Rant about HDR

r3t1awr3yd

Okay, HDR to me, is like a woman who has taken all of her clothes off to impress me. Sure, she might look nice for a while but then my brain will eventually kick in and start to wonder if she's lost her marbles.

What I'm trying to say is... HDR leaves nothing left to the imagination your brain uses to make inferences from shadows and things you can't see. It takes away from half of lights power... which is to create darkness.

Thoughts?

:scratch

pathfinder

You will find many folks who agree with your thesis, but I am not a among them.

I propose that your complaint is with poorly created HDRs, not the technique itself. If you look carefully, HDR images are being published in newspapers, magazines, company reports every month all across the country. I am not asserting that images with wild haloes are being published, just images with impressive detail in shadows, mid-tones, and high lights that would be impossible to capture with a single exposure.

HDR is a tool, no more, no less. A fine craftsman can create art with simple tools, but simple tools do not guarantee art from everyone's hands. Indeed, most tools can be used to create awful results, but I submit that is not the fault of the tool, but of the user.

There is a long discussion, pro and con, about the merits of HDR here - http://www.dgrin.com/showthread.php?t=165183

Scott Kelby had a blog about HDR here - http://www.scottkelby.com/blog/2010/archives/10746 - and I think Scott is dead right, that while a lot of photographers do not like HDR, an awful lot of non-photographers love it. That should tell us something I think. Are all those non-photographers wrong?

I know this is true as I described in this post - http://www.dgrin.com/showpost.php?p=1416694&postcount=109

HDR is frequently discussed as to whether it is better than other methods of contrast, lighting control. My question is why does it always have to be either / or? Why not both?

I am moving this to Finishing School, as this is not really about technique, since shooting HDRs is pretty straight forward, but about post processing and how the image finally is viewed.

r3t1awr3yd

^^ Read the S. Kelby article (and now reading the thread). Interesting perspective and something good to read/hear.

pathfinder

As I said in my link, I am impressed that hdr images are vastly over represented in my Popular Photos in my Smugmug gallery, that is to say, ~ 20%, but I upload an hdr image maybe 1 out a 100 shots or less.

Not sure what that really means if anything, but it is a fact.

Look at some of Trey Ratcliff's images in http://www.stuckincustoms.com/ for an example of better hdrs, perhaps.

kdog

r3t1awr3yd wrote: »

Okay, HDR to me, is like a woman who has taken all of her clothes off to impress me. Sure, she might look nice for a while but then my brain will eventually kick in and start to wonder if she's lost her marbles.

What I'm trying to say is... HDR leaves nothing left to the imagination your brain uses to make inferences from shadows and things you can't see. It takes away from half of lights power... which is to create darkness.

Thoughts?

No, you have it wrong. Your camera can capture 6 stops of light. But your eye can capture 15 stops. HDR allows you to get closer to what you actually saw. As Pathfinder alluded to, you can of course ruin any shot with HDR, as you can ruin any shot with Photoshop. But one cannot blame the tool for that. Done right, you can greatly enhance a scene with HDR, and leave no obvious trace as to how the photo processed. Pathfinder's got many great examples of that in the gallery he linked above.

This HDR made me a lot of money.

Art Scott

r3t1awr3yd wrote: »

Okay,Thoughts?

Well yes...As put forth above.....eues see more than the sensor ....I have shot many shots for HDR processing because OF what I COULD SEE in the shadows could not be picked up by the sensor in a single frame.........and trying to pull it out in post was just not going to work and since Ai shoot 88.999% of the time at my lowest native iso, getting grainy pix at iso80 is not an option for me.,..........Then there are those pix that people scream about being over processed.....in the film days we called it Contemporary Art ..........

Remember also that all the master landscape photographers were also great manipulators of their medium....or their darkroom technicians were great manipulators....................

pathfinder

When are they going to finally have that bridge open, Joel?

I am surprised the security folks let you get a way with your tripod - They pulled Kathy and I out of the traffic flow and went through my truck - not sure why they thought two grey haired folks were a threat though.

kdog

Supposed to open this fall! We'll see. They still need to finish dozens of miles of new pavement which will probably be the gating factor. They are going great guns on it now, although it's several years late already.

