How to Create High Dynamic Range Images

LIMITATIONS OF EXPOSURE BLENDING

In addition to the Powerful Tone mapping tool, which works on true High Dynamic Range images, Photomatix includes a handful of "Exposure Blending" tools, which also combines LDR images, but in a more traditional way of merging the shadows and highlights from two or more source images, without generating a true High Dynamic Range "neg" to be tone mapped. After my initial experiments with the waterfront mansion images that opened this story, I was unimpressed with the results of the tools offered under the Photomatix "Combine" menu. None of the H&S (Highlights and Shadows) combining methods produced results that I'd willingly share with other photographers -- the results looked like awful dodging and burning jobs or bad layer mask compositing! (See right)

I tried to salvage one of the Combine menu Exposure Blending methods (H&S Auto) in Photoshop by adding saturation to give the ultra-vivid look I was trying to obtain, and added an S-Curve for improved contrast. The final image is noisy, and the sky shows noticeable banding. It's safe to say I was not at all impressed with these "Combine" methods. Sure, they are a lot easier, but the results didn't come close to tonemapping a merged HDR image, at least in my initial experiments. (See below)