HDR for Dummies

Trying to find a good HDR subject in this grey that passes for daylight here today I went for this, the twin tunnel/arches underneath "Ny Carlsberg". From this angle you can see the mission statement (that I may translate later but basically says: "by our strong and valiant example and the quality of beer we provide so will all brewers in this country try to live up to our standards"). You can also see through the tunnels, the walls in the tunnels and the mosiac above. All these elements had completely different light and so a good reason to go for HDR. You can see all three shots that I used here which were obviously shot on a tripod. In any one of a number of programs you merge all three together as an HDR (in photoshop this is File>Automate>Merge to HDR). Once you've done that change the mode to 8 bits (Image>Mode> 8 bits) and when converting you will be asked to change gamma and exposure - have a tweek with gamma here and see if it looks good. Play to your hearts content with adjustments but a cool shortcut is the Topaz group of plug-ins (they cost).

Sorry if this is sucking eggs for some of you or if you think its's not a great explination but it's what I've learnt so far (since starting Blip). HDR does have it's place and I hope this is a reasonable example that helps somebody.


You can see a ghostly 4x4 in large.