My first HDR shot

HDR is the acronym for High Dynamic Range, first introduced to me by the hubby. Had some time this morning to play around with the camera (had a playdate but nobody turned up, pfft) and some software. Any experts reading this? I know this is slightly overexposed. I generated the image with a trial version of Photomatix and took the ‘cheat way’ of saving the image by PrintScreen-ing (the software only generated .tif images that for some reason my Photoshop could not open). Anyway, which looks better?

or

Will definitely spend more time playing around.

EDIT: I’ve played around with the tone-mapping bit, which as I discovered, was essential to producing a REAL HDR image, thanks to the hubby.

Check the results out:

Download a copy for your desktop! More shots and desktops of this rose and pinecones here.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 15th, 2007 at 11:37 am and is filed under Imperfect Everything. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

4 Responses Subscribe to comments


  1. julie

    I like the second one – doesn’t look as blown out.

    Feb 15, 2007 @ 11:40 am


  2. julie

    …but upon further review, I have to say I really enjoy the color of the pink background in the first one.

    Feb 15, 2007 @ 3:39 pm


  3. Kelantan Gal

    I like the second one better. I can see the details of the rose clearer. But I guess it all depends on what you want to use the pic for. The first one gives me the feeling of “daze” like just woken up or kena kidnapped/drugged and then just woken up that sort of feeling… the mystery novel feeling.

    Feb 15, 2007 @ 9:47 pm


  4. German Vasquez, Jr.

    I was doing some research for HDR and stumbled upon your site. I am a novice photographer and have never done a HDR, but I have experience doing graphic and web design. Personally, I agree that the first rose is blown out, but I do like the brighter pink background. I like the rose head on the second image. I think the image with the tonal range (the one you offer as a background) is very noisy. Maybe you could cut the head off the second rose and paste it in the first and play with the levels/curves a bit to tone down the overexposed leaves in the first pic (the one in the foreground and one in the background.

    Mar 05, 2007 @ 9:18 am

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