CS HDR or blending?

K
Posted By
Kelpie
Apr 29, 2006
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174
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3
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Just wondering if anyone has got their head around the HDR option in CS2? Does it offer any huge advantage over blending 2 images with layers?
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Mike Russell
Apr 29, 2006
"Kelpie" wrote in message
Just wondering if anyone has got their head around the HDR option in CS2? Does it offer any huge advantage over blending 2 images with layers?

For certain applications such as astrophotography, medical imaging, and image rendering HDR offers tremendous advantages.

IMHO there is great potential for using HDR as a replacement for layer blending and masking, the tools are not yet well developed enough to provide much advantage.
—
Mike Russell
www.curvemeister.com
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nomail
Apr 29, 2006
Kelpie wrote:

Just wondering if anyone has got their head around the HDR option in CS2? Does it offer any huge advantage over blending 2 images with layers?

Not over blending of only two images with a difference of one or two stops exposure between them. However, if you try to capture a huge dynamic range, and you’ll need something like 6 images at one stop exposure interval to do this, then HDR becomes much better than trying to blend two images that differ five or six stops in exposure.

—
Johan W. Elzenga johan<<at>>johanfoto.nl Editor / Photographer http://www.johanfoto.nl
PF
Paul Furman
Apr 29, 2006
Kelpie wrote:

Just wondering if anyone has got their head around the HDR option in CS2? Does it offer any huge advantage over blending 2 images with layers?

I haven’t tried that HDR specifically but have used similar techniques and in my opinion manually masking layers can give a more pleasing result. By manually masking, you maintain the local contrast instead of losing mid-range contrast to gain highlights & shadows. Both approaches risk creating rather unrealistic looking images but, well, it just depends. Ha.

For example, I often mask a second raw conversion for the sky & ground and many times it works just fine to use a soft eraser along the edge. Sometimes that works for shadow or sun-splashed portions of a scene, sometimes it’s a miserable failure.

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