blown out joy
January 4, 2008 11:49 AM   Subscribe

If you like HDR pictures, you might like these of New York City.
posted by plexi (37 comments total) 21 users marked this as a favorite
 
HDR faking with Photoshop for the lazy:

1) Select All, Copy, Paste, so you have another layer with the photo.
2) Desaturate and invert that layer.
3) Set that layer to Overlay, and play with the opacity slider.
posted by smackfu at 12:17 PM on January 4, 2008 [15 favorites]


Yes, yes I do like these, very much. Thanks!
posted by WPW at 12:17 PM on January 4, 2008


This one isn't so bad, mostly because the HDR is very subtle (like it should be, IMHO).
posted by CitrusFreak12 at 12:38 PM on January 4, 2008 [1 favorite]


Is it just me, or do all these photos have that eerie 'taken during a solar eclipse' feeling to them?
posted by AbnerDoon at 12:39 PM on January 4, 2008


Welcome to the new Drop Shadow.
posted by space2k at 12:48 PM on January 4, 2008 [7 favorites]


CitrusFreak12 - that one reminds me of the look things have in a really nice FPS, like maybe Bioshock.
posted by Artw at 12:51 PM on January 4, 2008 [1 favorite]


Smackfu, you could replace your step 1 with "hit ctrl-j"
posted by Outlawyr at 1:01 PM on January 4, 2008


Aha, keyboard shortcuts.

Actually, I forgot a step too. If you do a Gaussian blur on the reversed black-and-white layer, it's way better at faking HDR. (And if you skip the invert/desaturate step, you get stuff that looks like porn.)
posted by smackfu at 1:18 PM on January 4, 2008 [2 favorites]


You guys crack me up. Or, more accurately, you make me feel much better about the pain inside my soul when it comes to really poorly done HDR images.

Agreed, CitrusFreak12, HDR is most effective when the tone mapping is subtle. Otherwise, it's just like playing with the color sliders... "Oh, look, I have some weird colors here! Yay!" Most HDR images published by amateurs look like garbage because of that. This guy isn't as bad as most, but still...

Most importantly, though, subject and composition count for a lot, and I feel these photos are poor examples of subject and composition. All of the pictures with ghosted people? Awful. Some hallway in a museum with so many reflections that you can't tell where the floor is? Awful. A really dull vertical shot of what is actually a nice-looking building when viewed from a half-block away? Awful. Incredibly poor tilt-shift mimicking? Awful. Water tower on a roof? Awful. Ground support for an elevated sculpture? Awful. Sideways shot at graffiti that shows almost as much parked cars as it does graffiti art? Awful. African Burial Ground monument at a sharp angle (and with poor lighting due to the HDR)? Awful.

Some of the others are good, though. But overall, I get the feeling that the photographer heard about this technique and liked the distinctive look of the output from Photoshop, yet he just doesn't understand lighting and exposure enough (and the good reasons for combining multiple exposures to create an HDR image), and doesn't put enough thought into subject and composition, to get consistently great photos.

BTW, here's the camera he is using: Olympus SP-350
8.0 MP, it has manual exposure settings and the ability to capture RAW images, and it goes for only about $300.
posted by brianvan at 1:42 PM on January 4, 2008 [4 favorites]


Cool. I had never heard of HDR before. Learn something new everyday from the ole 'filter.
posted by slogger at 1:43 PM on January 4, 2008


These are really cool. Especially this one.
posted by Quidam at 1:44 PM on January 4, 2008


I want a Flickr filter against any image not available in at least 1024x768. If you're going to post the photo, post the photo. Your thumbnail does not interest me.
posted by effugas at 1:46 PM on January 4, 2008 [12 favorites]


I really enjoyed these...thanks!
posted by gummi at 1:48 PM on January 4, 2008


Gotta go with CitrusFreak, HDR, done properly, shouldn't be detectable to the average viewer.
posted by doctor_negative at 1:52 PM on January 4, 2008 [1 favorite]


These are hideous. I enjoy good HDR pics as much as anyone but these are so poorly done that the edge of the sky along buildings is totally uneven. I give the photographer a D for trying but please, keep these hidden.
posted by JJ86 at 2:01 PM on January 4, 2008 [1 favorite]


These are hideous.

