Make Use Of Podcast #29: Eye-poppin’ HDR Pictures

I’ve been getting into photography lately, ever since I picked up my very first dSLR camera (Digital SLR or Single-Lens Reflex) about a month ago. One of the techniques I immediately decided to try out was HDR or High Dynamic Range.

“… high dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allows a greater dynamic range of exposures (the range of values between light and dark areas) than normal digital imaging techniques. The intention of HDRI is to accurately represent the wide range of intensity levels found in real scenes ranging from direct sunlight to shadows.”

-Wikipedia

Sure that sounds technical and maybe it is, but here’s a non-technical definition: it makes the colors and details in your pictures pop out. It greatly enhances your images. See for yourself in Flickr’s HDR group.

Now, I said I started doing this when I got a dSLR camera, but you don’t need anything more than a basic point-and-shoot or even a cell phone camera to get great results.

There are many ways to create HDR images including using software like Photoshop and Photomatix, but here’s a great, free way to do it online at a website called: CreateHDR.com.

Here are a couple of HDR images I created using CreateHDR.com.

hdr photography hdr photo

This podcast is available through iTunes so don’t forget to subscribe to the podcast if you have an iPod, or in another podcatcher if you have a different MP3 player.

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Don’t forget to post your own eye-poppin’ HDR’d images from CreateHDR in the comments below.

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Jason Mayoff

Jason Mayoff is a dad, a tech geek and a Canadian radio broadcaster (CJAD 800). You can also find Jason at his a href="http://www.pleasantnights.com/">photoblog.

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  • phil

    Technically, that’s not really HDR. HDR is a method of making a picture where you can see what’s in the shadows without blowing out the highlights and vice versa.

    You need to shoot multiple exposures of the same scene, with widely varying exposure ratios (I’ve been trying using 5 images from 2 stops underexposed to two stops overexposed, though I could go higher – 4 stops each way is not unheard of), then process those into a single image. What you get at this point is HDR but not displayable on normal hardware. (Typical PC hardware displays 8 bits per color; HDR can have 32 bits per color) You then go through a process called “Tone Mapping” to reduce the image back down to something your computer can display. It’s the tone mapping that creates that hyper-realistic coloring. But, what you’re not doing here is bringing up the dynamic range of the image.

  • http://www.devicepedia.com Devicepedia

    I’ve been using HDR for some time and i find it reasonable. Does any one have know of any other applications that has similar functionality?

  • Michael

    cool idea but the site doesn’t seem to be working… all I get is an image that says… processing image,please be patient.

    • http://www.pleasantnights.com/ Jason

      I also noticed that it seems to work on and off lately. I sent an email to the contact email on the site (contact@createhdr.com). I’ll let you know their response when I get it.