Tone Mapping & HDR: Before and After

On my recent trip to Prague, I used the auto-bracketing feature of my digital SLR to take a series of three photos that I later stitched together using Photomatix to form the final tone mapped HDR image. The collection of my tone mapped HDR photos starts here.

Resources I used:
Stuck In Customs >> HDR Tutorial
Vanilla Days : HDR Tutorial (Page not currently loading so text only Google cached version is shown.)
hdrphotos.net – HDR II (Page not currently loading so Google cached version is shown.)

You can make the photos have a very natural appearance to an almost cartoonish appearance. I have tried to keep my photos on the natural side, but a few are on the border. Basically with this post I just want to give a few examples to show how much more detail is available when HDR photos are made. These were all handheld and would have improved with the use of a tripod. Click the small photos below to enlarge them.

Tone mapped HDR photo. Notice the high amount of detail throughout the photo.
Inside Prague Castle - Tone mapped HDR
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Next are the series of three photos (+2, 0, -2 EV, respectively) that were used to create this HDR photo. The 0 EV (middle) photo does the best job of capturing full detail throughout and is the one that I would use had not the other two exposures been available.
Inside Prague Castle: +2 EV
Inside Prague Castle: 0 EV
Inside Prague Castle: -2 EV

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Another example, this time outside. The photo below is the tone mapped HDR version. Again you can see how the level of detail is not uniform throughout any single one exposure photo…multiple exposures were needed for the best effect.

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Next are the series of three photos (+2, 0, -2 EV, respectively) that were used to create this HDR photo.


1 thought on “Tone Mapping & HDR: Before and After

  1. Pingback: europe photos -- distractionLab blog

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