Can't comment, as I'm unfamiliar with the whole HDR deal, but given your comment I would be interested in seeing A work. Links appreciated
posted by IndigoJones at 2:18 PM on January 4, 2008


I agree with everyone that HDR can be overdone, or faked, but at it's core it is the closest thing to Ansel Adams' Zone System for digital color images. The analogy breaks down, however, since we are not printing to paper, buy rather peoples computer monitors (which may have different dynamic ranges and biases themselves.

A more interesting question might be: Do we react the way we do because the image looks unrealistic to the way our eye would take in the scene, OR because we are not used to seeing photographic images like this (normally). For example, a traditional photograph will either blow out the highlights or drop the shadows to black. Our iris can adjust to see the values in both (just like a well-done HDR image). So are we really reacting to the fact that this doesn't look like the images we have been conditioned with, or because it looks unrealistic in some other subtle way?
posted by spock at 2:23 PM on January 4, 2008


I turned this guy onto HDR back in April '06 and he's been experimenting with it ever since. I think he gets it. We both hate the "turn it up to 11" look of the Photomatix HDR crowd.
posted by spock at 2:27 PM on January 4, 2008 [2 favorites]


These would be a lot cooler if they weren't so small. :(
posted by patr1ck at 2:39 PM on January 4, 2008


Can someone explain to me, as if I were a six-year old with a limited vocabulary, what an HDR image is? I looked at spock's link, and I also did some Googling, and I found several explanations, all of which hurt my brain.

In layman's terms, what am I looking at?
posted by kbanas at 2:42 PM on January 4, 2008


HDR faking with Photoshop for the lazy ...

Image > Adjustments > Shadow/Highlight gives a similar effect with much more control and without looking flat.
posted by itchylick at 2:45 PM on January 4, 2008


They didn't have Shadow/Highlights when I learned Photoshop, young fella.
posted by smackfu at 2:53 PM on January 4, 2008


kbanas: combination of exactly same scene taken to make the really really bright areas show up (i.e. everything else is dark) and really really dark areas show up (i.e. other things are totally white). there is anywhere between 3 and n photographs taken to combine into one photograph.

the idea is that the human eye outside can perceive both darkness and brightness together; cameras can't. combining the two into one photograph makes it more "realistic" looking picture, except when people over do it. (like imho the photographer in this post did - they don't look real, and the actual idea behind HDR is to make it look more real).
posted by olya at 3:05 PM on January 4, 2008


* outside and inside. the difference is more apparent in outside photographs. see example between non hdr and hdr in the photographer that spock linked to.
posted by olya at 3:07 PM on January 4, 2008


They didn't have Shadow/Highlights when I learned Photoshop, young fella.

Yeah, I'm not sure what version that little feature popped up in. I just stumbled across it a few weeks ago myself.

(also, they didn't have layers when I started using Photoshop ;)
posted by itchylick at 3:20 PM on January 4, 2008


I'll nth the people who say overdoing HDR is a bad thing. I've been playing around with it and can honestly say that tonemapping appears best to my eye when it's subtle. It's actually more difficult to get a good HDR image than one might think, and I'm still at the stage where I'm not completely sure what I'm doing with it, but it looks like another interesting technique for the old bag of tricks.
posted by pjern at 3:30 PM on January 4, 2008


Thanks for the link, Plexi (and the photo Quidam linked-- fantastique). This thread is gonna lead me down a Photoshop rabbit hole.
posted by NolanRyanHatesMatches at 3:47 PM on January 4, 2008


Hey HDR haters, I hate to do this, but is this considered bad or good? I'm a little biased. Been playing with, basically, tone mapping via blended masks.
posted by notsnot at 5:30 PM on January 4, 2008


Thanks for the post. I like these. As an ex-New Yorker, I find many of them somewhat nostalgic. Also, with their eerie colors and stark stillness, they seem to represent a certain crystallized dream New York. A place separate from the actual New York.

I think this one is close to what was in my mind when I wrote this line:

there's just the stingiest sliver of a sky
plate glass windows capture the clouds


It's from a song about, yup, NYC, right here at MeFiMu, for those interested in giving it a listen. It's called Lexington Avenue Line.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 5:35 PM on January 4, 2008


Love the photos. Exaggerated HDR can make your blander photographs look like CGI or some sort of painting. Very pretty.
posted by IronLizard at 5:53 PM on January 4, 2008


HDR definitely has its place, but I mostly see it being useful for when it is impossible to get a decent shot just with a good fill flash.

