The HDR Test

High Dynamic Range.

The first HDR shot I saw literally blew me away. I had never seen such an effect before, and I was smitten. Although, over time I did learn to despise them to some degree. So many over-processed images are out there, offending my eyes.

As I spend more and more time making photographs, I am also spending more time post-processing them. And decided recently to re-visit this technique. The though being that with some minor adjustments, and knowing what my eye likes - perhaps I can use the method to my advantage.

First issue - the software. Photomatix on the PC appears to preview via a grainy, unfinished sample of the image. I'm not quite sure why with a high-end  i7, 9GB of low-latency triple-channel RAM & a 10,000 RPM HDD with seek rates as low as 4.2ms - we can't preview a high-quality image of the final product created. This seems backwards, time consuming and a under-productive.

Second issue I've had is that once you "export" the image, that's it. It's done. That sample you edited and tweaked while looking at a low-quality, grainy preview? Gone. Along with all your adjustments. Unless you saved them as a pre-set. Why would you program software that gives you a junk preview of something, and no chance to render, modify, render, further modify.... etc? This is poorly encoded software, and the manufacturer should be ashamed of themselves. Especially since the technique is widely created using their software.

All that aside, the end result can be quite pleasing to look at. Here is a first attempt, using only minor adjustments. For those in the know, this series was created with a single RAW file (against my better judgement), with EV adjustments made in Lightroom 3.5 by creating 4 virtual copies of the original. The exposure slider was set to -2,-1,0,+1,+2 and batch exported into Photomatix.

Untouched Original

HDR Final

Needless to say I'm rather pleased with the end result. My desire to rant & rave about the software is just my personal gripe with the software developer. The second image pops. Moreso than any edit I could have achieved within Lightroom itself. I tried :)

My goal is to utilize this process to create image that you can't tell are HDR. To process them enough to bring out the details, but leave you breathless at the quality of the image. It's not so fine a line between over-processed junk, and art. I'd prefer the latter be my product of choice.