Factors Influencing the Effect of hdr Photography

It may the problem that most novice in hdr photography will meet when we start our hdr journey. We took three pictures of the same scene. One is overexposed, one is underexposed and the other is normal. We input them into one hdr software and combine them together. After all these, we will sit there to wait until miracle happens. However, the result is not always satisfying, though it may be true sometimes. It really made me upset at that time. I could not get over that or even tell why it was
so. By asking friends who are experienced in hdr photography and doing more practice, I finally recognize one problem. And I would like to share it with you now.

Photo editing software may be the first factor we will think of, but I do not think that it is the most important one. In my mind, editing method plays a more important role in this cases. As we can see, there are various hdr software that are recommended by various people, most have both advantages as well as disadvantages in certain fields. This time we will ignore the difference in various hdr photo editing software and focus on how to improve from our photo editing technique, which I think play a even more significant role in most cases. Before coming to talk about how to improve our hdr photos, we have to make clear one point, that is, combining photos is just one step of producing hdr photos and it is not the end. To some degree, we can say that combining is just the start of hdr journey. The following steps may vary according to different software.

 Now, I will take HDR Darkroom for example. First, we have to choose the type of tone mapping from the three modes, that is tone balancer, tone enhancer and tone compressor according to specific situations. Strength can be adjusted to decide the degree we want to apply. Next, we will focus on basic adjustment. Brightness, contrast, saturation, white and black are all basic aspects we will talk about when evaluating a hdr photos. We will not explain how to determine each option in details here. It is neither because they are unimportant nor because they are easy to understand and grasp. However, it is really difficult to conclude rules accepted by all or suitable for all. Personal experience obtained from exercises and personal preferences make a great difference to actual operation. For me, when I want to stress the hdr effect, improving the contrast and saturation can always be my choice. After that, color adjustment is the next step. It is often used when we want to tint certain atmosphere to original picture and give it our personal style. For example, to enhance the air of autumn, I always tend to give the picture a warm tone, which has a yellowish tendency. Besides, it is a great way to add certain special photography style, such as vintage and lomo.    Can you find other factors leading to the unsatisfying result? Maybe you can share with us right now. With more and more good suggestions, we will be more likely to create great hdr photos.