This feature exhibits some of the best HDR photography here on deviantart. These gorgeous images are an amazing advancement in photography.

Rather than describe them all myself, I've asked the artists to doso.


"(forgive me for my bad english).

For my HDR I used Photomatix to create the HDR photo from three shots (-2, 0 amd +2 stops of exposure) and then I worked on in in photoshop. The shots were in colour but I'v desatured to increase the "hdr taste". I didn't use a tripod but only a holy "auto-alling" function in photomatix could help me to do this one. The lens used is a Peleng 8mm fisheye. The camera is a 350D."
-Pupazzaro-

I can't say that I have the most professional approach when it comes to HDR photography. For me, it is A LOT of trial and error, because not everything belongs in HDR, and if it does, not every photograph is post-processed in the same way. I guess my first advice would be to treat every photo as an individual project when shooting in HDR. It does take more time than a regular photo, and it takes a lot of creativity. My method is to upload and merge the photos using a program called Photomatix, and make any adjustments in photoshop. The adjustments that need to be made vary depending on the photo. Sometimes levels, sometimes contrast, sometimes color balance, or sometimes a simple touchup.

Aside from this, I can't give much more advice. Like I said, I'm no professional by any stretch of the imagination, and I learn a little more every time I process an HDR photo.
-nny-

"This photo was done by taking 3 bracketed exposures with 2 stop intervals in shutter speed and a constant aperature of f5.6. But then all I had was a few different images, so I merged them using Photoshop CS2. In PSCS2, I used the HDR dialogue box under "automate," and selected the images I wanted to be merged. Now that my image is merged, its basically just a 32 bit, floating point image, which is almost completely unusable in PS. I then switch to 16 bits, because thats the most range I'll need in the DR values to create an nice image.
I can't say that I really have a favorite HDR image, but I think that all of these other images in the journal are quite good.
For me, the allure of HDR photography is it allows us to see greater depth in our environment than we would be able to see with our naked eye. Its not just capturing, but enhancing and creating.

-Patrick Lewis (=ThePatriarch)"

"I am thoroughly enjoying the 'New Look' that HDR enables. The eye has a fine dynamic range. Film very small. Digital a touch more. HDR toning and mapping is a true digital darkroom beting the range of the eye. I have got lazy and typically use my Canon's three brackets 2 stops apart. However, with patience I will go for up to 10 shots, one stop apart. I use Photomatix to merge and map. A tip- use a very solid tripod, mirror up, cable release - so shots are cleanly aligned."

"[link]
this is my favourite HDR piece and i did the conversion over CS2 on local adaptation method. i work on 8bit and this was done hand held with 3 images bracketted at 2 stops apart. the local adaptation method is just to get the basic merging of this image and doing so, i tweaked the curves to get the exposures that i want. after that's done.. i polish is up again on CS2 working on the curves and adding contrast and some burning and dodging on desired area. i tweaked the color tones as well cause i like the desaturated look of an old builiding. well that's jus abt wat i can remember.

Shahran [aka janrystar]"

"To start with a tripod is very important. I've experimented with freehand HDR, and it just doesn't work out so well. Most digital SLRs have a feature called auto-bracketing, which allows you to just hit the shutter button 3 times to take 3 shots at different exposures. This makes it a lot easier to take a few shots without accidently bumping the camera while changing the exposure.
After merging the RAWs to HDRi in photomatix using the batch processing option, i re-opened the file in photoshop, tone mapped it in there using the tone mapping plugin (made by photomatix as well), reduced to 8-bit color (tweaking the exposure/gamma as i did so), used brightness/contrast to accentuate the lighting a little, and unsharp mask to bring out more detail.

-your friendly neighborhood egg"