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

The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

Posted Mar 14, 2007 20:40 UTC (Wed) by tjc (guest, #137)
In reply to: The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux by kolloid
Parent article: The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

Sorry, but I hate HDR images. They're so artificially looking.

They are somewhat artificial, but ordinary photographs are also a poor representation of the physical world. It's just that we've been looking at them for so long that they seem normal.

to post comments

The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

Posted Mar 14, 2007 23:18 UTC (Wed) by allesfresser (subscriber, #216) [Link] (1 responses)

That's exactly correct. HDR has the potential (and this is why I want to try it) to enable the output to resemble what the human eye sees in a scene, since it has a far greater contrast ratio than any camera. But as you said, people tend to not notice this, and prefer photos which are comfortably within the limitations of the popular cameras of the day.

Pro photographers have been doing this sort of manipulation for years--it's called dodging and burning. Ansel Adams was an expert at it; that's why his images look so dramatic (and "artificial", sometimes, as the poster said above) because he intentionally tried to make the print look as *he saw* the scene, rather than what the camera captured. I love his famous line about the negative being the "orchestral score" of the photograph, and the print being the actual "live performance"--one comes from the other, but the life is breathed into the score by the performing artist. (Adams was also a trained classical pianist, btw.) So it is with the negative and the print; the camera's action of capturing light and affecting film or sensor is only the beginning of the piece of art, not the end. I get the feeling that Adams would have just adored the tools we have these days--so much easier than all that nasty mucking about with chemicals in the darkroom. :)

The Grumpy Editor's guide to HDR with Linux

Posted Mar 15, 2007 14:48 UTC (Thu) by tjc (guest, #137) [Link]

Pro photographers have been doing this sort of manipulation for years--it's called dodging and burning.

I've done a lot of that! Unlike our editor, I had a 5-year career in the photo industry before I made it to engineering school.

In some cases it is similar to HDR, but it's tricky because everything happens in realtime, and it's hard to get the same results on multiple exposures.