Tone Mapping
By Simon Barrow posted 07/07/08
A “post production” technique rather than a form of photography. I really enjoyed the article by Alex Rumjancevs on HDR but I prefer to wander about with the freedom of my camera and a lens or two without my big tripod. However I do like the finished look of the HDR genre so for me I find I tone map many of my images than utilise bracketing exposures and true HDR.
To produce a tone mapped image you need to take a RAW image for Photomatix or even a JPEG with Dynamic Photo HDR and process it as a single file conversion. You can do a conversion in CS3 but I prefer these stand alone HDR programmes. Before doing this conversion I have viewed the image and made any required straitening and/or cropping adjustments in CS3 first.
Both programmes I mention then give you a window to adjust the image in a similar way to a true HDR image. You can adjust the Strength of the effect, Colour Saturation, Light Smooth (reduces halos and noise) Luminosity (increased light to improve shadow detail) and then through a number of tabs in Photomatix to adjust Tone, Colour, Micro adjustments and Shadow detail adjustments. Once you have an image you are happy with you then click process and let your CPU under the direction of the programmes algorithms deliver its magic.
I then open the saved TIFF file in CS3 and make any required curve and colour adjustments I feel I need to make to the image. I also use either CS3 to reduce noise or sometime Noise Ninja 2. I then save the finished as a high quality JPEG and upload to Flickr.
So if you like the HDR look but would like to create the magic from one hand held shot this is the processing flow you should look to consider. You can view many Tone Mapped images in my Flickr set and please contact me if you have any questions.
Written by Simon Barrow. Find his pictures here or on Flickr.
Please leave a helpful comment here. When you give feedback make sure you let people know exactly what is great about their photo as well what does not work for you, always include useful suggestions on how the photo could be improved.
Lizzie Jobes said...
Posted on 09/07/2008 20:07
To Reply to comments: Get Involved
To rate comments:
Get Involved
sasar said...
Posted on 22/07/2008 21:46
To Reply to comments: Get Involved
To rate comments:
Get Involved