HDR Photography 2

Welcome to the long awaited part 2 of my HRD photograph tutorial. I finally got the night off from school and other related responsibilities and so I finally have some time to give you what I think is the coolest part of making an HDR image.

Tonight we will talk about the kinds of programs that can be used to make an HDR image, and how exactly to make an HDR image. We will start with some pictures I have taken recently and then watch as it evolves from three bland photographs into one solid image.

You excited?

To start off, there are several programs out there that have the capability to make an HDR image. Several of these programs are dedicated to just making HDR images, and are available for various prices around the web. Although I have found the following are the three programs used the most.

1. Photoshop CS2 & CS3 – The two latest versions of Photoshop have a Convert to HDR option in the file>automate menu.

http://www.luminous-landscape.com/tutorials/hdr.shtml

(This will take you a Photoshop CS2 HDR tutorial)

2. Photomatix- A strictly HDR program that costs $99 and is a good program for HDR. It however doesn’t have some of the features that other HDR programs offer.

http://www.hdrsoft.com/

(This will take you to the Photomatix home page.)

Such as….

3. Dynamic Photo HDR- This is a strictly HDR program that only costs $40 and produces results that are just as good if not better than Photomatix or Photoshop. Dynamic Photo also has features such as the ability to align the images yourself, draw anti-ghosting masks if you need to, and allows you to play with the saturation of very specific colors. The drawback with Dynamic Photo is that the image you view while tone-mapping is not the same image that is produced after processing. Usually this problem is minute and barely noticeable, but I’ve experienced some major changes between what I see while mapping my image and what is produced.

http://www.mediachance.com/hdri/index.html

(This will take you to the media chance Dynamic Photo page.)

To try out HDR on your own I would definitely suggest downloading the trial version of Dynamic Photo HDR. The trial version still allows you to make full HDR images, and the only stipulation is that there is a small watermark in the bottom left corner of the page, but it is usually not noticeable.

So how is an HDR image actually made?

For this demonstration we will be using Dynamic Photo HDR and three images I’ve taken recently.

At this point I must apologize for not using screen shots. I don’t know how to take screen shots on a PC, if someone can tell me that would be awesome, but because of that we won’t see any actual screenshots of me processing this image. Again I apologize but let’s start.

The first step is to load the images into Dynamic Photo that you want to use to make your HDR image. Normally I only use three images to make my HDR images, because I like to be simple. Taking only three images can also allow you to shoot an object that is slightly in motion without getting too much blurring. It is suggested that 5-7 images produces the best results, but I’ve found three to be just fine.

To load your images first open Dynamic Photo HDR. Then click “Create HDR File” in the quick tool menu on the right side of the screen. Did I already apologize for not having screen shots?

From there the “Create New HDRI Image” box appears. On the left side is a button that says “Add Images.” Click this button and find the images your want to use to create the HDR image and push ok. After you do this you must specify the Exposure Value of each image by using the slider labeled “Exposure,” or you can press “Guess EV” right below the bar and Dynamic Photo will guess at what the exposure actually is. I usually just hit “Guess EV” because the computer will specify the correct EV 95 percent of the time.

After you hit “Guess EV” an HDRI Simulator changes on the right side of the screen. This is what the computer is guessing the image will look like. But the image looks terrible in this screen because there is no tone mapping done to the image. So don’t really pay any attention to it. It’s just kind of an interesting feature.

Then click OK to align the images. Dynamic Photo will align the images manually at first, but then will give you the option of aligning the images manually. If there was a lot of motion between your different images then the program will have a tough time aligning them right. This is where the aligning feature comes in handy.

After Dynamic Photo aligns your images the “Align File” menu will appear center screen. You will see your image blown up on screen to allow you to see whether or not Dynamic Photo aligned your image correctly. As I said before the program gets it right 95 percent of the time but can align incorrectly because of motion. To check the alignment look under the “manual align” box on the right side of the screen. There you will find your different images. Using your mouse look at your image to see if there is any areas that weren’t aligned correctly. If there are simply use the mouse to move the image up, down, left, or right to get it where you want it. If any object was moving while you were shooting, such as trees blowing in the wind, it will be impossible to align the images perfectly. What is best is to align the images using a stationary object in the image. Such as the base of a tree or a house, just something that didn’t move.

