HDR Photography Tutorial #2

admin — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 13:44:38 +0000

If you don’t know what is HDR, read my previous post “HDR Photography at River side” to give you better idea. The method was more “Manual”, it should be easier. How? Read on.

Auto Exposure Bracketing Trick

In fact, AEB should be use to generate image under various exposures. AEB or known as Auto Exposure Bracketing is a trick to force camera take same image with different exposure. Different DSLR model may work differently, suggest you to check out the operation manual. But too bad my Nikon D60 don’t have AEB!

Use AEB if your camera allows. Let’s say camera don’t have AEB and you don’t want to capture same image with previous method, what can you do? We have another method to generate different exposure on the same image.

RAW Image Format

What is RAW image? The name itself explain it is Raw image created by camera’s image sensor without process. Therefore are not ready for edit with bitmap graphic editor or printing.

Open the RAW image and adjust the “Exposure” with the help of Adobe Photoshop Elements 8. Save a copy each for exposure -2, 0, +2. Then generate HDR using Photomatix Pro .

My Two Cents

The fake exposure generate from RAW image has limitation. The quality and color not that satisfied when zoom in. Overall still acceptable. Acceptable means OK only, not that perfect.

Left one is HDR photo, right one is RAW image.

Take a look on the HDR mouse photo generated from RAW image. How you feel? Please give your opinion in the comment below.

Photo Vignette effect

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 03:44:22 +0000

Recently notice some beautiful photos with dark corner near edges. I thought it is DSLR filter effect. Wonder which type of filter could produce such nice effect to emphasize the theme?

I don’t know it is software tricks until I read Photoshop tutorial to create the effect with a few steps. I’m using Adobe Photoshop CS4 to create the effect.

Create Photo Vignette Effect

I create the effect just in 4 steps:

1) Open your photo > select Rectangular Marquee Tool > highlight your object.

2) Right click on the Photo > choose Select Inverse > Press “Q” on keyboard

3) Click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set to 62 pixels.

4) Press Q again (do not click on photo or anywhere at this point). Select Image > Adjustments > Levels, set your desire Output Level to left (smaller value means darker)

Want to see the differences between original photo and vignette photo? The 2nd Purple Flower with vignette effect produce better contrast and outstanding object for eye viewing pleasure.