The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux [LWN.net]

The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

Posted Mar 14, 2007 19:20 UTC (Wed) by orospakr (guest, #40684)
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

So *that's* how professional photographers make their photos look like that.

I have always wondered what the secret was. :D

to post comments

professionals

Posted Mar 15, 2007 19:18 UTC (Thu) by qu1j0t3 (guest, #25786) [Link] (2 responses)

Uh no, real professionals shoot with film. (Flames to /dev/null :)

I don't see the point of this article. Is it to make mediocre digital shots look worse? There's a reason why highlights are blown out. Tone mapping is a Flickr freakshow, as other commenters also opine. This article would have been better devoted to: 1) buying a good lightmeter and learning how to use it; 2) photographic exposure from first principles through to Ansel Adams and what HDR is supposed to be used for, also see Debevec's original '90s research. Then you can write an article like this without looking foolish.

The Grumpy Editor should, in this Grumpy Commenter's opinion, avoid photographic topics in future.

professionals

Posted Mar 18, 2007 20:19 UTC (Sun) by ekj (guest, #1524) [Link] (1 responses)

There's a reason why highlights are blown out.

Sure. Because film and CMOS-censors share a weakness: they are incapable of capturing a high dynamic range.

Your eye can easily look at the face of your loved one, standing in a shadowed room, infront of a beautiful sunlit panorama, and enjoy the entire scene.

No camera, film or digital, can capture details *both* in the shadowed face of a person *and* on the sunligth snow-covered mountains outside.

So yes, there's a reason. What is your solution ?

professionals

Posted Apr 7, 2007 2:59 UTC (Sat) by ringerc (subscriber, #3071) [Link]

In my view the real solution goes way beyond sensors.

We need devices that can display decent dynamic range, and wider adoption of file formats with more colour representation that's a better match for human vision (eg exponential colour). Without that, we're going to have a very hard time producing, working with, and displaying true HDR (as opposed to flattened-to-low-DR like in the article) images.