HDR vs Exposure Fusion
Here are two photos shown three ways: straight out of camera, fused exposures, HDR with tone mapping. The originals (SOOC) are the captures with the best average exposure for the scene. The fused exposure version was made taking three exposures of the same scene, and using Photomatix to merge the exposures, without any further adjustments. Then taking the merged result into Photoshop and using the curves tool to heighten the contrast. The third version is my standard HDR merge using Photomatix’s tonemapping. It’s always a surprise to see what results from the tonemapping. Often the image is amazing, but sometimes it’s a little over the top. I’m experimenting with the Exposure Fusion feature to see if I like the more subtle images you can make with it. What do you think?
SOOC
EF
HDR
SOOC
EF
HDR
February 25th, 2010 at 8:41 am
It looks like both merge and HDR do best when the contrast is low. Monitors differ significantly, but on my LCD screen the colors look unreal in top photo using EF and HDR. Of course, you might not want “real.”
March 7th, 2010 at 3:37 am
I wouldn’t say “unreal” for these images. They just have good contrast and vibrant colors I’d say.
The unreal stuff might be better used to “artistic” touches when doing the tone-mapping, like these “grundge” and “painterly” modes in Photomatix. Adding life and vibrancy to colors is something , that I would say, a “must” when tone-mapping HDRs. Why do we take HDRs for then?