HDR means High Dynamic Range. It’s a way of processing a photograph so that it captures the fullest range of highlights and shadows in the original scene. All camera film and digital sensors have restricted dynamic range: the difference between the whitest white and blackest black on the screen or print is less than real life. HDR is a trick to increase the spread between shadows and highlights in an image by taking more than one picture of the same scene — one shot maximizing shadows, one mid-tones and one highlights — and then merging them into one unified picture with tremendous range. Of course, in practice it is not that simple or direct, thus the need for this very clear PDF book which will tell you step by step how to produce an HDR photo using Photoshop.<\/p>\n
The trick is useful especially for capturing photos of interiors, where, say, there is both a bright window and shadows on a face in one scene. With HDR you can see the patterns outside the window and details in the shadowy face. HDR is also used for twilight landscapes, and anywhere else where there is “tricky” lighting. My guess is that about half of the “best of Flickr” photos are ones that have been HDR processed. Indeed, the look of a high dynamic range is so common now that it is easy to detect, and some fuddy-duddies object to its “artificialness,” although all photos are artificial. Like any tool it can be overused and abused. Someday HDR may be built into cameras. Now, it’s a hack. A few websites, such as Stuck in Customs<\/a>, give basic intros to the procedure, although the process described at that site requires an additional software package called Photomatix<\/a>, which automates the method.<\/p>\n The better tutorial is available from O’Reilly publishers as a Short Cuts paid PDF. It gives superior step by step instructions, and does not require Photomatix software — it’s all done in Photoshop CS.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Photoshop hack for stunning images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"1","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0},"categories":[30],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2541"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2541\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2541"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2541"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kk.org\/cooltools\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2541"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}