HDR

HDR (High Dynamic Range) imaging is a technique that melds photos with different exposure together to make one image that turns out extremely vivid so that it sort of ‘pops out’ at you. For an example, do a google image search on ‘hdr’ and click on the first thing that looks like a 3d cartoon. If you look closely, it has too much intricate detail to be animated, and the edges are perfectly round; more than any computer in the universe could handle in a million years. Yet it looks abnormally vibrant. Those are only the high end ones, though. But you can still create something like this:

You can see that it was badly edited in the upper left hand corner.

I will be using the components from this image to explain how:

1. Download and install Photomatix Basic.

2. Take two pictures of the same thing with a digital camera.Make sure that one is is -1 exposure while the other one is +1 exposure or 0 exposure for your first one. You can read about how to adjust your cameras exposure setting in its manual. Best that the camera is on a tripod. You want the pictures to look EXACTLY THE SAME, except one is darker than life and one is lighter.

Note that most HDRs have 3 images, not just two. If you can find free software that automatically melds over two images together please comment to tell me about it.

Also note that the only thing different about the images is the exposure. You should use a tripod so that you can be sure that you are taking the exact same picture without pan or tilt every time.

3. Put the pictures onto your computer

4. Open up photomatix

5. Open the photos that you took in it.

6. Click on HDR from the drop down menu and select generate. Click OK on the popup window.

7. Enable ghosting and set the detect value to high on the next popup window. Click ok again.

8. Select ‘tone mapping’ from the HDR drop down menu, and make it a 16 bit image. After that, you are done! Or you can go onto the next step.

9. Exit your image (NOT Photomatix) and save it from the prompt that it gives you. Be sure to save it as a tiff. Now you are really done.

)10.) Open it up in GIMP or your favorite photo editor and re-save it as a png or another file type. Tiffs are just too big for most people.

This:

Plus this:

Equals this:

I added that kind of ’soft’ effect on GIMP afterwords. I just gave it a light ‘afterglow’ filter.