The tripod was actually the least of my worries. I had to trespass to get that shot as there are no pedestrians allowed on the bridge after dark. My luck ran out a few weeks later when getting this shot, and I got detained by federal marshals who had no sense of humor whatsoever.


Now that shot above is NOT an HDR. It's a single image push in ACR. I did bracket it, but got the results I wanted from the single middle exposure, so called it good. Whatever works, right?

So what's the this one -- HDR or not?

ian408

HDR has been around for a long time. Used in Architecture, it can help in awkward lighting situations making a photograph that's representative of the space being photographed. Used in landscape, it can bring out subtle details and help balance a difficult exposure.

But the reality is that most people over use the technique and more often than not, end up with an image that's artificial looking at best and over-cooked at worst. This is never helped by all the "nice shot" comments either.

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

pathfinder

I tend to agree, Ian, that hdr works better with some images than others. I like it for bricks, rust metal, leaves, forest scenes, and not so much for portraits or wedding scenes. Just as B&W works better for some scenes than color, or vice versa.

Artificial looking is what most images have been ever since the dawn of photography, with limited ranges of shadow detail, highlight detail etc, like classic Kodachrome.

I find it interesting that there is this big discussion among photographers, while artists have been dealing with contrast range differences between reality and on the canvas or paper surface for centuries.

Some paintings look quite hdr like when you go looking for them. ( Now I have to go see if I can find you some Ian.) Not all, of course, some have that Kodachrome look, like a Rembrandt painting with its limited highlights and deep, dark shadows.

Using haloes has been an artists secret for years, like rutt demonstrated in his post about unsharp mask sharpening in PS

I am thinking more about the ratios of lighting in paintings between highlights and shadows.

I am looking at "A Year in Art - A Treasure a Day" published by Prestel I can find image after image with detail in shadows and highlights and this is not restricted to a single artist or school of technique.

"Infant Christ with John the Baptist and Two Angels", painted by Reubens has no black shadows anywhere, and offers detail in illuminated and shadowed sides of the infants faces. No haloes, of course.

de VelaQuez famous image, "Las Meninas" while having darker shadows, still offers areas of detail that in real life would be just as hard to see. This is not a Kodachrome with deep shadows at all, in my opinion.

The sky in "Winter Scene with Ice Skaters" by Jan van Goyen looks positively like a dark, brooding hdr sky, but with no real black shadows in the people standing out on the ice. I can't find a link for this image.

Another is "Winter Scene" by Gysbrecht Lytens which looks positively like an over sharpened hdr image to me.

Whereas, "Nightwatch" by Rembrandt does have the deep dark shadows typical of some non hdr photography. The light is limited to areas of the artists primary interest for the viewer, almost like spotlights on each face. This is not an accident. And the background is a sea of black.

We haven't even begun to discuss the differences between print or oil on canvas, and transilluminated computer screens and how they handle shadow detail. I am interested in the differences I see between the book in front of me, and what i am seeing on screen, as well.

r3t1awr3yd

kdog wrote: »

So what's the this one -- HDR or not?

Aren't the good ones supposed to be a mystery?

I guess my beef is more with the "OMGWTHBBQ is THAT!?" type over-processed pieces of something special and less with tastefully done shots.

Richard

ian408 wrote: »

I guess art is in the eye of the beholder.

Yep.

To me it's ironic that so much of the overcooked HDR stuff we see looks flat despite the ridiculous colors. Rather than give the illusion of expanded dynamic range, there seems to be a uniform distribution of local contrast at the expense of true whites and blacks. Unclear on the concept, I'm afraid.

kdog

Richard wrote: »

Yep.

To me it's ironic that so much of the overcooked HDR stuff we see looks flat despite the ridiculous colors. Rather than give the illusion of expanded dynamic range, there seems to be a uniform distribution of local contrast at the expense of true whites and blacks. Unclear on the concept, I'm afraid.

