My buddy Mike made a comment yesterday about how Adobe didn’t add any HDR enhancements to the CS4 release. This is something that I have talked about many times with other folks as well. I think Adobe has really missed the boat by not delving further into the HDR pool with more compression and tonemapping capabilities built right into the program. Whether you are a fan of the process or not, HDR is only going to grow as camera manufacturers look at how to incorporate HDR technology into their cameras. The fact that there are free software programs out there that do a better job of processing HDR files should be embarrassing enough to Adobe that they would want to fix it. Nuff Said.
Speaking of free HDR software, FDR Tools is not the only offering out there for free processing. Another program that has quite a few fans is called QTPFSGUI, say that three times fast. Qtpfsgui is an open source HDR application that allows users to create HDR images from a variety of image types including RAW, TIFF, and JPEG, as well as using single images in the process. Once created, the application offers a variety of tonemapping processes to choose from. Personally speaking, I have only found two of the tonemapping options to be of any value and the controls are less than user friendly in terms of knowing just what each slider does. It is hard though to complain about something that you get for free and does a pretty good job to boot.
Here are a couple of samples from the Mantiuk and Reinhard ’02 tonemapping processes (these were made with the default settings).
Check out the Qtpfsgui website for more information on the software and downloads.
Finally, rounding out this HDR parade today is something that I saw yesterday when catching up on my Layers TV episodes. It seems that Matt Kloskowski of Adobe Photoshop Lightroom Killer Tips fame has jumped on the HDR bandwagon and did a nice tutorial with RC Concepcion. The tutorial covers how to process multiple exposures into an HDR file using Photoshop and then tonemap with Photomatix. It’s a really nice overview of the process. You can check out the video and all the other Adobe goodness at Layers TV.
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Woo Hoo first comment again. I must be the number one fan. OK so here’s the deal with HDR. Ansel would have used it because his Zone System is the analog version of HDR. I don’t always like the crazy, wild look of HDR gone bad but, the ability to capture a burnt log in the shadows next to nice crispy snow in sunlight is what I like about it. And Ansel would have liked it too. So since you are the Overlord of HDR Jeff, I charge you with going to Adobe and demanding that they develop better HDR tools in the program that I already own. Thank You, and God Bless America !!!
mike meyer