High Dynamic Range … Not Sure How I Feel About It

Don't know I will likely do others before I decide.

I've seen this technique used to bring out reflective objects more clearly than other methods .

Actually, this was a foggy morning and the aerial/atmospheric perspective is in the original.

I think the colors are too vivid, a common HDR phenomenon and probably one of the aspects that put me off all this time.

I like old school in many things A. Mac, but visually my ancient eyes need all the help they can get. Like sports in HD. I don't need to see individual blades of grass to enjoy it. However, it sure helps see things clearly on a "challenge call".

In your image, the knarly appearance of the tree bark (on the left) is accentuated by the detail. Makes it look like the fog hasn't enveloped it yet.

Can one dodge and burn and control the colors by controlling the transparency of the images?

I like the fog in the back ground, and the clear trees in the front.

I think it adds a lot of detail in the images in the front, while in the back they turn misty. Huge contrast between the two. The color is surreal. The photo is very eery. Overall, I like it..but I think the transition in the depth of field is too sudden.

but visually my ancient eyes need all the help they can get.

I hadn't thought of that, OM; aestheticsis one consideration, pragmatism is another. Maybe I'll post other HDR images and post the originals with them.

In your image, the knarly appearance of the tree bark (on the left) is accentuated by the detail. Makes it look like the fog hasn't enveloped it yet.

The greater the distance from the foreground elements, the more fog between the camera, the middle ground and background, the greater the ethereal effect -- in photography and in "reality" (in the eye). It's a physical and optical phenomenon.

Can one dodge and burnandcontrol the colors by controlling the transparency of the images?

I would say it all depends on what's "under" the image in question. The opacity of the original image represents the "true" colors in a print as opposed to a transparency (a slide).

More on this later it's a bit involved and I want to think it through and respond in terms that are clear with as little jargon as possible.

Can one dodge and burn and control the colors by controlling the transparency of the images?

Continuing

"Transparency" implies light passing through an object/substance, etc. . In other words, light that is transmitted and filtered rather than reflected from a surface. And technically, any substance, etc. that is not literally transparent, is actually translucent an important distinction in terms of your question, Bro.

Imagine looking at an image on a computer monitor it appears "opaque" even though it's comprised of illuminated pixels more like a slide (transparency) than a print (on paper and seen via reflected rather than transmitted light).

If you lower or raise the brightness, or, increase, decrease the monitor's contrast settings, in an analogous way, you are dodging or burning all or selected portions of an image on the monitor screen; but, you are not doing so by altering the transparency.

Okay, I'm finally getting to it.

1) Start with an image on the monitor at 100% opacity and think of it as a BACKGROUND atop of which you will place the identical image as a LAYER, it too at 100% opacity.

2) Without explaining how to do so, delete the background image and leave a solid white background in its place (this is the way it's done in an image-editing application like Photoshop -- (I feel I needed to note that in case someone wants to try this). What remains is the LAYER at 100% opacity sitting on the WHITE background.

3) In Photoshop, etc., begin to adjust the layer to make it anywhere from 99% opaque (minimally transparent), all the way down to 0% opaque which is the same as 100% transparent. At every percentage in-between, you will be "dodging" or "burning" depending on which direction you're going -- that is changing from more or less transparency/opacity.

BUT, IMO, this is not actually "dodging" and "burning" because the original image begins at full opacity and while it can be made less opaque (more transparent), it cannot be made more than 100% opaque.

TO FINALLY ANSWER YOUR QUESTION, HERE IS THE WAY TO DODGE AND BURN A DIGITAL IMAGE

Written by Steve Patterson. It may be hard to believe these days, but there was a time not so long ago when cameras were not digital, and photo developing was done in a lab, not on your computer. Digital cameras and Photoshop may have brought the world of photo editing out of the darkroom and into your living room (or wherever your computer happens to be), but many of Photoshop's tools and features have their roots in traditional film development.

Two great examples of this are Photoshop's Dodge and Burn tools, both of which are found in the Tools palette. The terms "dodge" and "burn" refer to techniques that were used to either lighten (dodge) or darken (burn) specific areas of a photo by increasing or limiting the exposure in those areas. The Dodge and Burn tools in Photoshop are the digital versions of these techniques and are often used to either lighten underexposed areas of a photo or darken overexposed areas.