For our image since there was no motion Dynamic Photo aligned it perfectly.

When you are satisfied with the alignment hit “Ok” at the bottom right corner. Now using math, ugh, Dynamic Photo will create a 32 bit HDR image. Congratulations, your first HDR image is made.

Wait a minute? This looks nothing like the beautiful HDR images I’ve seen on Flickr and in your photo sets. What’s wrong? Nothing is wrong. It’s just that screens nowadays are not capable of showing a 32 bit image with a huge dynamic range. Therefore the image you’re a looking at is not an accurate representation of what the image really is. To get to a processed HDR image you have to now tone map the 32 bit image you see.

What is tone mapping?

Tone Mapping is the process that Dynamic Photo HDR uses to convert a 32 bit file into an 8 or 16 bit image. This is where the magic happens, or the failure happens.

To begin tone mapping in Dynamic Photo press the “Tone Map HDR File” button in the Quick Tool Menu on the right side of the page.

Your image now appears, and the default tone mapping settings have tone mapped your image. Before you start playing with all the options, let’s review what you see in front of you. In the left top corner you will find the different methods that are available for tone mapping. These include, Eye Catching method, Ultra Contrast method, Smooth Compressor method, Auto-Adaptive, Photographic, and Human Eye methods, almost all of the time you will use the first two methods, Eye Catching and Ultra Contrast. These two methods make the best images in my opinion. But always play with all the options, you will be surprised by the images your can create with all the methods.

As you click between the methods look at the “Settings” menu below the Methods menu. You will notice all the scrollable bars changing depending on the method you use. It’s these bars that you use to tone map your image. Slide the bars around to see how it affects the image. As I said before the sliders will change depending on which method you use, but these are the general options that can be manipulated, Brightness, Color Saturation, Vivid Colors, Dynamic Light Radius, Dynamic Light Strength, and Surface Smoothness. Each of these controls changes the image in various ways, and the only true way to see what they do is to try it for yourself. Keep playing around with the sliders until you get something that looks good to you.

On the right side of the screen you will see 5 different options. First in the upper right corner you see the “Filter Color” button. This button allows you to change the image from color to black and white. Next you will see the “Gamma” dial. The Gamma is the contrast of the image, the greater the Gamma the greater the contrast. Try moving the dial around to see the affect is has on the image. Below the Gamma you will see three controls, “Curves”, “Color Equalizer”, and “Hue Shift.” The curves control allows you to change the light curves of the image, allowing you to control the darks and lights of the image. The Color Equalizer control allows you to play around with the saturation of each color in the image. You can completely de-saturate one color from the image and leave the rest intact. The last control “Hue Shift” allows you remap the colors in the image, which can have amazing and deadly effects, such as making the sky purple.

The last set of controls is the gray boxes at the lower left corner of the screen numbered 1 through 10. When you right click on these boxes they will save the current settings you have marked for all the different controls. This can come in handy if you come across a setting that seems to work well for any image. To apply this saved setting just click on the box normally, and it will apply those settings. Dynamic Photo also allows you to save your settings as a .DPS file and allows you to load them back into Dynamic Photo. It’s good to save these settings because your 10 dots run out soon.

To tone map your image play around with all of these different controls. Remember that a good HDR image looks realistic and has both bright whites and dark blacks. There really is no set method to HDR at this point. The process all depends on the look that you are going for and what the image is.

I’m going to play around with the settings for our image and show you some good and bad examples. This however will draw this part of the tutorial to a close. Next time we will go over how to export the finished HDR image. I hope you have enjoyed this tutorial and I will see you next time.

(This HDR has the Dynamic Light Radius and Brightness turned to maximum. It creates a very unrealistic feel. Unfortunately this is the kind of HDR that is seen most often.)


(Using the Filter Color option)


(This one has the smooth surfaces control turned to maximum. With this control set at this level you lose a lot of the interesting detail that HDR is associated with.)


(This is the ultra contrast method set at the default settings)


(This picture is not very visually interesting, but if I had to choose a favorite it would be this one.)


(I had some fun with the saturation and hue controls.)

I hope you enjoy the pictures and this post.

If you have any questions please feel free to comment and ask them. It is entirely possible that I may have missed information or explained something poorly. But just go ahead and fire away.

Peace out everyone
Zmuh11