How to Make HDR Photos

Published on March 25, 2008 by oxygen in Photography
How to Make HDR Photos

You have seen them, now you can make them. HDR photography doesn’t require expensive cameras or software, and it’s easy to learn.

You have likely already seen HDR photos on the internet. If you have, you will agree: they look stunning. What you may not have known is that making HDR photos does not require expensive equipment or software. All you need is a camera and software which you can download for free.

image source

An HDR photo of Trencin, Slovakia.

What is HDR?

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range. The dynamic range of an image is the scale between darkness and light. The dynamic range of a normal photo is limited. Depending on exposure, different parts of the actual dynamic range are revealed: a low-exposure photo lets you see the highlights, but the shadows are blacked out; a high-exposure photo lets you see the shadows, but the highlights are whited out. An HDR photo lets you see the whole spectrum of brightness, from the brightest to the darkest.

Preparing the Photos

In order to create an HDR photo, you need several photos of the same object with different exposure. Some cameras have the option to automatically do this, so check your manual. If your camera doesn’t have this option, you can still adjust the exposure manually (but make sure to use a tripod). 3 photos should be enough in most cases.

Using the Software

The best program for HDR is the strangely-named Qtpfsgui. This program is free and works better than many commercial HDR creation programs.

Once you download and launch the program, click New HDR and then open the images you took. Select “auto align images”, and then click next. It will take some time for the program to align the images with each other. After that, you will get a manual alignment screen, giving you an opportunity to correct any mistakes the program may have made (which is rare, but still possible).

The next step will show you some options. It is usually best to leave them as they are and click Finish.

Once the image is processed, you will see it, along with some options on the top frame (”Mapping”, and “Histogram”). They will let you preview how the image will look with different settings, but they won’t have an effect on the final result. The mapping mode that I think looks best is the “Linear” one. Once you are finished looking at the image with different settings, press “Tonemap the HDR” on the upper toolbar.

The Tonemap window has a lot of modes, each with their own settings. The ones I found to work best are the “Reinhard” ones. Be sure to experiment with the settings to find the ones which work best. Once you get a result you like, tonemap it with a high resolution, save it, and you are done.

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9 Comments

Nay, posted this comment on Sep 21st, 2008

Dont do it

Bill, posted this comment on Oct 4th, 2008

Yeah, don’t do it.

overkill, posted this comment on Oct 7th, 2008

Really, stop with the hdr.

Imacro, posted this comment on Dec 29th, 2008

I am really frustrated about hdr technology. I have been reading a lot for months just to make an hdr photo but I couldn’t. The reason behind that I think is the ambiguity in explaining” how to make hdr photos”. Moreover, I think there is some kind of exaggeration in showing the results, because I don’t think that those photos displayed in some websites are results of those explanations and tutorials. There is some kind of photo processing and colore treatment that they won’t tell any one about. Any way, maybe I didn’t understand the tutorials very well and I am putting the blame on people although I have been trying for months and I did a lot and a lot of trials. To be brief, I would ask some questions if you allow me:
1- What does it mean to take three photos with different exposures? Is it with different shutter speed or different EV values (+2/0/-2) or they are the same?
2- If it is three pictures with a tripod then how would they take hdr photos with moving objects? I have seen a lot of them. May be one raw photo?! I don’t know, but do you think that you may get such amazing photos with just treating this photo with some software.
3- I have Sony H50 and I want to use auto bracketing to take three photos, but the camera gives me(0.7/0/-0.7), I tried to change the EV value but I couldn’t, is there any way for that?
4- If I should use different shutter speed, what are the speeds should I use for the hdr?
Finally, would any one please give me the short and easy steps for making hdr, I tried the ways mentioned in most websites but I failed. I don’t think that the whole issue would take more than three or four short sentences. Those websites make it longer just to see there ads.
Sorry and Thank you so much for your time.

oxygen, posted this comment on Jan 1st, 2009

In response to Imacro:
1. Different EV values are normally used, although changing the shutter speed is also likely to work (but, high shutter speeds may reduce quality).
2. Several possibilities. They could use a camera with very high-speed bracketing (some go over 10 FPS). It could be “fake HDR”, such as a filter applied to a normal photo that makes it look HDR. They could also possibly use an expensive camera that has a relatively high dynamic sensory range that allows it to take HDR photos in one exposure.
3. Look in your manual. Any camera with bracketing should have a way to adjust the maximum and minimum EV values.
4. N/A, usually EV values are changed instead of shutter speeds. In fact, most cameras don’t have a bracketing mode that changes shutter speeds.

Also: Most unusual HDR images are usually the result of creative tone-mapping techniques. In the program, there are many tone-mapping modes that produce interesting and artistic results - as I said in the article, you should experiment with the settings to see which is best for the image you want to create.

Please post if you have any other questions

Imacro, posted this comment on Jan 6th, 2009

i am really thankful, and will not stop trying to reach this level of professionality.
again thank you so mucy.
bye.

Eric , posted this comment on Feb 1st, 2009

I have downloaded the Qtpfsgui and processed 3 images, after looking at the result, I was not impressed at all, it looked just any ordinary picture! So, I tried to save it anyways, and could not as this program does not offer any choices such as plain jpg or Tiff files, it has its own proprietary pictures extensions.
So, how do I save them???????

oxygen, posted this comment on Feb 2nd, 2009

I covered this in the article. If you want to save it as an ordinary image, you have to tone-map it. Tone-mapping is what makes the image look impressive and converts it to a normal jpg or png image. If you want to save it as an HDR file for further editing or to tone-map it later, you can just click “save as”.

Helmet, posted this comment on Feb 16th, 2009

Hi! I’m new in the photography-buisness and really want to learn how to make HDR images. I downloaded Qtpfsgui and got it running. Everything works fine but I got a bog problem with clouds: The auto-bracketing on my camera is to “close” to eachother, so I have to take the pics manually. The problem was that the clouds moved too fast, so i didn’t get to set my exposures without them moving and getting different pictures. How do I solve this problem? Am I too slow or is there any tricksI don’t know about? (I have an Olympus 420 btw.)

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