what we've got

This is my take on how to create a HDR-type image using a single photo. It’s written for beginners, and will take you through the process from beginning to end. It’s likely to take 30 minutes or so first time, but you’ll get quicker as you repeat it. If you want to know what a HDR image is, there’s an excellent demonstration over at Wikipedia.

First of all, so you have an idea of the kind of thing that can be achieved, here’s the image I made earlier today, followed by the original.

This is the original photo, a JPEG of a round 3Mb in size, taken with a Canon Ixus 80 point-and-shoot:

I think this illustrates the first rule of HDR processing – start with a decent photo! It won’t transform a bad photo into a good one, but it might make a good one even better. (Bear in my that these images are downsized and saved into different formats so I can add them to this blog: trust me when I say they look better in their original, high-definition formats!)

What you’ll need

This isn’t a completely automated process, but it doesn’t take very long. You will need the following:

• A photo you’re happy with. It can be in almost any format. If you’ve already seen some HDR images, you’ll know the kinds of things that work well – high contrast landscapes, with dramatic skies and water are common – but try different images, see how well they work.
• Adobe Photoshop CS2. I understand the latest versions of Photoshop cannot generate HDR images out of the box. There are other HDR rendering software out there: many use and enjoy Photomatix, for example.
• I used iPhoto to adjust the exposure settings for the images, since it’s quick and easy and I’m familiar with it. Photoshop will do it too.
• A bit of time, since – depending on your computer’s processing power – these images can take a little while to render. I’m using an iMac running Photoshop through VMWare and it only took a couple of minutes.

Getting started

First you’ll need to generate three copies of a single photo with three different exposures (different levels of light and dark).

• If you’re using iPhoto this is easy. Open the photo in iPhoto and duplicate it twice so you have three photos in total. I prefer to make a new album or new event and put them in that so it’s clear what I’m doing.
• Now click on ‘Edit’ then bring up the ‘Adjust’ set of histograms (the graphs which show the different levels of exposure, contrast and so on).
• Set exposure for the first photo to -3; leave the second photo at 0; set the third one to +3. That is:  the first one is dark (-3); second one is normal (0); third one is light (3).

Now you’re going to need to start Photoshop for the next bit.

• Open Photoshop and open each image all together (select them all from the File / Open menu). They should by default cascade (organise) themselves onto the screen.
• With the photo open, choose File / Save for Web (it doesn’t matter where you start, just use the first one that you see).
• When you’re done with the first one, close it and start on the second. As you close it, Photoshop will ask you to save it: don’t: click ‘No’. You should have already saved it as ‘Save for web’. Save each each in turn like this.
• I make a new folder for ‘Save for web’ images, so I know what I’m doing – I usually add ‘_HDR’ to the end of the folder name and/or photos, so I can differentiate them from the originals.

If you want to know why we had to save them for the web, read the section ”Why save the files for web?’ below.

But for now -  you’re ready to make a HDR!

Using Photoshop’s ‘Merge to HDR’ to create your image

• With Photoshop open, choose File / Automate / Merge to HDR in the menu.
• It will ask you to find the images you wish to merge. Add the three that you have saved above. You don’t need to check the ‘Alignment’ checkbox since all images are the same.
• A dialogue box may appear which says ‘Manually set EV’. If it does, you’re going to need to set the levels for each photo manually in the ‘EV’ value box.
• To manually set levels, click on the ‘EV’ button. It will be active, ready for you to enter the levels. For the under exposed / dark photo, enter ‘-3′; for the normal photo, enter ’0′ (zero); for the over exposed / bright photo, enter ’3′.

When you’ve done that, hit enter. The dialogue box will disappear and another new one will appear in the top right.

• You can just hit enter here – don’t be disappointed with the image since it might not look much different – we’re not done yet!
• Now, go to the pull down menu and choose Image / Mode and then adjust the bit rate to 16.
• A histogram should appear, in a box titled ‘HDR Conversion’ (if it doesn’t, click the down arrow to open the part of the box). Now you’ll need to make some adjustments – this is the fun bit, and you’re getting nearer to the end result.
• From the pull down menu , choose ‘Local Adaptation’. The image will likely go very bright at this point.
• There is a point at the bottom left-hand corner of the histogram. Drag this point until it it meets the first of the major ‘spikes’ on the graph. As you move the point from left to right the image should become darker. Adjust the image to find the best balance of light and dark.

When you’re done, click ‘Ok’. The image will run through a final, brief conversion and voila – there it is.

Hopefully you’ll be overwhelmed with the result!

