Hi Anirban

HDR images are created from at least three seperate images of the same subject which have a minimum of three different exposure levels.

For a three image set there is one for the shadows, one for the highlights and one in between.

These are then combined in such a way as to preserve the shadows, highlights and give the 'appearance' of a Higher Dynamic Range than the camera is actually capable of.

HDR is an illusion of a greater dynamic range.

In the case of the images you posted there has also been some adjustment to the parameters of the HDR process to give a higher degree of colour variation.

Here is an example of a HDR image and the three images used to create it without excessive adjustments.

John

Dear John an John,
Thanks for your kind suggestions and help. I have the following queries though:

1. Is there any necessity for HDR images these days with better editing softwares?
2. Don’t these images look like MAGIX Red Giant Quick options?
3. I have undertaken a similar project. Shot with my DSLR and the edited with a software called HDR Express2. But is not happy with the result.

Please help.

Regards.

Hi Anirban

. . . . Is there any necessity for HDR images these days with better editing softwares . . . .

Yes - the limitations occur before you get to edit the image - they are in the camera sensor - it has a limited dynamic range.

Assuming the camera stores the image as JPG then the image has already been processed in the camera using the parameters set by the camera manufacturer and has an even more limited dynamic range and colour gamut (total range of colours available) compared to the original data from the sensor. (RAW files store nearly all the unprocessed data from the sensor)

1. if you expose for the highlight tones to stop them burning out then the shadows lose detail.
    
2. If you expose for the mid tones - the highlights burn out but you get a little more detail in the shadows
    
3. if you expose for the shadows then the highlights can burn out totally  and some of the mid tones may begin to burn out

If the camera stores the image as RAW files then depending on the dynamic range of the scene you may not need to have differently exposed images - you can under certain circumstances recreate three images in the RAW conversion process - however you are still limited by the dynamic range of the camera sensor

Software cannot compensate for

1. loss of detail in the shadows - if the data is not there it cannot be reconstructed - in RGB terms the values are at or close to 0,0,0 with very little dynamic range to work with.
    
2. burnt out highlights cannot be recovered - there is no information on the relative levels to the rest of the image - in RGB terms all the burnt out parts have values of 255,255,255.

Any software that claims to do this is, IMHO, making guesses at what the relative levels should be and in many cases will result in totally false images.

As you can see in the original images you posted, the sky in the boat image has no detail at all, and no amount of adjustments the single boat image above will recover them. yet in the HDR image it is full of detail - this is a classic combination of three or more images exposed to give detail in the Shadows, Mid tones and Highlights.

. . . . Brightness / Contrast and Sharpness but is there any other option . . .

Yes in my image editting software there are the following adjustments available for Brightness and Contrast:

• Brightness / Contrast
• Fill light / clarity
• Local tone mapping
• Curves
• Highlight / Midtone / Shadow
• Histogram adjustment
• Histogram equalize
• Histogram stretch
• Levels
• Threshold

The ones I use most (in order of most useful) are:-

• Curves
• Histogram adjustment
• Levels.

Curves I use the most because they are not only good for adjusting light/dark and altering the relative levels of the tones in the image it is also very good for colour correcting.

. . . . edited with a software called HDR Express2. But is not happy with the result . . . .

The final result depends on the adjustments available in the software and the settings you used.

In the software I use HDR is divided into three steps:

step 1  Alignment - here I can set the alignments for the component images either manually or auto

step 2  Adjust individual images parameters

step 3  Final adjustment of new HDR image as shown below

Step 1          Step 2           Step 3  

HTH

John

Great explanations John, mainly the exposure the ones on highlighting shadow and tones.
You pointed out sensor as reasons. But my camera has APCS (CMOS Sensor). Is that not good enough?
I heard that good photographers hardly take help from editing softwares. They play all in the camera settings manually. Is this true? Does being too dependent on Photoshop or HDR software kills one’s creativity?
I thought that RAW is very high end quality; do I shoot with RAW instead of JPEG and does RAW HDR yield better results?
Any kind suggestions for such a software. I downloaded a free one called Fusion F1 HRD and Luminance HDR. Any ideas of them?

