Book in Barnes and Noble

Yea! it’s very exciting to see it has finally arrived. I visited a Barnes and Noble book store and my book was on the shelf. I whipped out my camera phone and took a shot:

In my book “Complete Guide to High Dynamic Range Digital Photography” there are 5 contributing artists. Have a look at their amazing images on flickr and you will realize why they are internationally recognized in HDR photography. Not only is their work phenomenal but they are all wonderful people. A big THANK YOU to the contributing HDR artists, Trey Ratcliff (Texas), Asmundur Thorkelsson (Iceland), Valerio Pandolfi (Italy), John Adams (Florida) and Domingo Leiva (Spain).

The book not only displays their work but it also includes a statement from them about HDR, what it means to them and how it inspires them. This is a “How to” book with coffee table qualities.

If you already have the book it would be great to get some feedback. Please feel free to write a review at any one of the bookstores: Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Borders

For any questions feel free to drop me a note: ferrellmc at comcast net

HDR and Color Cast

After you process your HDR image you might notice a color cast when you compare it with the 0EV image. When I use Photomatix to process my HDR image set I can usually detect a warm/reddish color shift. No problem, you can use cooling filters or fiddle with the “hue” in the hue saturation adjustments or you can try Tim Grey’s method www.timgrey.com.  He applies it to single shot images but there is no reason why it can’t be applied to HDR images.

Open Image
Dup the layer (Ctrl-J) (Cmd-J)
Go Filter>Blur>Average  (this is the average of all the pixels and is displayed as a solid color).
Go Image>Adjustments>Invert  (this inverts or is the complimentary color)
Change blending mode to Color  (reduce opacity, usually to about 25 and add color saturation back)

Below is an HDR image that has undergone the process and to see the before would not be very dramatic as the color shift is slight. The above steps reduced the blue cast to the image.  To see how this technique can correct an extreme color cast I’ve shown a before and after of my daughter, Brooke (single shot). I left some of the warm tone by reducing the opacity to 20 because she likes the golden tan.

Flash Merging

Here is a Flash Merging example taken with an SB-800 Nikon flash triggered off camera. Four images were taken with the flash held in a different position for each image. I loaded 16-bit tiff’s into Photomatix with the “Exposure Blending” option and blended using the “Highlights and Shadows – Intensive” choice. Its good to play around with all the Photomatix choices and see what you like the best. I even decided to go back and eliminate an image and try a combination of just 3. After I saved the final blended image, I followed with some cloning of the grayed reflections in Photoshop then added curves and color saturation.

You can see some more examples of flash merging in the Strobist group on flickr: HERE