What to do next: improving and sharing your images

If you’re less than overwhelmed, this might be for a number of reasons. One is that the photos do not have sufficient levels of dark and light. To change these levels, go through the process from ‘Using Photoshop’s ‘Merge to HDR’ to create your image’ above, and choose a broader range for your values. So, rather than choose -3, 0, 3 try choosing -5, 0, 5 instead.

You might also try more photos at different exposures, to see if this improves the overall effect. You can make adjustments in Photoshop, including some of the automated ones if you’re uncertain what you’re looking for: use the Image / Adjustments menu and choose an automated adjustment there.

Experiment with different images. Some lend themselves better to this treatment than others. Try ones with quite a bit of contrast, natural scenes outdoors, perhaps some city lighting at night.

Look for subtle changes. Not all HDR images have to look completely different – sometimes the additional changes in texture can really improve a photo. Have a look here, first at the HDR image and then the original:

The image above has subtle changes in vibrancy, as well as major changes in the texture, giving it a more full-bodied feel when compared to the original, below:

When you’ve tried this, why not share your experiences below in the comments and add links to your images – I would be really interested to see how you’ve used this process, or tailored it to your needs and resources.

Follow me on Flickr (click here). I post often, including HDR images. This is one of the best ways of getting to see what other people are doing and asking questions, as well as sharing your work.

Why use this method?

We’re not creating a true HDR image using the technique I’ve outlined above but one that approximates its effects. The best way to take a true HDR image is to set up your camera on a tripod and take three or more shots of an identical image with different exposures. Even better – use a DSLR camera and set the file type to ‘RAW’. Only then will you achieve some of the amazing results you’ve probably seen online.

However, that is not always possible or even desirable. Sometimes we want to take shots with movement – perhaps they’ve got people in them, or traffic – and so using three or more images will be problematic, since we need them to be the same. What’s more, you can convert some of those old favourites you took before you knew anything about HDR!

Why save files for the web?

The problem we have is that Photoshop uses the EXIF data – the camera settings, date and time it was taken, etc – to help it decide how to automatically render the images to HDR. If you don’t strip out the EXIF data it will return an error, telling you there’s not enough range to create a ‘useful’ image. That’s because you’ve simply duplicated the photo and therefore all its EXIF data, and manually changed its exposure: each photo, although they look very different, will have identical EXIF data. So, we need to strip that out. There are several ways of doing this: I used Photoshop to do it.

Outline of this approach

If you know how to use Photoshop and iPhoto or just want a reminder, this is what I did in outline:

• Used iPhoto to adjust the exposure of three different images, from -3 to +3
• Save these three photos in ‘For the web’ format using Photoshop CS2, stripping out the EXIF data
• Rendered using Photoshop’s ‘Merge to HDR’ automated process
• Saved to 16 / 8 bit and adjusted the ‘Local Adaptation’ to improve the image.

Acknowledgments

Two websites were especially useful when going through this process: this one and this one. Without them, I wouldn’t have known where to start. Thanks!

I went to the new art exhibition at Lyon’s Musée des beaux-arts last weekend, on its first day of opening (by chance rather than through planning). Called ‘Picasso, Matisse, Dubuffet, Bacon… Les modernes s’exposent au musée des Beaux-Arts’ it is a chronologically organised history of modern painting and art objects, arranged in two dozen or so rooms.

The gallery itself is a beautiful space, full of clean and well-organised rooms with the work displayed well. Its floors don’t creak. It has lots of benches for sitting on and pondering. It has a cafe. What’s more, it has its fair share of the old masters and some fascinating ancient work, too. I was in love with the world when I wandered around – the city, the new experiences, the atmosphere on the streets, the food – had me besotted. Coupled with the fact that I’m no professional art critic, this could be an exuberant review.

But it’s hardly an exuberant exhibition – and is all the better for it.

Rather, it’s actually quite conservative in my estimate. On the whole, it’s a history of painting arranged chronologically and thematically. Artistic periods are linked with the era in which they appeared, or to which they referred. So, we have the ‘return to order’ grouping following World War II. In this room, history represents upheaval, to which the artists reacted by returning to order. Five or six paintings (and sometimes other art objects) represent this deliberately simplified approach.

The overall effect is to create an excellent historical primer, in which it makes it simpler to contextualise artists and their relationship with their wider world, to create connections, begin to make sense of those many movements, artworks, periods. It is as good as any art historical book I’ve read, and you do feel a sense of development both artistically and historically as you walk round.

