W photographers doing purposeful "tone mapping".

2. Photography doesn't include composites: One can't hijack a common name like "Photography" with history and usage and narrowly redefine it without consensus. One can, of course, create one's own new term.

In your "subclass" of Photography that you prefer, would include only:

photographs made with one shot and one lens at one time, not altered except using, "curves, contrast, crop, level, dodge, burn, and adjusting colors" as available in PS 2 2006.

To exclude from "Photography", images accepted as great photographs made with from several sources, you might be a excommunicating works of masters.

It is an error to consider digital photography real and true, because it isn't.

It is merely a way we want to SHOW things.

It is all artifact. That's what photography is.

There is as much point, IMHO, in saying humans with artificial hips or pacemakers are less human as saying a landscape picture, with an apple added, is no longer a landscape photograph!

Asher
 

Don Lashier

New member
Diane Fields said:
I'm curious how many are taking advantage of HDR or tonemapping software and learning how to use it creatively? I've been doing masking, adjustment layering, etc. after RAW conversions for a number of years but just starting to actually explore it with software/plugins.

Hi Diane,

Some images totally demand this. In the past I've used several techniques including:

- Single conversion with masked adjustment (curve layer in photoshop) as this example

- Dual conversion with manually constructed mask as in this example.

The downside to both these methods is that they're very tedious and time consuming, and just don't work that well for some images, as the example below. Also I'm not prone to even look at PS plug-ins as most examples I've seen are easily accomplished directly with proper technique. So I was amazed when I recently tried a quick and simple technique that I read about on LL. You'll have to dig up the article yourself, but it's amazingly simple and effective technique - just layer the dark image on top of the lighter one, then copy/paste the lighter one to the layer mask of the darker one, then blur the mask to taste. Less than a minute and you're done.

This worked wonders on one of my "problem" images that I had struggled with for a couple of hours with less than satisfactory results. In addition to solving the obvious problems with the flames, the rest of the image printed much better.
oldnew.jpg


I've also played with Lightzone some, and although I like its tonal adjustment paradigm, I don't think it would have handled this particular image that well, nor most that require the extreme of dual conversions etc.

- DL
 
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Don Lashier said:
So I was amazed when I recently tried a quick and simple technique that I read about on LL. You'll have to dig up the article yourself, but it's amazingly simple and effective technique
Sorry Don, I can't seem to find this article (or was this a post in the LL forum) - could you point me in the right direction?
Thanks!
 

Diane Fields

New member
I think perhaps using the term 'tonemapping' is what seems to bother some. Anyone shooting in RAW is certainly doing a similar thing---adding a bit of fill light, adjusting a curve, attempting to pull up the shadows or recapture what seems to be lost in the 'blown' highlights. Then in the graphics app if you are blending different exposures using layers, masking, adjusting----you may not be calling it tonemapping, but that's what it amounts to. There is newer terminology that many of us aren't used to using with digital capture---but its pretty much the same thing that's attempted to be done for a long time. I'm not even considering 'adding' any objects--there isn't intention of doing that with tonemapping.

Perhaps I could ask if anyone is using noise reduction software or plugins? What about actions they produce or others? Filters such as gaussian blur? Sharpening or sharpening plugins? At least IMO--I don't see it as a possibility to not work within something like an RC and a good graphics program like PS if you are going to work with digital captures, either from a digital body or scan. Then its a matter of what tools you will use to further your vision of your image and allow you to work efficiently and productively----and creatively.
 
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Roger Lambert

New member
I started a thread on HDR ...

and blended images at Fred Miranda forums a couple of weeks ago that got a little spirited.

There are some photographers who are philosphically against these techniques because they rankle their spiritual quest for artistic interpretation versus verasimilitude, or see multiple exposures as a crutch for photographers who don't know how to make a proper exposure in the first place. (sigh)

I think that HDR and blended exposures may be the most exciting and/or underutilized technology at the disposal to digital landscape photographers.

The human eye ( or brain), and film to some extent, see light almost in a logarithmic scale. Digital camera sensors, hower, see light in a purely linear fashion.

The result is that the human eye/brain can perceive a much larger dynamic range than the digital camera. HDR and blended exposures offer the potential to rectify that situation.

But, they are new tools, and have had a rocky start. Too often they have produced artificial-looking results because of poor techniques or software.

What I find exciting is that I am seeing photographs posted around the net which more and more use of HDR and BE's in new situations - full daylight photography, for example, where one might not initially think there would be benefit.

I don't think that HDR or BE's are appropriate or desireable for all or most images, or that verasimilitude is the Holy Grail, necessarily, for all landscape photography.

But I do feel that these techniques are truly unique and potentially very powerful tools that we are only just beginning to appreciate.
 

StuartRae

New member
A while ago I compared several 'tone mapping' plugins.

The results can be seen here

The photo I chose is nothing special, it just happens to have the type of shadow details which the human eye picks up but the camera masks.

Regards,

Stuart
 

Don Lashier

New member
StuartRae said:
A while ago I compared several 'tone mapping' plugins.

The results can be seen here

The photo I chose is nothing special, it just happens to have the type of shadow details which the human eye picks up but the camera masks.

Stuart, it would be interesting to add a dual-conversion / light mask on dark version. Would you be willing to do this, or supply me a raw and I'll send you back a merge?

- DL
 

StuartRae

New member
Don,

or supply me a raw and I'll send you back a merge?

Asher had much the same idea. See my new thread. Unfortunately I don't have PS, just PSE which I use as a vehicle for plugins. It would be interesting to see what a PS "light mask on dark version" can do.
If I get time I'll do a composite transformation in PWP.

Regards,

Stuart
 

Asher Kelman

OPF Owner/Editor-in-Chief
Tom Yi said:
I've a question, since I'm not a really into landscapes alot.
Why not use a ND filter instead of using HDR?
A poster mentioned it above, that many of these images look fake, many images with this treatment doesn't look real. I look at the image and the first thing is that the image seems to lack range, that everything seems to be in the middle of the histogram. I'm sure that I'm not noticing the good ones as they look natural.

Hi Tom,

The problem with HDR looking fake is when everything is equally exposed with the sun off to 75 degrees from the horizon and some deep shadow should be under trees and it isn't!

The secret, sometimes, is to try to blend back the final result with 1-3% of one of the original darker layers.

The problem with ND filters is that have a straight line generally between the top and bottom halves. That is fine if that matches the skyline, but that is rarely the case and one is make a lot of compromizes.

Still, one can get a lot of the way there with ND filters. With film, that's all I used, but, that Tom was way before your time! :)

Asher
 
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