How the world got fooled by HDR photo of Iceland volcano eruption

It was one of the most striking pictures out of Iceland and, to trained eyes, obviously post processed to obtain the dramatic toning effects (so easily obtained by using a HDR software such as Photomatix Pro). But the world oohed and aahed.

Well, the cat’s out of the bag and Reuters has posted a retraction and the original, unprocessed, image.

To be fair to the original poster, applying HDR to a photo is not wrong and there is a good reason to do so. Toning up a photo for dramatic effects, as was done in this photo, is also not wrong. After all, it made the rounds of almost all the web sites (just search Twitter). It’s a beautifully toned picture.

But, No, Virginia, the sky did not look like that because of the volcanic eruption.

Read the article at: Toronto Star

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• The merits of using HDR: When to use HDR correctly

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