Art as a mirrored reflection of society and its history is of course a very simplistic relationship and it’s one that is interrogated as the exhibition moves towards its final stages. In the final works of post-modernism, those very notions of a stable art, history and what they mean in relation are discussed in the artworks and the commentary that accompanies them. If you’re in Lyon – and why wouldn’t you be? – I’d highly recommend it.

We had snow in the mountains here this morning, a light dusting on the trees at the top. It was cold and grey and I expected more later.

But when I went out walking this afternoon I noticed that the snow in trees had melted, and the sky was blue again.

I watch the meteo for signs of snow here and elsewhere. Wintersports enthusiasts following the weather religiously, of course – there is great cachet being the first to snowboard or ski.

I went out on my scooter and found some excellent high ground to take a few shots. When I got home, excited to see them, I was very disappointed to see they all had a black spot in the same place. Here’s an example – you can see the blemish  in the centre-top of sky (if you look really carefully you’ll see there’s one on the left-hand side, too, about half-way up):

It’s easy to edit this culprit using iPhoto, Aperture or Photoshop for example. But I wanted a clean sensor. I went into the camera menu and locked the mirror and had a look. The sensor seemed to be covered in a grime, with a few bits of noticeable dust stuck to it. I read that this might be caused by the lubricating fluid in the camera, or atmospheric conditions. That’s it. I’m going to clean it, I thought.

At first I used a cloth I got with my spectacles along with their cleaning fluid, but I noticed that this left some lint behind and only removed some of the grime. So, I used a fake chamois leather, cutting down a piece or two to fit. I soaked a small piece in, ahem, vodka and buffed the sensor with with that, attached to the end of a blunted wooden kitchen skewer. Heath Robinson has nothing on me.

I wasn’t drinking the vodka at the time, in case you’re wondering why I might do such a crazy thing. I used an airbrush to blow the dust away, and some sellotape rolled into a ball to remove some of the lint from the housing, lint that I probably put there in the first place. I took some shots of the blank white wall, and some others outside at different exposures and so on, and – eventually – they looked fine. Phew.

It was touch and go for a while. But after spending hours disconnecting the lens, cleaning the sensor, blowing air into it, reconnecting the lens, taking some trial shots at different settings and plugging it into the Mac to get the photos visible, it looks as good as new. I did this forty million times by my last count, or it feels like that. Now, I’m not recommending you use an airbrush, vodka, or any of the methods I’ve used here: it’s your call, and if you’re worried, get a professional to do it.

Right, I’m off for a White Russian, since I’ve got most of the ingredients to hand.

Hmmm. A history of web browsers – that’s not a promising title, you might think. Well, you might be right. But whilst glancing through the browsers in this short well-presented history, I started to remember when I first use the web.

Ah, my first time: I used Netscape, probably around 1995 or so, where I used to work. We had a single PC – despite the fact that we sold and repaired them – sat on its own in the corner, as if on an altar. It was on dial up I think. Colleagues asked if I knew about the ‘world wide web’ – so revered was it back then that we often used its full title – and saying ‘no’, they invited me to have a go. The cursor blinked in a little box onscreen. ‘Just type in anything’, they said. So I did. I typed in ‘monkeys’.

Before long (although longer than we’re used to now) a list of monkey-related websites appeared. Nowadays, this event is forgettably commonplace, but then it felt an almost overwhelming experience. I tried again, thinking it might be a ruse. But no, entering something else – I have forgotten what I typed – worked just the same. We all looked at each. Nobody said anything.

And so looking through the list of browsers I’ve used is part informative, part nostalgia. There is probably a rule for technology nostalgia somewhere, following the numerous rules that have sprung up, but I’d like to suggest a new one: the cultural value of a new piece of technology can be measured in the length of time it takes to become nostalgic about it. The shorter the length of time the more valuable.

You can’t fool nostalgia – it’s red in tooth and claw when it comes to the survival of the fittest memory, an instinctively-driven evolution to save and remember those things that mean the most to us. For me, it was Netscape and the wonder of world wide web. What about you?

We’ve seen the trouble that newspapers are in, but unlike the recording industry who appear to be in more or less in the same boat, newspapers and their journalists seem to be doing something positive about it. Or at least they would do if their ideas were taken up. I spotted this article by Dan Gillmour in The Guardian which gets to grips with the real problems of fitting journalism into the post-social media landscape, in which he outlines 22 ideas that he would employ if he was in charge. We all think we can run the organisation that we love better. This is Gillmour’s version.