That's the sign of an HDR straight out of the tool (Photomatix, Dynamic HDR, etc). The entire shot ends up getting squished into the mid tones. One must apply a fairly heavy hand in Photoshop to get it back. That's the step that novices always seem to miss.

Richard

kdog wrote: »

That's the sign of an HDR straight out of the tool (Photomatix, Dynamic HDR, etc). The entire shot ends up getting squished into the mid tones. One must apply a fairly heavy hand in Photoshop to get it back. That's the step that novices always seem to miss.

Right, I understand that it isn't inherent with the tool. What I understand less is why some people seem to think that it's "art."

pathfinder

Indeed, Richard, on the the processing steps Trey Ratcliff describes in his hdr tutorial, is blending the tone mapped image from Photomatix with the original three files and using masking to choose which of the four images pixels, end up getting displayed in the final image - literally painting the final image into existence by hand.

That is why I say photography and art ( painting at least ) are growing closer in ways never envisioned by people years ago.

Whether we like hdr or not, a large part of the public does. Look in recent magazines and news papers and you will find a lot more hdr and hdr-like images. Twenty years ago, you never saw any of these in a publication.

kdog

Richard wrote: »

Right, I understand that it isn't inherent with the tool. What I understand less is why some people seem to think that it's "art."

Actually it is inherent in the tool to squish everything into the mid-tones by default. You can usually tweak the image in the tool to add some range back, but I prefer to save it out flat, and add the pop in Photoshop afterwards by setting levels and curves.

gmachen

kdog wrote: »

That's the sign of an HDR straight out of the tool (Photomatix, Dynamic HDR, etc). The entire shot ends up getting squished into the mid tones. One must apply a fairly heavy hand in Photoshop to get it back. That's the step that novices always seem to miss.

Bingo! After obtaining greater shadow and/or highlight detail (by whatever method, including even the related procedure of contrast masking in post), one still must go back in and set the endpoints again, or else the "fake" look often results. If you look closely at what it does, even the Photoshop Shadows/Highlights filter holds the extreme levels unaffected or even extends them if the image is flat enough, that is, it forces another shadow and highlight, or applies a range correction. So if one's shadows are more like three-quartertones, running the S/H filter actually will make the shadows darker. They'll probably look better, too, but you would likely do better if you set the range yourself. This consideration is precisely why kdog's first image (the "moneyshot") looks so natural: there still are some (insignificant) plugged shadows and blown-out speculars remaining like a human would perceive, despite the opening up of detail in the extremes.

angevin1

No offense OP, but I love it when someone rants about HDR...I get to see some amazing imagery! Nice work Joel...also, glad they chose to let you go, that drop looks like a doozy!

run_kmc

HDR in the right hands (a minority) can be excellent.

HDR in the wrong hands (a majority) seems to be frequently used as a crutch to "save" a boring image. Unfortunately, a boring image is a boring image, and you can't fix that.

craig_d

The argument that "non-photographers like HDR" is weak. It argues for chasing after the fickle taste of consumers rather than following our own muse or our own understanding of what makes good art. It may make you money in the short term, but it may also mean that your work is laughed at 20 years from now.

Back in the 1980s, if you wanted to have a hit single in pop music, you had to have a glossy, high-tech production, thunderous drums, a keyboard sound that screamed "digital synthesizer", and guitars so heavily distorted they hardly even sounded like guitars. That sort of thing was very successful at the time, but what I note today is that the music of the '80s sounds more dated than the music of the '70s or '60s. HDR strikes me as the same sort of thing in photographic terms -- a short-term fashion that will age very poorly.

The Scott Kelby piece is interesting because of the image he shows of the boat approaching the shore. While one often hears that HDR helps to bring out shadow detail, in this case his HDR version actually throws away shadow detail. The image doesn't really look like HDR at all; it looks like he boosted the contrast and saturation and messed around with the luminance curve. In this regard it could be considered a successful HDR image (it doesn't advertise the process that created it), but if you can achieve pretty much the same result by simpler means, why bother with going to all the extra trouble? Kelby himself points out that doing HDR right involves a lot of work.

