HDR Image Pool on Flickr

[Frank Petronio]

Thought we could cringe or be inspired. The interiors can be pretty nice, but the skies always look scary, like it is Armageddon or something.

http://www.flickr.com/groups/hdr/pool/

[David Luttmann]

It looks like most of these people are using it to create a different type of "look" rather than to truly utilize increased dynamic range.

Put me down for the "cringe" group.

[Marko]

Like with any other new tool, it's the exaggerations that come first, until the limits are established. Once the novelty wears off, it will either be used as intended or it will be forgotten.

I'm not sure "cringe" is exactly the right word, but yeah, put me down for it too. For me, it's mostly the lack of shadows and/or generally confused sense of the direction of the light that causes the negative feeling...

[Kirk Gittings]

Those images are simply a display of incompetent use of HDR.

[Jack Flesher]

I have to agree Frank -- I have been following threads on other forums on these tools and the skies always seem to go hyper-gray.

[Michael Gordon]

Does HDR also include a "Disneyfy" slider? Some of those look downright cartoonish.

I agree; cringe might not be the right word. Is there a single word to describe rolling my eyes?

[Nitish Kanabar]

Pardon my ignorance - what is HDR?

[Craig Wactor]

I understand the technique being tried in these - exaggerate the atmospheric perspective by adding local contrast to the near areas and lowering it in the distance. That is a trick I've used in printing in the darkroom, as well as in photoshop, but these images look like they are done by someone who has no idea what they are trying to accomplish - like someone with a real understanding of painting or drawing translated it to PS and these guys are imitating an imitator of that. Or maybe someone designed a really horrible PS action?

[Gary Smith]

I have seen a few examples of HDR that look really good. However, most of these simply look like bad posters, or some terrible painting. I go with the cringe crowd.

Gary

[Frank Petronio]

Sorry, HDR stands for "High Dynamic Range" and it is function in Photoshop CS2 that allows you to combine a rich shadow and a rich highlight version of the same image to create a new image with an extended tonal range.

I think the problem stems from people not allowing the shadows or highlights to carry the detail and they tend to shove everything into the middle tones, which are then converted to 8-bit jpgs which only make things worse.

The question is can we ever display (on screen) or print HDR images effectively? I haven't looked into it but my hunch is the file formats and display methods are way behind the "potential" of these images.

[Nitish Kanabar]

Thanks Frank.

So, if I understand correctly, the process involves merging two or more versions (taken at different exposures, say one for shadow detail and one for highlight detail) of the same composition and merging them in photoshop such that the resultant image has neither blocked shadows nor blown-out highlights. I've done this myself without knowing it is called HDR (I use Photoshop Version 7.0) - but I must confess that the results I got were nowhere as garish (I think!) as those on the flickr site.

Regarding some of the newer LCD monitors have a much greater dynamic range, so an HDR image with a correct ICC profile should display effectively on such a monitor. Don't know about the printing though.

[QT Luong]

One problem with HDR is that it cannot invert tonalities. So if you have a landscape with a bright sky (brighter than anything on land) which would be overexposed without HDR, after you use HDR, you are still left with a light grey sky that doesn't contain enough dark tones, since none of its tones can be darker than your land tones. That's why so many of those skies look unnatural. You do not have this problem if you use a GND at capture time, or a similar effect in PS.

[David R Munson]

I can see potential in this technique, but by and large it is not being realized. I'm interested to see what people will be doing with this five years from now when, as others have noted, the novelty will have worn off at least some.

[clay harmon]

Wow. Time to short my Thomas Kincaid stock. He is going DOWN!