It does not (nor does it aim to) pose a complete solution to the problems that newspapers face since sales were challenged by the availability of news online and the changes in the ways that information is accessed and distributed. But some of it clearly takes on the influence of social media (or new media, if you prefer to underscore the opposition between the old and new). His second point, for example, incorporates crowd journalism into Gilmour’s idealised newspaper; later in Point 5, there is an emphasis on ‘conversation’ between writers and readers, that golden rule of contemporary social networking tools like Twitter:

5. We’d make conversation an essential element of our mission. Among other things:

- If we were a local newspaper, the editorial pages would publish the best of, and be a guide to, conversation the community was having with itself online and in other public forums, whether hosted by the news organization or someone else.

- Editorials would appear in blog format, as would letters to the editor.

- We would encourage comments and forums, but in moderated spaces that encouraged the use of real names and insisted on (and enforced) civility.

- Comments from people using verified real names would be listed first.

There is still an element of ‘interference’ rather than a wholesale laissez faire approach – someone has to judge the most valuable conversations, moderate forums, and so on – so some might feel it doesn’t go far enough. But this utopian view of post-social media newspapers represents a step in the right direction, even if its ideas remain, for now at least, just that.

Who else but Google would try to re-invent email? If you’re using Twitter you would have noticed that Google’s new innovation, called Wave, has been a trending topic for a what is forever in Twitter-time (a few days to you and me). After watching Google’s keynote presentation a couple of months ago, I was none the wiser – it was too long and I drif… hey, look, there’s a squirrel outside! Anyway, here’s something that lasts for a couple of minutes that will explain all for those in a hurry.

I like the idea of Wave. I’ve found that social networks like Twitter and Facebook offer lots of things that email no longer does. The notion of a public conversation clearly isn’t appropriate for all matters, and email is so embedded in many of our working practices that it will take a while to overhaul, but being able to collect and then replay conversations sounds fantastic, almost like twisting time itself. The subtle change in the interface that’s important: we’ve been able to track messages over time for a while, but using the slider bar means that you can see conversations evolve. I haven’t an invitation yet – it’s invite only – but I look forward to learning more when it’s made public. I’m especially interested how it might encourage learners to collaborate.

What this represents more broadly is another way in which we are using new forms of communication. Not just revisions to existing forms, but new ways of speaking to and reaching out to one another. And as Clay Shirky tells us wisely, when we change the way we communicate, we change society.

Songstress Lily Allen caused a stir recently when she said that piracy was killing music, or more specifically, up and coming musicians. There have been several interesting discussions of her idea, but none so effective or imaginative or just plain groovy as this one.

I like Lily Allen and I think she has a point, although in one respect I’m ambivalent: I imagine exposure through downloads might help bands, new and old. But I’ve also used services like Spotify without buying music as a result. And you have, too, I suspect. Evidence would be useful: how many people go on to buy after illegally downloading music tracks?

It seems to be that the music industry is having similar problems to the newspaper industry, where their existing business model no longer works because of the internet’s capacity for capturing and sharing. The issue isn’t about whether we should or shouldn’t be filesharing, though – not even DRM will stop it – but how the music business will react when they want to make money. Who said we do not live in interesting times?

I’ve just finished the final of three courses in my masters in online and distance education (MAODE) from The Open University (pending failure and resit, which right now seems horribly pessimistic). It feels good to finish, especially as I got married half-way through the first course and moved from the UK to Switzerland and then France at the beginning of the third course. My background is in American short story minimalism, so learning the approach, methods and practices – immersing myself in the new discourse, one might say – was in itself fascinating, before I even got started on the subject-related stuff.

Study can become addictive, so I’m wondering what I can study next. Perhaps a geology course might interest me, since I’ve become a bit obsessed by mountains; or there’s always photography? Or perhaps abandon formal study altogether. I’ve certainly decided to do this for the subjects that are central to my academic and work life. Not that there isn’t any more to learn: but I want to write and research independently. Shorter courses can broaden my learning in those areas that I’m inexperienced in. I might even doth some maths.

But for now, I’m weaning myself off study with the lighter but by no means less interesting The Great Courses ‘Museum Masterpieces: The Louvre’ DVD set, which discusses a selection of some of the great artists and their work. Then I’ve got their ‘How to Listen to and Understand Great Music’. And there’s French, too – and… well, almost everything I do seems to involve learning at some level.

I’ve my peers on H800 to thank for making it such a happy, interesting and useful experience. Many of us used Twitter for sharing ideas, tips and support. Now it’s a bittersweet feeling to symbolically close the Tweetdeck tab where I had kept a search for the hashtag ‘H800′ so I could follow what people were writing about it. Bye bye MAODE, hello everything else.