(PS: Is my experiment on the last picture decent enough)

Hi,

I am not sure that I see much value in this technique.  You can use Photoshop or Xara to generate these effects from pretty much any properly exposed image.  You can also generate them by just using the manual settings on any decent camera, so why bother with the multiple images?  I do agree that if you want to create these surrealistic style of images, you really should be shooting in RAW format or both jpeg and RAW, that way you have the best of both worlds.Consumes more real estate on your SD card but at least you have the option of how you adjust the image.

George

Hi
@ Anirban

. . . . But my camera has APCS (CMOS Sensor). Is that not good enough? . . . .

It is not a question of is it good enough.  The simple fact is that there are scenes which a camera sensor cannot cope with eg:

• Landscapes - the sky can be much brighter than the land and a single exposure cannot capture the entire range
• High contrast between sun lit scene and shadows
• Scenes shot into the sun or bright light eg portraits

@ George

Here is an example of a scene which is difficult to shoot and correct for while retaining detail and not amplifying camera noise in the shadows and there is very little detail in the highlights ie through the door

Here is a HDR composite image

from three shots the one above plus these two - exposure as above +/- 1 stop

    

Note the detail through the door windows  - this cannot be recovered from a single 'correctly exposed' image two of the door panes are burnt out..

In this sequence of images I could have done with a fourth image at -2 stops - unfortunately the camera used only allowed three shots with auto bracketing.  Alternatively I should have increased the bracketing to +/- 2 stops.

John

Some interesting points from both. But somehow I feel that shooting three images at three exposures actually help but that needs more expertise while dealing with the HDR.
John can you suggest what else other than sharpness, contrast and dark lines do I need to focus more for the HDR image?
Following is an example of myself with the HDR effect. Don’t think it is ok.

Hi,

You know, I totally misunderstood what was meant by HDR.  I thought it was trying to create a effect that was not actually present in the original image.  After reading John Baker's comments on auto bracketing, I realized that I just did not really get the qustion.  I use auto bracketing all the time, I just never associated it with the term HDR.  Perhaps I am technically challenged and not up on the latest terminology.  In the old film days, I used to do it manually, now with DSLRs you do it automatically based on camera settings.  I agree with everything John says.  I actually do go and change the setting to +2 stops if needed just to get the image right.  Sorry if my comment caused any confusion, I just thought that the question was to create a effect after the image was taken.  My bad.

George

Hi,

This has been a good and interesting discussion on HDR. My still camera, Canon Ti4, has an HDR setting, takes the three images and gives me the composite. I showed this to my wife but told her not to use this except in special circumstances, like a backlighting problem and with the camera on a tripod and nothing moving. She spent the day on a moving boat taking photos with the HDR setting. We have a hundred beautiful photos with ghost images. Oh well.

There is nothing that beats getting the best image possible. But with a video camera, I don't think that we can do HDR like with a still camera, so the only way that I see in MEP is to use the HDR gamma effect.

In my first post, I showed the effect of using the HDR gamma on photos, whilst trying to get something similar to what Anirban showed by adding in brightness and contrast.

For Anirban, in your last image that you posted of yourself, did you use the HDR effect in MEP or another program?

In case you didn't find it, here is the screen shot as to where HDR Gamma is located in MEP2014 Plus. I don't think that this is included in the Regular version of MEP.

I use this in many of my videos where the darker areas were underexposed due to some brighter areas in the shot. The action was in the shadows and I was able to bring them up using HDR Gamma without overexposing the brighter areas. I do get some graininess, but that is better than no video at all.

I use this effect occasionally on photos or I treat them externally with another program first, like Xara DPX10.

So far, I am satisfied with the HDR Gamma effect in MEP on my videos.

Hi

This is an interesting discussion and I use this feature in MEP a lot, given the limited dynamic range of digital camcorders it is invaluable. I wonder though that the effect Anirban is looking for is in fact using it in the opposite sense or an exaggerated way to what the rest of us are looking for.

I have pondered how MEP is achieving the effect after using the different settings of the 2 sliders. I have come to the conclusion that it is creating an Alpha mask from the image, inverting it, and placing it between an image above and below it, then darkening one and lightening the other. I did this to create the effect in very early versions of MEP with some success.

