![]() ![]() There's nothing wrong if you like the nuclear look as some do. In fact learning luminosity masks with a tool like Lumenzia will help you capture more usable images because you will learn to recognize what zones different parts of your scene fall into.īack to HDR because this is a very simple route to get natural looking high dynamic range images. This is not like a preset where you are offered no clue as to what is happening. A far better alternative is to use Luminosity Masks, and while you can create your own, save hours of time and just buy Greg Benz's superb Lumenzia extension for Photoshop. Lifting shadows and pulling highlights sounds a bit like dodging and burning, but it really is not the same thing, so if you won't do HDR but want more control, learn to dodge and burn. Lifting shadows can absolutely reveal detail but also introduces a lot of digital noise in the shadow areas. Pulling down highlights works, but only to a point where you start to get weird artefacts appearing. That said, our exposures still need to be made with the proper intent, such that we don't clip the critical highlights and don't drive the shadows into the ground. When HDR first arrived on the scene we were working, on average with about 6 stops of dynamic range and HDR has fallen a bit out of favour because a digital negative from a modern camera has a lot of latitude in a single image. ![]() It's not unusual to find a current camera sensor with 12 stops or more native dynamic range. ![]() Since those days, HDR software has gotten better, and so have camera sensors. It also required us to take a great many images, sometimes 7 or more images of the same scene, necessitating a tripod and a reasonable amount of preparation. Back in the day, HDR software was not that good, and went nuclear very quickly. What's HDR Again?įirst off, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, and the intent was to create an image with a wider dynamic range than a single image could deliver. Fortunately, those days are mostly past, and it might be time to revisit the entire HDR idea, this time with some history under our belts and a better understanding of what we want to achieve. You remember those days, lots of electric, oversaturated, haloed images that made your teeth hurt and your eyes burn? Yeah I thought so. It's been a couple of years since the boom time of HDR. ![]()
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