BradfordBenn

I liken HDR to the font collections when one first gets to use a computer, I remember it like it was decades ago. Remember one had to use all the fonts. Titles in Tahoma, headings in Times New Roman, body in Garamond, quotes in Courier, and of course Zapf Dingbats just cause one could. To me it is the same thing. When used properly, HDR is a good tool; when used properly font selection is a good tool.

kdog

Geez, it's just a tool. Like Photoshop. Get over yourselves.

colourbox

Don't hate that one guy who was into High Dynamic Range more than anybody: Ansel Adams

craig_d

colourbox wrote: »

Don't hate that one guy who was into High Dynamic Range more than anybody: Ansel Adams

Riiight, so tell me exactly what shots Ansel did with five bracketed exposures blended in software?

ian408

colourbox wrote: »

Don't hate that one guy who was into High Dynamic Range more than anybody: Ansel Adams

If you want to compare what Adams did to work done today; it would be similar to masking and making level adjustments to dark and light areas. It is most definitely not HDR.

CatOne

craig_d wrote: »

Riiight, so tell me exactly what shots Ansel did with five bracketed exposures blended in software?

Well none, because he didn't have the software. If it had been available, odds are he would have used it.

He certainly used techniques that were very HDR-like. Between filters and development techniques, he did essentially the same thing. Of course, you didn't get the color saturation, because his stuff is largely in black and white. But the skies and the drama… all HDR.

kdog

ian408 wrote: »

If you want to compare what Adams did to work done today; it would be similar to masking and making level adjustments to dark and light areas. It is most definitely not HDR.

Sure it is. So is using the fill light and recovery sliders in ACR.

ian408

kdog wrote: »

Sure it is. So is using the fill light and recovery sliders in ACR.

I guess we'll have to disagree then. Adding fill light or using the recovery sliders extracts from what exists in the image. HDR uses multiple exposures to insure that both the brightest and darkest parts of a scene from different exposures are included in the final product. If you have black portions of an image, there is no way ACR (or in Adam's case, the darkroom) can recover the detail in that area. Only by combining images that have correct exposures for those black/bright areas, will you have increased the dynamic range beyond what was in the original +0 EV image.

I do believe that Adam's development of the Zone System helped him a great deal with exposure and made it possible to the things he did in the dark room.

kdog

ian408 wrote: »

I guess we'll have to disagree then. Adding fill light or using the recovery sliders extracts from what exists in the image. HDR uses multiple exposures to insure that both the brightest and darkest parts of a scene from different exposures are included in the final product. If you have black portions of an image, there is no way ACR (or in Adam's case, the darkroom) can recover the detail in that area. Only by combining images that have correct exposures for those black/bright areas, will you have increased the dynamic range beyond what was in the original +0 EV image.

I do believe that Adam's development of the Zone System helped him a great deal with exposure and made it possible to the things he did in the dark room.

True, and I should have been more specific. I meant there was little difference between a single-image HDR and doing ACR manipulations. Single-raw-image HDR is a legitimate use of HDR in my opinion because a RAW image has more dynamic range than does a JPG. Most of the HDR tools will take a single RAW image for this reason.

Qarik

craig_d wrote: »

The argument that "non-photographers like HDR" is weak. It argues for chasing after the fickle taste of consumers rather than following our own muse or our own understanding of what makes good art. It may make you money in the short term, but it may also mean that your work is laughed at 20 years from now.

.

*shrugs* if the non-photographers are your clients then the argument is not weak. people like what they like and you have to keep that in mind when you taking pictures for more then just your personal taste.

craig_d

Qarik wrote: »

*shrugs* if the non-photographers are your clients then the argument is not weak. people like what they like and you have to keep that in mind when you taking pictures for more then just your personal taste.

The point is that chasing after money and creating art are not the same thing and at times are opposing goals. While I am not religious, I am reminded of the line in the Bible about how you cannot serve both God and Mammon. The choice is yours.