The blur control appears to be blurring the mask more or less because placing this slider in the wrong position gives an effect where objects being lightened exhibit brighter edges than is ideal, as in the cupboards in Johnebakers 2nd screen shot. Lowering the Blur slider evens the transition somewhat when using more than about 20 to 30 on the HDR Gamma slider.

All in all a great feature in 2014 but I am interested to hear others experience with it. As a result of it being available, I tend to underexpose my footage slightly when shooting to prevent the highlights from clipping, and then bring up the darker areas with HDR effect in the edit.

Cheers

Peter

Hi Anirban

Did you intend this question to be in the Photo section? It says in the heading that it refers to MEP.

Peter

@ George,
Appreciate your kind modesty and humble confessions. Rare to find these days.
No prob George, you are always a part of our gang !

@ John CB,
Thanks again for the help and the screen-shot. Unfortunately I don’t use the one that you showed but the MEP 18 where this facility is not there.  Can you kindly share a picture with this MEP 2014 for my reference?

@ Peter,
Apologies for the confusion. My question is under the Video segment. I use MEP 18.
I really LOVE the awesome idea of yours. Can I request screenshots please for a better understanding?

AND HERE GOES MY EXPERIMENT AS WELL.....

.

Hi all,

I see that the image in my first post was too large and the only way to see it was by opening the Dropbox file.

Here it is again, but this time it seems to work, I hope.

@Peter: I too would like to see your method. I think that I saw something in the manual or a tutorial on creating a mask for the regions, like the sky. I will try again with Xara.

@Anirban: Your last photo has a surreal effect to it. I believe that the main reason for HDR is just to bring up the shadows without affecting the bright areas. So if you are looking at surreal, then HDR may be a starting point. Anirban, it may be almost time to upgrade, to 2015 Premium. It includes several Red Giant effects.

@Peter and John EB: I think this should be moved to the MEP Discussion area, and not remain in the Q&A where it will get lost in the noise.

There is a neat effect in MEP2014 Plus/Premium which is not in the regular version, and that is secondary colour correction. Here is what the manual says:

Secondary color correction allows individual colors in video and image objects to be adjusted. The two layers, the front and background, are separated from each other using a mask. Both can be edited separately. The master layer may also be used to influence the overall image.

Below are 3 images in which I selected the blues of the sky and water, and then modified the colours.

In the first image, I modified the background to be somewhat purple (exaggerated to illustrate what can be done), so the blues were protected.

In the second image, I modified the foreground, that is the blues and everything else was protected. As you can see, there were some protected (bluish) colours on part of the boat. Too bad MEP doesn't have the same feature wiht the Color/Brightness effect.

In the last image below, I took the one above and added some HDR Gamma (43) to it. You can see the grass better. The really dark area below the boat is too dark and there is no information in photo to bring up, even with HDR Gamma at max. I left HDR blur, brightness and Contrast on default.

I see that my file is still too big. It showed up on my screen before I saved, so I thought it would show up in the message.

Here are the 4 images that were in the composite image.

Original:

Below: HDR at 90, note the halo around the upper edge of the boat.

Below: HDR 100, brightness 36, Contrast 90. Note the sky is more blue with more contrast, but I lost some detail in the shadows.

Below: Same settings as above but with the Pixelan RiseShine effect, making it look more surreal and like a painting. I added gloss to get the shine.

Hope these turn out ok this time. I should have cropped the edges as I did in the composite image.

@ John CB, 

Thanks for all the help mate. Please tell me can HDR be done in videos as well? And does the MEP 2014 Premium has this facility?

Finally other than the surrealism effect, does HDR has any more importance ?

(PS: Will moving to forum attact people. And the language is differnt.)

Here is an example of a HDR image and the three images used to create it without excessive adjustments.

John

 

Hi John,

Excuse the digression but can you (or others) check something out for me please. I'm following this thread with interest and learning stuff in the process. I opened your interesting example, impatiently waiting out the 4 s delay Magix have introduced recently. Then I used the back arrow in my browser (Firefox) to return to your post. But instead that gave me this message which never terminated:

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

In the software I use HDR is divided into three steps:

Hi John,

Learning a lot here!