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As useful as the Dodge and Burn tools are, however, they both suffer from a serious problem. Both of them cause permanent damage to your image, and this is never a good thing. The best way to work in Photoshop is to keep your original pixel information intact so you always have the original photo to fall back on. This is often referred to as working "non-destructively" in Photoshop, and it's the way you should be working whenever and wherever possible. Fortunately, Adobe has given us numerous ways to work non-destructively on our images, and in this photo editing tutorial, we're going to look at one of them. We'll look at a great technique for selectively controlling the exposure in a photo by lightening and darkening specific areas, giving us results very similar to what we could achieve with the Dodge and Burn tools but without harming a single pixel in the image.

I apologize for such a long answer and violating my promise to avoid jargon. Feel free to skip all or most of my response but I'd rather you have it and not want it than want it and not have it.

I do love the challenge of trying to answer such questions

can anyone tell?

Boy, my Uncle Louie would have loved this ability! Too bad he's gone...

I think that it offers a different way of highlighting certain elements of the picture-- it depends on what you want to do... I think it could be a very useful tool! But, too, I love the mistiness of the picture at the top. The brightly colored leaves sure do pop out at you-- and if that is what you want to highlight, it certainly does that!

I'm thinking it could be very useful to highlight something one would normally miss-- like a bird way out in a swamp... If you highlight the bird in the picture, you would notice it-- otherwise, you have to look for it. Sort of like the eyes of the alligators in the swamps at night. Black darkness, eerie shadows, and then Bam! The green eyes of the alligators...

Pretty picture!

Well, actually, you said that you had bracketed the photos. That is, you had taken the same composition with several different exposure/f-stop values, giving several different images. I haven't done much post processing recently, so my terminology may be off, but it seems like a composite image could be made of the several images by adjusting the opacity of each individual image or parts thereof, in effect brightening or muting colors.... Sorry if I amsaying something that is infeasible.

Yes, I can tell.

Bro,

You pretty much nailed it once the bracketed images are exported to the HDR-processing application, the software makes the initial compositing; beyond that there are preset-effects in the application and beyond that, more can be done in Photoshop, etc. .

I find the overkill potential to be huge!

Beautiful- thanks for sharing

I'm probably jargon deficient, very jargon limited.

So, given this fact I hope what I'm about to say makes sense.

The image appears layered, a sharp in focus, brightly luminescent foreground, over a second layer that is greyed, muted, defocused and otherwise dull and lifeless.

The initial impression is an altered depth of field and different colorspace from the two layers.

Like your in a pocket of absolutely clear air in a forest swathed in fog, and the transition is abrupt about 20 meters away.

The transition area can be seen from the color "flares" along the areas of the picture where the depth of field changes. they show yellowish, and once your eye picks them up you can follow them over the entire background. (I first recognized them on the right over the path and branches, and as you scan the pic to the left, you see the splotches right at the distance dividing line all the way across) In the middle back at the two gray trees and a brown tree, at the base you see the yellow tinting. on the left you see it in the trunk of the tree sitting behind the snag right on the border of apparent diffusion.

Your eye wants to see two pictures when there is only one to be seen.

Have you given thought to doing this as a three step process? a foreground showing all the great details, a midrange carrying the color intensity, and a background covering the diffuse distance. You might get a smoother transition that the eye could better discern.

That would be where I would go with it...

Here is an example where HDR is invaluable :

gettyimages

Yeah, but the depth of field is tiny compared to the infinity represented in what Mac is doing.

NWM,

For reasons you note, I have shied away from HDR from its inception although this particular image, even after applying the HDR "layering," is not too far from the original.

On the day I took the photo, I took a number of others and converted most of them to what I deemed more effective black and white derivatives. I will post some later today for you to critique.

I will likely continue to stay away from HDR unless I find that, for particular images, it literally makes them more effective.

I appreciate when someone takes the time and makes the effort to comment so thoroughly and thoughtfully about my stuff. Many thanks, my friend.

Personally, this photograph elicits a pleasing emotional response. The detail and vivid structure in the foreground is enhanced by the color saturation while themid and backgroundbeckons me to step in andsee what'shidden in the fog.

Great job, I love this one!

I will probably take this into a new article for now, here's a shot from the same morning.

It too was shot in color and converted to ALMOST black & white (grayscale). I won't elaborate on the "ALMOST" -- that will be the subject of the new article. The image below is simply to show the atmospheric/aerial perspective that the foggy morning presented.

Fog/mist in a forest is one of my favorite subjects.

Good point . Maybe that's the best application of HDR [small depth of field ] .

It too was shot in color and converted to ALMOST black & white (grayscale). I won't elaborate on the "ALMOST" -- that will be the subject of the new article.

I am waiting for that article, as I have something to post on it.

Article in progress, Buzz; I hope to post it within the hour.