Off Blog - HDR Post Processing of Images

- August 25, 2010

After glancing through some of me buddy Darren's well taken shots here, I was very impressed with the post processing done on the pics. They were out of this world. Apparently this was done using HDR (High Dynamic Range) post processing. Then it clicked.....ever had that problem of a nice pic with great background but so bright that the foreground subject(s) becomes underexposed? sure! With HDR, this can be a thing of the past.....It basically takes 3 pictures of different exposures (braketing will do it) and combines them to give a near-perfect exposed picture, regardless of whether its a sunny day or gloomy area or even at night.

Now this post processing is done on the computer and requires at least 3 multiple exposures for best effect but I can imagine as camera tech becomes more advanced (super fast CPU) this feature can be a real-time post processing feature on cameras in the near future as well!

Well I did a bit toying with the trial version of Photomatix upon recommendation from Darren. Basically a badly underexposed pic (taken in Eindhoven, Holland back in 2005). So I did not have multiple exposures of this pic, fine, no problem. I just created a + EV and a -EV picture. Meaning 2 additional files : one that accentuated the sky (background) and the other, the foreground (building + bikes). I pass that through Photomatix....now the software is clever, it accesses the EXIF info in the files and says that all the exposures are the same..but I can modify it....so I added +1 and -1 to the 2 additional files.

About a minute or two later....wow....this is just my first try and I got great results.....just compare the original files and the HDR processed file!