AG Schnozz wrote:
[snip]
> I've been doing some "HDR" stuff in The Gimp and PWP. Obviously
> not with all the fancy slider stuff, but it gets you mostly
> there. My biggest problem with what I've seen, though, is the
> inadvertant squashing of the mid-tones. However, my guess is
> that it has to do with idiotic use and not the program itself.
It's a bit of both. (Er, not that I'm calling you an idiot or anything,
AG...) Having been exposed to Royce's workflow (and his avoidance of
the relatively poor implementation of HDR in Photoshop CS2), the
software really has to be properly designed for the use of HDR, and
workflow and technique really matters. From what I understand, the GIMP
and Picture Window Pro simply don't have the chops to do full-blown HDR,
so anything you get out of 'em is gonna be a poor representation
(misrepresentation?) of the power and promise of HDR, just as with CS2
(Swiss Army knife software implementations aren't fair tests of what can
be done with HDR). There should be no "inadvertent" squashing of
*anything* in an HDR image unless you wanted it squashed. Period.
If you haven't done so already, I *thoroughly* recommend you give
Royce's article a boo:
http://www.naturescapes.net/072006/rh0706_1.htm
He's made a believer out of me.
Garth
P.S.: And LightZone's intriguing me more and more, but yes, as Gary
Faulkenberry noted, it does not have support for Olympus' .ORF RAW
files. I'm not too concerned -- I just convert to 48-bit TIFF using RSE
2006, and then grab it with LightZone. Works a charm. And identifying
and preserving the mids in LZ is almost mindlessly easy, once you get
the hang of it.
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