Had to try HDR

[trelaflip]

Was bored and had nothing to shoot so decided to just take random shots in the backyard. Thought be a good time to try HDR. I'm quite pleased with the results. Wondering what you guys/gals think before I actually try HDR else where.

Note first image, colors are off. I was playing with white balance. It was actually really orangey looking outside like the two other photos show.

[leight]

They're look'n good Jason Big fan of the last one! I don't know much about HDR myself, but I think I'm gonna have to look into it - looks great!

- leighton

[janesa13]

Looks great!
How do you do tone mapping? photoshop? In fact, how do you do HDR anyway....I have no clue

[leight]

http://www.flickr.com/groups/myfirst...7594118688479/
That there is a flickr group dedicated purely to HDR, beginners That thread has some great links in it to help understand the concept of HDR.

I can't help myself, that third image is awesome

- leighton

[knickers71uk]

whoa I love the 2nd shot. I think you did really well!!

[stevesutt89]

This may be the wrong place to ask this, but anyway. Can anyone tell me if I can make HDR images in the GIMP, or if there are any other free tools for creating HDR images.

[Tiberius]

Really, any image program that supports layers can be used. Most of the work is done in camera, by taking several photos from an identical viewpoint, but at different exposures.

All you have to do then is to open the images in your program of choice, then put them all into one image - one photo on each layer. Then erase the parts of each layer that you don't want to have showing.

For example, if you have two pictures of a landscape but at different exposures, you'll have one photo where the ground is correctly exposed and the sky over exposed, and another photo where the sky is correctly exposed and the ground is under exposed.

All you have to do is place the photo with the correctly exposed sky on the top of the layers stack, and erase the ground.

That way the sky shows from the pic with the correctly exposed sky, and the ground shows from the pic with the correctly exposed ground.

Photoshop is good, because you can use layer masks instead of actually erasing pixels, so you can fine tune your picture easily.

[ribkaje]

Whoa... nice one mate. Really like the 2nd photo. Good stuff.

[Nicole]

The Gimp can't do true HDR. You can blend exposures and pretty much fake HDR, but it won't really be HDR because the Gimp only works with 8 bit images.

Photomatrix does offer a free version of their software according to the website:

The trial is fully functional and never expires, but applies a watermark to images produced with one of the two Tone Mapping methods and four of the six exposure blending modes.

There's also HDR Shop which offers v1 as a free download if you're using it for non-commercial use.

Hope that helps

[wijew]

awesome trelaflip. love the third one.

I haven't tried HDR before but i am going to try it soon!