Scott Kelby has a great article on “HDR” — you know the over-the-top-kind — and whether to HDR your image or not. I like that part of his article:
If someone shows me a great HDR image, I’m like “Wow!” If they show me a few more, I’m like, “Those are good.” If they show me a book of them, after about the eighth page, I’m dying to see a regular un-HDR’d image. The novelty can wear off fast on me.
But read the surprising conclusion at: Photoshop Insider.
Rick Sammon has probably written the easiest-to-understand concise article/tutorial on when to use — and, more importantly, when not to use — HDR in your photography.
Read the article at: Rick [RAW RULES] Sammon.
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
Related Links:
The big secret to outstanding images that seem to be perfectly exposed in the bright as well as the shadows, and that pop out in deep colors is HDR. Photomatix Pro [QuickPrice Check]
[ Download a trial version of Photomatix Light at: HDRsoft ]
Related Link:
When the BBC announced their “In pictures: Landscape photo of the year 2009″ winners, readers were up in arms at what they perceived to be pictures that were heavily manipulated digitally using a technique known as High Dynamic Range or HDR.
HDR is a technique where the photographer takes a number of shots of the same scene at different exposures to ensure that shadows, midtones and highlights are accurately preserved. These shots are then merged together in post processing to produce one photograph with seemingly impossible dynamic range.
HDR has long been a technique reserved for professional photographers who produced incredible landscape photographs that the amateur photographer could never seem to reproduce no matter how hard they tried. And even when the secret finally came out in print, the process of manually merging these pictures in Photoshop was just too time consuming and difficult for the average user. It was not until special HDR software such as Photomatix came out that HDR exploded onto the amateur photographer scene.
Continue Reading »
