Has anyone created and/or tried to create HDR photo's?

I can’t give a personal opinion over it, but here’s a site I found a while ago: http://stuckincustoms.com/2006/06/06/548/ and I find that to be quite interesting, plus that guy has some awesome photos, especially of Chernobyl, a place I dream to go to one day :) As for anything else, I don’t know sorry :/

Here are some HDR photos that I’ve made.

I use Photoshop. I’ve tried Photomatix, but wasn’t satisfied with the results. Photomatix tends to create disgraceful halos around objects and to give an artificial look to the result.

I usually take 3 photos using my camera’s bracketing feature. Then I use Photoshop to create the HDR image (File/Automated scripts/HDR) and tonemap it to 16 bits (Image/Mode/16 bit). Then I import the resulting image into Aperture and finetune it to get the best result.

I have done a few but haven’t really found any “good” ones out there, I use QTPFSGUI, it’s free, somewhat confusing but I like it.

@skyrail, yes stuckincustoms is a great website, he has billions of HDRs and they all look amazing!
That guy sure has traveled a fair amount too!

I’ve tried, but i kinda suck at it. or i haven’t find the right motive yet. I use photoshop for that purpose

@XCNuse, I envy him and his travels, he’s been everywhere, he’s lucky to have the time and money to do all that traveling with his nice equipment ;_;

Well i attempted one, Here it is if you want to check it out!

In my personal opinion, I find HDR to be kind of worthless in photography. Its main use is with CGI and motion graphics.

The problem with tone mapping is that you’re putting information into areas of a photograph that wouldn’t have them in the first place. The sun, for example, would never show detail. Specular high lights would at minimum 253 if not 255 across RGB.

Look at Ansel Adams or any of the other great printers of the black and white age. Through the Zone process (which is a topic of it’s own) there were still areas that did not contain detail no mater how compressed or expanded the development process got.

SO, to wrap this up, instead of wondering how to make those grey, flat, over-sharpened HDR images, concentrate on correct exposure and learning to see light.

Every photographer has their processes and ideas, but just to point out @rob..

there are no rules in photography or art in general, photography is an art, you can do whatever you want and if people like your concepts.. then good for them, but because some extremely well known previous photographer from back in the day didn’t do it doesn’t mean it’s just right.

Just saying, everyone has an artists license, and just because hardware can’t do it, software is capable and makes up for it.

Tone mapping is fun because it turns the world into something so surreal it’s just fun.

Also, plain HDR not tone mapping is how the eye typically sees anyway, thus the achievement of some HDR photographers that try to get what the eye sees, tone mapping on the other hand as I said above is just to get something plain out of this world.

I will not go into technical processes, since the other Flutherers have done that, but I just have a comment on my HDR experiences. If you want your final product to look like the image that you saw with your eyes, then you need to train yourself to make a strong mental image of the setting as you take your shots. This remembered image will help guide you as you do your HDR tweaking.

@XCNuse I won’t argue with that and I understand where you’re coming from, but artistic license seems like a cop out. If that were the reason, I’d then ask why as an artist you did that. From a commercial standpoint, the majority of HDR images are unusable. I don’t think a lot of people actually understand what HDR is doing in the first place.