# Touch of HDR



## ArtByPaolo (Aug 20, 2013)

I like to touch on HDR a bit in my photos not to overdo it but create a surreal balance.  I took this in Italy last year.  
Feedback appreciated.
Thanks
-Paul


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## HughGuessWho (Aug 20, 2013)

Honestly, this image does not accomplish that which we use HDR. There is no significant Dynamic Range in this photo.


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## ArtByPaolo (Aug 20, 2013)

Then where do you suggest this falls and should be posted?


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## Majeed Badizadegan (Aug 20, 2013)

A touch of tone mapping. 

Some HDR shots are tone mapped. It doesn't mean multiple exposures were combined.


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## HughGuessWho (Aug 20, 2013)

I wouldn't suggest posting it anywhere other than here. I was just commenting on the HDR aspect of the photo. HDR is often times used to describe photos that have been processed to look "surreal" as you mentioned in the in your post. However, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is used for the purpose of capturing the full range of light, from the highest highlights to the darkest shadows. In the photo you posted, there are no real whites and no real blacks and is therefore a Low dynamic range picture.
If you are simply after a surreal look, that can be gained many ways besides HDR processing.
I hope that helped.


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## Ilovemycam (Aug 20, 2013)

Like it, freaked out nice and easy.


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## EDL (Aug 20, 2013)

With lots of haloing around the roof.  As mentioned HDR wasn't necessary here, although I understand the desire to jazz it up with tone mapping.

Personally, i would have backed off the sliders a little, and bumped up brightness some.


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## DarkShadow (Aug 20, 2013)

Cooked in the incinerator. To much for my taste, sorry.


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## Murray Bloom (Aug 20, 2013)

I agree. The image is overcooked and way too dark in some of the shadows. The incinerator comment above is oddly appropriate. I also understand the look that you were after, however.

I'm so sad that, in many peoples' minds, the term HDR has come to mean this sort of thing, as opposed to a high-definition image with extended dynamic range; which is what HDR was intended to be. But I guess that horse has already left the barn.


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## EDL (Aug 22, 2013)

Murray,

I'm definitely a noob, but I think the issue with HDR processing is that tone mapping is part of it and tone mapping is really what many people think is HDR.  Understandably, both are two different processes, but used in conjunction to produce the final image (and let's face it, just combining the exposures with no tone mapping results in less than desirable images).

I like that I can use tone mapping to produce certain results, even if the image wasn't captured in multiple exposures, or I can "overcook" something (I think it looks good in certain instances), but I think generally many people think the tone mapping portion of the process is what makes it HDR.


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## Murray Bloom (Aug 22, 2013)

EDL said:


> but I think generally many people think the tone mapping portion of the process is what makes it HDR.



Then many people are wrong.  A tone mapped image is a tone mapped image.  An HDR image has High Dynamic Range, and is made with multiple captures.  If people who knew nothing about animals began calling elephants cats, would that make it so?

Admittedly, I've been on this soapbox since I first saw a grunge image called HDR.  But I'd really like to see various kinds of images called what they actually are.  Not doing so only confuses the issue, with the end result being that most photo hobbyists have no idea what HDR actually is.


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## HughGuessWho (Aug 22, 2013)

EDL said:


> Murray,
> 
> I'm definitely a noob, but I think the issue with HDR processing is that tone mapping is part of it and tone mapping is really what many people think is HDR. Understandably, both are two different processes, but used in conjunction to produce the final image (and let's face it, just combining the exposures with no tone mapping results in less than desirable images).
> 
> I like that I can use tone mapping to produce certain results, even if the image wasn't captured in multiple exposures, or I can "overcook" something (I think it looks good in certain instances), but I think generally many people think the tone mapping portion of the process is what makes it HDR.



An HDR image, does NOT require tone mapping.


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## Murray Bloom (Aug 22, 2013)

Actually, Hugh, while an HDR image doesn't require tone mapping, the HDR process does.

When you start with a combined tonal range that's beyond what any current display medium is capable of showing, you need to somehow compress the image so that the ends of that range coincide with the extremes of what the medium can convey. Most often, this is done with tone mapping, which, I believe, encompasses several different actual methods to achieve the same thing.

A perhaps too easy analogy would be modifying film development and selecting paper (contrast) grades during wet processing to yield a similar result.


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## Gavjenks (Aug 23, 2013)

HughGuessWho said:


> I wouldn't suggest posting it anywhere other than here. I was just commenting on the HDR aspect of the photo. HDR is often times used to describe photos that have been processed to look "surreal" as you mentioned in the in your post. However, HDR stands for High Dynamic Range and is used for the purpose of capturing the full range of light, from the highest highlights to the darkest shadows. In the photo you posted, there are no real whites and no real blacks and is therefore a Low dynamic range picture.
> If you are simply after a surreal look, that can be gained many ways besides HDR processing.
> I hope that helped.



This is incorrect in several ways

1) There *are *extreme blacks and whites in this image. In fact, it is almost perfectly clipped to use the full 8 bits of luminosity range of the jpeg. Try opening it up in photoshop and seeing for yourself.

2) HDR does not require there to be 100% blacks or whites anyway, though. HDR simply means that you compressed a greater dynamic range than is "normally" achievable into the final image, for your chosen medium, by using some sort of "abnormal" technique.  As long as the final image has non-clipped luminosity range that extends beyond the normal range for that medium, it is HDR.  Even if the blackest black is just a dark gray and the whitest white is just a light gray.

In fact, a much older method of HDR than any digital software method is simply developing an appropriate film in a compensating fashion. E.g. with highly diluted developing chemical, long development times, and very little and intermittent agitation, causing the developer to become exhausted in the highlights before it has blown them out, and thus no longer developing that area for awhile, while it continues to work in the shadows. This can MASSIVELY increase dynamic range if done properly (on the order of maybe 5-8 stops beyond "normal" processing methods), yet the actual final negative usually looks really dreary and gray, without much in the way of any whites or blacks (unless it was an extraordinarily high contrast scene to begin with).

HDR has nothing to do with the black to white range in the final image, and everything to do with the degree of *compression *from the real world to the image, and how that compares to normal.

3) It's pretty much impossible to tell 100% for sure from looking at an image whether it is indeed HDR or whether it was low contrast to begin with and was tone mapped, unless you have some sort of privileged, outside information about the scene (as in: you were there, or the photographer described it to you in detail verbally, or you have quantitative light meter readings).  Otherwise, you're just guessing based on your typical experience, and you could be wrong if it was a strange situation in real life.


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## ArtByPaolo (Aug 24, 2013)

Thank you for all the feedback.
This probably wasn't the best first RAW photo to post...it is darker than most of my stuff. About 90% of my stuff has this look to it this just happened to have been darker than normal.  I have done several photos showcasing a much broader tonal range from dark to light.  Coming from a fine arts background this is the style that appeals to me.  Processing normal photos is my new choice of medium.  Granted this wasn't a multiple exposure shot I was aiming to gain a touch of how a full multiple exposure shot can be so this photo even though dark sits closer to that category than something straight out of the camera.
Thanks.


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