Practical HDR: A complete guide to creating High Dynamic Range images with your Digital SLR [ペーパーバック]

HDR photography is a fairly complex subject. As an amateur photographer of several decades experiences, I've often encountered situations where a single photograph simply cannot capture both highlight and shadow detail. "Practical HDR" does a good job of explaining the basic problems with photography compared to vision, though it gives shorter shrift to RAW format in discussing this than it really should. Truth is, RAW captures 2-3 more Exposure Values of dynamic range than normally appear in JPG images, since the in-camera tone mapping tends to compress highlight detail severely to enhance mid-tone contrast.

As "Practical HDR" rightly points out, there simply is no easy solution mapping a high dynamic range image to ordinary monitors and prints. Any global change you make will sacrifice contrast in one range in order to enhance it in another, which is why standard tone-mapping throws away highlights. The best solution is to treat each area of the the image separately, emphasizing different luminance ranges in different parts of the image.

The book explains bracketing exposures, a familiar concept to many photographers even if they aren't attempting to create a HDR image, and the basics of using three programs: Photoshop (CS2 or later), Photomatrix Pro, and FDRTools. However, "practical HDR" rarely goes much beyond what you'd learn from the manuals for these programs. Time and again, the book does little more than describe the purpose of program sliders, and tell you to play with the slider until you get a result you like. I could have figured that out on my own, thank you.

Toward the end of the book, "Practical HDR" dips briefly into photoshop techniques such as the Curves tool and blending two images using a layer mask. Both are extremely basic looks at fairly hairy subjects - it's very easy to end up with a highly artificial looking result when using layer masks if you aren't careful about transitions.

For a book that is often concerned about aesthetics, the book itself makes some highly questionable ones. The print is often a hard to read white-on-black, and sometimes there's a faint photographic background behind the text making it even more difficult.

There's also something of a coffee-table aspect to the book. Despite ostensibly being about instruction, there are roughly 40 pages of photos in the 160 page book which have no accompanying discussion at all. "Look at what I did" is hardly helpful for a photographer struggling with HDR when you don't explain how you reached that result.

Sometimes the book skips over vital steps. In one example, a very drab looking intermediate result becomes a vibrant final result, and the book simply says "I applied a strong 'S' Curve to expand the tonal range." This is extremely counter-intuitive, since he earlier deliberately compressed the tonal range. I strongly suspect the improvement has more to do with the author's skill with the Curves tool than anything else, and the result is an example that isn't very helpful to the reader.

If you've never done a bracketing exposure, or examined the histogram on the back of the camera after a shot, you'll get more out of this book than I did, since it will serve as an introduction to those concepts. If, however, you're looking for solid book on how to merge highlight and shadow detail in an image without losing overall contrast, you will be as disappointed as I was.

- Gus

A physicist acquaintance who specializes in digital imaging tells me that increasing resolution or reducing noise in digital sensors are much easier problems to solve than extending the range of light of sensors to equal the human eye. In the unlikely event that you are a serious photographer who has been waiting for the dynamic range of digital sensors to increase rather than deal with high dynamic range (HDR) it would be better to get over it. This book is an excellent place to start.

Nightingale's book is divided into chapters that include understanding dynamic range, shooting for HDR, merging bracketing sequences, creating photo-realistic and hyper-real HDR images, and post-processing.

The author recognizes that there are many HDR software packages on the market and rather than try to describe them all, he only touches on three. They include Photoshop, which at least as far as the CS4 version he dismisses as not very useful, and the quirky but occasionally useful FDRTools. The lion's share of the instruction is devoted to Photomatix Pro, which is rapidly becoming the standard for HDR. Unlike several other texts, he explains what each of the sliders and buttons in Photomatix does and what compensating adjustments have to be made if you select one of the more specialized sliders. He also covers post-processing of HDR images in Photoshop at a level of detail sufficient for those familiar with Photoshop to clean up the HDR image, rather than just suggest the tools that might help. He also provides several examples that give detailed step-by-step explanations of how he used the options available in both HDR software and post-processing and the reasons he selected those settings. Sprinkled throughout the book are HDR examples created by several expert photographers.