[Wick Beavers]

While only with great difficulty can one create new pixel info, you can come close to the same thing as "HDR" automate function by simply processing your raw file(s) at various exposure settings and combining them in layers. Erase or select away parts of the layer(s) you wish.
You're basically compacting all the subject elements into 10 zones (the useful old histogram or the pleistocene era zone system) no matter what the algorithm. While our eyeballs can see a "widest" gamut, everything we use to replicate images shrinks them into much smaller color spaces.
That's why it's always best to process in 16 bit profoto color space and then shrink to specific output device(s). Archive the edited widest gamut 16 bit file for next gen output device use. Which, of course, are "just around the next corner".
I have really enjoyed processing the same image in both daylight and tungsten temperatures, then combining the two with careful selection and cutting. See: http://www.pixelshoot.com/fmsetgallery.html?gallery=peoplE and check out first 2 boy on beach shots. Both images are processed twice- once "for tungsten", once for "daylight" and then combined in layers. The lad is daylight processed, the remaining parts of the images are tungsten processed (well, with maybe a little "judicious" and "discrete" opacity blend change(s) and/or gradient selection/cut). To the old boys, this is basically toner and hand colored film stuff. Or comp'ed film printing. See, there are always more than one way to skin cats. Photoshop has multitudinous ways of doing the same thing to a digital file. Just like film processing, right?
Photoshop CS2 is ultimate and there's no way an intelligent viewer can see a difference these days between a digital and analogue print (if care is taken in the editing processes). It's usually pretty obvious- the early adopter period when a "traditional" film person comes into digital by simply noting the degree of torque we see in the sharpening, levels, curves and saturation departments. We all go/went there. And artistically, ocassionally it works. But Adobe continues to offer "interesting" tools to solve small problems which often become bigger ones! Auto levels/contrast/color, Brightness/Contrast, Shadow/Highlights, Photomerge, HDR, and those so-called "artisitic" filters come to mind...

[Jan Brittenson]

I'm a cringer too. Whenever I see a sky that's obviously too dark to have illuminated the ground I quickly move on! IMO, in a landscape the effect is like a portrait photographer pasting in a third eye in the forehead of their subjects. Too surreal for my taste.

[Daniel Moore]

What we're seeing there are tonemapped HDR's, which are 8 bit LDR's. HDR's are 32 bit and by definition contain far more data than any display (Brightside monitors excluded) or print can reproduce. Tonemapping results vary wildly depending on the input images themselves and the tonemapping operator used. The images posted look to all have been worked up in Photomatix, which again, can work minor miracles or really muck things up. There is no one fixed setting to apply, no 'plot my shadows and highlights and make it beautiful button' yet. Photomatix can also -blend- exposures using shadows, midtones or highlights from multiple images, but these are 8 or 16 bit images, not HDRI. Loss or destruction of local contrast with haloing is a trade mark of tonemapping generally speaking. Only recently are better tonemapping operators coming onto the scene. Artizen HDR, I believe, is the first program to employ multiple operators where the user can simply scroll through to find one that works best. Finding the right combination of input images and tonemapping operator takes some work, but when you just have to capture the cat pee stain on the rug at the far end of the living room and the sh*t eating grin on the driver of the decrepit ice cream truck that won't park somewhere besides outside the bay window, then it's worth the effort.

[Guy Tal]

Some are good, most are over the top for my taste. I could say the same about cross-processing too. Hey - they're just tools. If you cringe at new tools you'll never learn to create anything new.

Guy

[JohnnyV]

Some people like the look...some don't. I think the Photomatix HDR/Tone Mapping effect can be over-used but I think it can be controlled to a more subtle effect.

Here's Dan Burkholder's use of Photomatix...not so subtle look:

http://www.danburkholder.com/shadows/

[Colin Robertson]

Looks kinda like paint by numbers.

[Steve J Murray]

I do it in layers like Wick is proposing. I like the control and things don't end up looking like a cartoon. This does allow almost any dynamic range you can capture with two or more exposures.http://gallery.photo.net/photo/4433463-md.jpg

This shot was done with two exposures: one at 1/20 for the foreground, and one at 1/125 for the bright side of the lake. Place the darker image on top of the brighter one as a new layer, select layer mask/reveal all, then "erase" with the paintbrush the parts of the darker image where you want the detail to be seen. If you do too much, paint on with black and the top image will be put back, so to speak. Very flexible technique and can be done in PS6. This can be done with multiple digital exposures, multiple versions from a RAW file, or multiple scans of one film or more than one film. This alone makes the Zone System obsolete!