What's the software?

Any chance of uploading those images to DB so that the detail can be seen please?

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Hi All

I moved the thread to MEP Discussion.

John C.B. - That halo effect is what I was referring to in my previous post. It can be reduced by moving the HDR Blur slider down to about 20 but don't go too low because the effect goes haywire because the mask inverts or something!

The Secondary colour correction as you have shown does allow for isolation of areas based on colour differences but it does not allow you to adjust Gamma or brightness and contrast as in my method I will describe below.

As I understand it, you can create travelling masks for video from the MEP timeline with the MX integration in Xara Designer but I do not have Xara.

Anirban - As you have an earlier version of MEP without the HDR facility in 2014 (which does work with video BTW), my method could be useful.

The method:-

1. Place the clip you would like to create the HDR effect on on the timeline and then duplicate it 2 times on the  tracks below aligned at exactly the same start position as the first track. Ungroup and remove the Audio tracks of the copies if you wish. 

2. Select the middle copy and apply Chroma Key > Alpha to it. This effectively turns this track into a black and white image where the darker areas of the lower track shine through and cover the dark areas of the upper track.  This then forms a Travelling Matte (or Mask) which follows the action of the video on the other tracks exactly and by brightening the bottom tracks image you can lighten the dark areas without affecting the highlights of the overall image in the monitor. Like wise by lowering the brightness (Gamma) of the upper picture track you can make the sky less blown out without darkening the dark areas in the monitor image.

Note: The little arrow that appears when you hover the mouse pointer near the start of the middle Alpha mask track should be pointing upwards. Clicking on the arrow will point it downwards or upwards which will invert the mask.

3. Play around with the Gamma and contrast controls and with the Video threshhold and Video level sliders in the Chroma key window, on the middle Alpha Mask track, and you can fine tune the mask to let more or less of the brightened darker areas from the bottom track through.

To get your head around the shape and extent of influence of the mask, a tip is to place say a red swatch temporarily under the bottom track then mute the bottom picture track to see the mask characteristics change whilst adjusting the controls in 3).

There is no limit to the number of effects you can apply to either the upper or lower track using this method if you want to make some surreal look to your video.

Peter

Peter,

Thanks for the tips on HDR Blur. I hadn't been playing with it as the word "blur" threw me off.

For the halo, I was actually trying to get it in order to more or less reproduce the halo that Anirban had in his initial photo. Normally I don't boost the HDR too much as strange things start to happen elsewhere. HDR blur may help attenuate this.

It would be nice to have the ability to modify brightness, contrast and gamma with a feature like the secondary color correction.

Xara is a great addition to MEP. I use it a lot, albeit not for making masks.

I tried out your chroma key method. Not quite as good as HDR, but with tweaking the parameters I can get close. I had never tried using chroma key this way, so thanks for this one.

This discussion along with a question from another potential Video Pro X6 purchaser inspired me to look at how the instruments in X6 can help with color correction. This was an eye opener. So now I'm learning about what it all means and the impact of modifying the various exposure and color correction tools. Seeing and understanding the instrument monitors helps greatly. Too bad they are not in MEP. I didn't know that there were "illegal" white and black levels for broadcasting. Larry Jordan has a good video about color (or colour, as we use in Canada and the UK) correction.

Is the following a minor bug?

An object is adjusted with HDR Gamma and/or blur. If another object is now selected (with Brightness/Contrast still active), its label misleadingly gets the HDR tag, even though the settings remain at default.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK

Terry,

You are right, the next selected clip says HDR. The HDR tag is added whenever you are on the Brightness/Contrast effect, even if you do nothing. It goes away if you do nothing and select another effect screen and do something like change a colour, and then undo it. Strange.

Terry,

You are right, the next selected clip says HDR. The HDR tag is added whenever you are on the Brightness/Contrast effect, even if you do nothing. It goes away if you do nothing and select another effect screen and do something like change a colour, and then undo it. Strange.

Thanks John. Duly reported as a minor bug.

--
Terry, East Grinstead, UK