HDR enquiry from digital novice

Can anyone give me a general explanation to the benefits of HDR and what software do I need? I have Silkypix on trial for the moment and I like it. Can I use it for HDR?
I have found some software online called HDRsoft, is this any good?

Thanks,
Rob

HDR enables images with a very wide dynamic range to be reproduced within the capabilities of curent materials without losing detail in shadows or highlights.

This gives a very distinctive look to the images and when done well can give amazing results.

Personally I'm not sure I like the effect when it is used for every image and I would prefer to save its use for those images that suit the technique. In a similar way we wouldn't sepia tone every image.

It's worth looking in to and when used with a suitable image can be fantastic.

Silkypix doesn't do HDR, but it may be of some use before and afterwards as it handles TIFFs and JPEGs as well as RAW files.

Forum contributer "ikillrocknroll" has done some wonderful things with Photomatix. See www.pentaxuser.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?t=6651&start=15

I haven't had a proper go with Photomatix yet myself - but it certainly looks interesting. There is a free trial version - that puts a watermark over the final image.

If you don't like the look that Photomatix gives you, and some don't, there are several alternatives. EasyHDR is an application that gives a somewhat more natural look; there is both a trial of the full version and a free-to-use basic version on the website.

Another alternative is QTPFSGUI (don't ask why it's called that!) which is a free, as in open source, HDR application. The latter gives a lot more options than either of the other two regarding the tonemapping algorithm used to generate the final image.

I believe that at least one forum member also uses Artizen (sp?) although I've never tried it so cannot comment. You may also find that many RAW converters are so good at recovering shadow detail these days that HDR software is not always necessary. But there is a world of HDR software out there if you want to try it so give some of them a go and see what works for you.

Adrian

I have used HDRsoft and it workedfine for me, however I preferred the manual results I did in Painshop Pro (also easy in any photo editing packager that has layer functionality) using layers and layer masks.

I layer the pictures of different exposures from the darkest at the bottom to the ligest at the top - i.e. forground first Sky last. I then mask out the parts I don't want. The benefit of this approach is that effects are totally in your control and you can use opaciticy % for your mask brush allowing for much more subtle blending.

I would your both technics on a test set of images and see which results you prefer.

I agree fully with John, use sparingly - I take pictures specially for this approach and use exposure bracketing function on my K10D

There are two parts to HDR photography:
1) Image capture & combination
2) Tone mapping

The quality of the first part varies greatly. The idea is that you take 3 to 9 shots, 2Ev apart and combine them. Some software is terrible at handling any differences between the frames (like people moving etc), some is much better. Adobe's HDR in CS2 is pretty terrible, and I use Artizen (though Photomatix is purported to be very good at handling ghosting too).

The second part is where the "distinctive look" comes from. Photomatix has only one tone mapping operator, whereas Artizen has a complete set. I find it helpful to have multiple tone mapping operators available because they handle different situations, and can produce different looks.

In fact, you can tone-map a single image to produce that "HDR look"... if you want to, of course

I did try quite a few HDR packages, and in the end plumped for Artizen. The user interface is not the slickest, but it is actually very capable. Be warned - you will need a bucket load of RAM and plenty of time to handle true HDR

When doing this I will use Silkypix to process the RAW files. Work like this: pick the shot with the most detail, and set up the parameters so it looks ok. Do NOT adjust the exposure compensation!!! Once you have the white balance, sharpness, contrast, colour etc all to your taste - copy the parameters and paste onto all the other RAW shots. Now process them all to 16-bit TIFF files. Bring the TIFFs into Artizen and produce a full 32-bit per colour pixel HDR image and then tone-map.

Extreeeeeeemely time consuming, but can produce some great results if you persist!
(Hint: after spending a looong time with HDR I've got better at recognising when you don't need HDR!!)

Matt

Thanks for all the help everyone, I shall have a go soon.

There's also Picturenaut... http://www.hdrlabs.com/picturenaut/
This gives results similar to Photomatix, but is freeware.

For a more dramatic look try www.mediachance.com and Dynamic-Photo HDR.