It really does have a place for architectural photography, particularly when the view to the outside is an essential part of the experience.

I think this link (from spock's reference above) pretty well demonstrates why to bother.
posted by meinvt at 5:59 PM on January 4, 2008


On the backingwinds blog link above, if you click on any small image you will see a larger version.

To understand what HDR gives you, you have to know that almost any scene that you can shoot exceeds the dynamic range (bright to dark) of what your equipment can handle in a single exposure. For example, if you expose for the "middle" of a very high contrast scene, you get a decent picture but it is possible that the highlights are blown out (no detail, just white) and stuff in the shadows also lacks detail (no detail, just white). This can be true of an image taken on film OR digital.

Now imagine that you could take images of the same scene at different exposures (over and under the average exposure we were talking about above). You can: it's called bracketing. The problem is that you are "picking your poison". If you go to the one end you have more detail in the highlights, but more of your middle tones have now dropped into no detail/black. Or if you go the other way with your exposure (to pick up detail in the shadows) you are losing some of the middle ground to blown-out white. (Because the overall range of your equipment hasn't changed, you've simply picked what you want to expose for.)

But what if you could COMBINE the detail found in the over-exposed images AND the under-exposed images (with the first middle-ground image)? That's essentially what you are doing with HDR.

One other note regarding HDR with a digital camera: the average Joe shoots to get JPEGs, but a JPEG image is an image compression algorithm. In other words, it is throwing away information to get a smaller file size. Better cameras give you the ability to shoot RAW. A RAW image essentially contains more exposure information (giving you the ability to alter the "exposure" after the fact). Some people get most of the benefits of HDR out of just one or two RAW images. But most instructions will suggest you shoot bracketed RAW images to get a really big range of exposure information to work with.

That lets you do some really incredible range stuff, like this shot of Westminster Abbey at night. The photographer provides a short tutorial, here.

Keep in mind, that since you are normally bracketing multiple shots you are normally working with a still object and camera on a tripod. It isn't great for run and shoot situations, unless you are working from a single raw image to simulate the process.
posted by spock at 7:37 PM on January 4, 2008 [2 favorites]


This guy gets to use a digital back - one of the signs of the coming apocalypse i think.
posted by sgt.serenity at 10:21 PM on January 4, 2008


notsnot posted: Hey HDR haters, I hate to do this, but is this considered bad or good?

I don't think there is anyone on this thread that hates HDR. Many people do appreciate good HDR but the OP link is not good. IndigoJones asked what good HDR looks like and I can give a couple examples of favorites I have seen on Flickr here#1 and here#2. #1 is great because it does what HDR is supposed to do. It expands the dynamic range of an image unobtrusively but without making it muddy. The contrast in this picture is beautiful without blowing out highlights. Even floor areas which you would expect to be shadowy and dark have an excellent tonal range with beautiful details.

#2 is beautiful in its graphic qualities. It is much different than #1 because it doesn't try for realism but the composition, tonalities, and contrast are masterfully done. This was not a 5-minute job of a simple photoshop plug-in. It isn't amateurish and was well thought out before it was even shot. It is heavily done but it fits the subject and the scene.

Heavy HDR use should be used for specific shots that are dramatic. Jeff uses it strongly in scenes which are anti-dramatic simply for effect. If he would have picked his scenes and composition better it would go a long way to making the images work.
posted by JJ86 at 8:49 AM on January 5, 2008


Like any medium, there are good and bad applications of tone-mapping. Simply applying a tone-map on top of a digital photo does not make it more worthy as a piece of art.

These photos are OK. The skyscraper museum shot is interesting. But the subject has to be interesting to make any photo to work. What makes HDR/tone-mapping work is a photo that features a dramatic range of light.

Here's a set of shots that apply the tonemapping in a more subtle fashion.
posted by Jazznoisehere at 9:20 AM on January 5, 2008


I'm wondering what the Photographer to Prozac User ratio is - i think HDR and Prozac are kind of going hand in hand here, i could be wrong obviously (but i don't think i am) - but someone in a white coat with a clipboard needs to start grabbing people coming out of Calumet.
posted by sgt.serenity at 7:18 PM on January 5, 2008


(Thank you JJ86, much appreciated.)
posted by IndigoJones at 10:27 AM on January 6, 2008


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