Re: OT: HDR and Tone Mapping B&W Images
On Wed, 15 Aug 2007, Dan Burkholder wrote: Dan, I love the photos -- they put true fantasy on my monitor... delicious! But to one who hasn't done the HDR process or used the software, some questions demand to be asked.Hi Don, Like any new thing in photography, we have to use and over-use it to learn how best to exploit HDR's look and feel. I haven't done any B/W work yet but I'm really looking forward to putting some of my HDR images into pt/pd. There can be artifacts from the HDR processing. Sometimes these are beautiful, and sometimes they detract from the final image. John Sexton used to say that the only good test strip was one that had areas too light and too dark. Applying that wise logic, it's instructive to push HDR *too far* to see what happens. Heck, it's easy enough to back off if you want. And nobody will stop you from layering one of your original frames to paint-in *normal-looking* areas of sky or whatever. First, tho, I have one point of disagreement. George De Wolfe writes in Camera Arts that folks said they hadn't realized the extent of the disaster until they saw your photos. Oh, come on... My living room looks like that all the time, without even a strong wind down the chimney. But here's what I wonder: Assuming the photos shown were sent to Camera Arts as digital files, how large were those files? And if you wanted to make actual prints (in color), could you? By inkjet? Or? How large do you think you'd print them, or would that be figured in the doing? Naturally I think about translation into gum prints via color separations. Would color-separating your finished HDR file be different from simply making different coats from different color seps without the intermediary HDR? Or, it occurs to me, maybe gum printers who do about 20 coats have done HDR, so to speak, already? Last question: why is the process "off topic"? Isn't it "alternative photography"?. (Whatever you call it, thanks and congratulations -- they're great !) Judy
|