Wednesday, January 2, 2008

HDR

A neighbor of mine turned me onto this software for making "High Dynamic Range" images. This process seemed like exactly what I've been needing to do to the images of my installations. You basically take 2 or more (up to 6 or 7) bracketed pictures using a tripod and keeping the camera in the exact same spot. You cover the range from way overexposed to way underexposed. You get a program that makes HDR images or the plug in for photoshop. I got a very simple freeware called Qtpfsgui. This program makes HDR images for you. There's not much to it at all. With the more complex programs I'm sure you can get even better images and you have more control over the specifics of the process. Above is the HDR image I made of my last installation. It is made of the two images that I put on my post from September. If I had more than two images and more experience with the software, I could do better. As it is however, I was able to do in 10 min or less what used to take hours in photoshop. Below are some HDR images I found on Google.