Image by IDS.Photos
High Dynamic Range Photography is one of the fastest-growing trends in image manipulation today. HDR Photos are clearer, with more depth, than standard photos, making them breathtakingly crisp and clear and bringing out an almost 3D quality in the image using a greater range of shadows and tints to more closely resemble the light our eyes take in when viewing a scene in person.
Image by Lan Bui
Photography captures an image at an instant in time, with a limited range of light, shadow and color. HDR Photography allows the designer to capture a wider scale of the elements, making the image appear more realistic and beautiful. This blog post will cover some of the basics of HDR photography to give you an idea of how it’s done. Whether you’re using an older version of Adobe Photoshop, or the latest in photo editing software, you can create stunning HDR images that are perfect for use in your personal designs or for stock photography.
HDR images are actually a set, usually of three, photographs which have been blended together to capture the full scope of light and shadow at a given moment. Because cameras are limited to choosing to capture only certain aspects of a scene in each exposure, it’s necessary to capture different elements of the image in each shot and meld them together to create the complete picture that’s available to the complicated mechanisms of the human eye.
Creating an HDR image is a process that begins with a basic knowledge of photography. You’ll need to understand how to adjust the settings on your camera, in order to take at least three different photos at various exposures. Three photos are necessary for creating an HDR image; one at normal exposure, one slightly over-exposed to capture the highlights of the subject and one slightly under-exposed to capture shadows.
Once the photos are taken, they are merged using a version of Adobe Photoshop, PhotoMatix, or other photo editing software with HDR capabilities. The results can be breathtaking:
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Tom Chu works for PsPrint and PsPrint Blog. When he’s not sitting behind a computer, Tom likes watching sci-fi movies and Japanese cartoons, hitting the golf course and playing with his four dogs. You can connect with Tom via Google+ or Twitter. |