Nightingale writes concisely and clearly. I particularly liked that he distinguished between images where the range of light was extended but the images remained realistic, and HDR images that seem almost surrealistic and more like illustrations than photographs. The author shows you how to create both types of image, and clarifies which controls lead to which results.

Although this is one of the best books about HDR that I've encountered it is not perfect. For example in capturing images, I've found that it pays, not only to insure that the bracketing images are made by varying the shutter speed rather than aperture, to keep the same depth of field, but also to turn off auto-focus and auto-white balance to prevent too much variation from image to image. Moreover, when it comes to processing, other than to refer to FDRTools' capabilities to deal with motion between bracketed images, there is little other discussion of the motion problem. On the nice-to-have level, it could have been useful to deal with tools like Photomatix Pro's Lightroom plug-in which extends the utility of the software. Similarly, providing images that were downloadable or on a disk might have made it even easier to follow the examples, especially with available trial versions of the HDR software.

Nevertheless, I still find this one of the best books available on the subject, and I intend to keep it in the small library of books next to my computer to which I regularly refer.

I've been using HDR techniques in my nature photography for quite a while. Anytime scene dynamic range exceeds the dynamic capture range of the camera's sensor, you are going to have sacrifice either lights or darks (or a little of both). In nature photgraphy, it is quite common to encounter this situation when part of your subject is in full sun and part in shade. If you want to capture this wide dynamic range, you will eventually turn to using some tone mapping software.

This book covers three tone mappers: Photomatix, FDR Tools and Photoshop. While this book does not cover all the avilable tone mappers, the first two are noted for their ability to generate high quality natural looking images. Photoshop is covered as well, I suppose because a number of photographers will already have a copy. Photoshop is probably the least capable of the three as far as tone mapping is concerned. On the other hand neither of these tone mappers produces a 'final' image that would not be improved by some post-processing in Photoshop. As pointed out in this book, there are some advantages to pre-processing raw files (to TIFF, for example) before opening in any tone mapper. So it's best to think of HDR tone mappers as part of an HDR work flow that includes Photoshop (or other image editor) at both ends.

I have had a chance to review three previous books on HDR and this one is so far the best. I have some quibbles with this one as well, but as far a getting started in HDR photography, this is the best. It includes both processing for a natural look, as well as the 'exotic' HDR that is more commonly seen. The use of particular controls in each software package's interface is well explained (unlike some earlier books) and will give you a very good start. It must be noted that in HDR software, there is little in common in regard to what each control is named and what it does. So these explanations are necessary.

The quibbles: Chapter 4 is about creating 'Photo-realistic images' and Chapter 5 is about 'Hyper-real images'. The detailed steps in using Photomatix's Details Enhancer is covered primarily in Chpter 5 although I find it much better for photo-realistic images. This may also be true for FDR Tools, although I do not use that particular tool. So be sure to read both chapters before applying to your own images. I would have liked to see more material related to pre-processing raw files in preparation for tone mapping. For example, I find it much better to remove chromatic abberation, and set white balance in Camera Raw, saving as TIF, before beginning the HDR processing. Next, I would like to one of thes books actually provide downloadable versions of the images used so you can follow along with the examples in the book. One thing all these books point out is that images respond very differently to tone mapping, and there is a good possibility that your images won't respond like the images in the examples. And finally, there are a number of images by noted HDR practitioners at the ends of chapters, and although pretty, they are not accompanied by any explanation whatever of how these tools were used. So mostly filler of sorts. (But check John Maslowski's images on page 81 for what I would call true photo-realistic images.)

The good points: The book expects you to have a good working knowledge of your camera. There is none of the 'what camera to buy' or 'what lens to use' found in some other HDR books. It fully explains what your HDR exposure sequence should look like, whether your camera has a built in exposure bracket function, or you have to work in manual mode. (And a DSLR is not required; any camera with a manual mode and histogram display will do. A tripod is required in all cases anyway.) The images are reproduced is a larger size that lets you see what's happening.

If you are interested in HDR images, download and install the trial versions of the main two described, then include the trial versions of the other tone mappers mentioned on page 157. Prepare several HDR exposure sequences, and try each. Follow the steps described in this book with Photomatix aand FDR Tools. Then work with the others. Your only cost at this point is the book; the trial versions are free.