Take the HDR challenge!

Jennyboo7481 · Jan 4, 2008

okay... amateur adobe attempt here. Am not even sure what we are doing but here is my take (ahem... artistic vision)

Ls3D · Jan 4, 2008

Amateurs welcome! I see you put the feminine touch on it

Have you tried the Photomatix demo? It is pretty easy to install and get started.

-Shea :mrgreen:

Jennyboo7481 · Jan 5, 2008

no but with all the talk I will definitely look at it.

kdabbagh · Jan 8, 2008

I wanted to take the liberty of asking a totally noob question. Hope you don't laugh too hard:

In order to "take the HDR challenge" of any picture, must you first take 3 shots, one overexposed, underexposed, and properly exposed?

Or do you just take the picture and create the different exposures through PS or something?

After looking at this thread and particularly what ranmyaku did, I realized that I have a lot of photographs that I took that I pronounced 'hopeless' could be revived and used by this HDR stuff. Is there a tutorial or a book someone can recommend for a TOTAL NOOB.

Thanks in advance...

and Ls3d i am not trying to hijack your thread sorry if it seems like it

Ls3D · Jan 8, 2008

You really want 3 (or more) exposures and most DSLR have AEB - Automatic Exposure Bracketing, wherein you can set a range of different exposures and shoot them off a tripod in quick succession just by holding the shutter closed.

As was discussed you also want Photomatix to merge the HDR sequence and handle the tone mapping. There is a demo version (fully featured) that watermarks the results. PS CS3 can also merge HDR's but the results are not as artistic, which is fine for 3D work (reflection maps and image based lighting).

You can WIKI this and learn a bit from the Photomatix site as well.

RE: Hijacking, not at all - this shared info pool is why I created the thread, besides you might demand a flight to Hawaii!

-Shea

P.S. There is another 'challenge' in this section with just JPGs if the RAW files are a problem. So have a go!