rf-photography.ca

I received an email from a representative of the New York State Museum about an upcoming exhibit they’re hosting of landscape photos of New York State asking if I’d help spread the word.  The text of the presser is copied below.  My only caveat would be; if you want to, to verify what rights you may be signing away by submitting images.  There’s a Terms of Use on the submission link but you may want to check that there is nothing additional that you may be granting them.

State Education Department/University of the State of New York/Office of Cultural Education

New York State Museum   News

MADISON AVENUE, ALBANY, NY  12230

FAX:  518/486-3696

Contact:

Joanne Guilmette

518/474-8730

Jguilmet@mail.nysed.gov

NYS MUSEUM INVITES PHOTO SUBMISSIONS FOR UPCOMING EXHIBIT

ALBANY, NY — The New York State Museum is inviting the public to submit their digital photographs of scenic New York State landscapes, the best of which will be showcased in an upcoming Museum exhibition and displayed on the Museum website and Flickr page.

Scenic landscapes exist in every corner of New York State and are often found on picture perfect postcards that read “wish you were here.” The State Museum’s exhibition, Wish You Were Here! New York State Photographed by You will open in the State Museum’s West Hall Corridor on September 3, featuring a selection of the best landscape photographs submitted by the public. These can be photographs of a beloved vacation spot or even the backyard, neighborhood street or other favorite place. Images chosen for the exhibition, as well as others that are submitted, will also appear on the Museum’s website. Photographs will still be accepted after September 3, since new ones will continually be added to both the gallery and website.

Wish You Were Here will complement another exhibition in the Museum’s adjacent West

Gallery –   Not Just Another Pretty Place: The Landscape of New York. Also opening on September 3, this will be the first exhibition of landscape art to be culled from the Museum’s vast collections.

Those wishing to submit photos for Wish You Were Here will find further information at

www.nysm.nysed.gov/wishyouwerehere.

The New York State Museum is a program of the New York State Education Department’s Office of Cultural Education. Founded in 1836, the museum has the longest continuously operating state natural history research and collection survey in the U.S. Located on Madison Avenue in Albany, the Museum is open daily from 9:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. except on Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s Day. Further information can be obtained by calling (518) 474-5877 or visiting the museum website at www.nysm.nysed.gov.

I received an email from the folks behind Photo Engine a few weeks ago telling me they were going to be launching a new software package that did HDR and a whole lot more and asking if I’d be interested in being part of the beta group. Sure, I said.

I’ve been playing with the software now for a couple weeks. What follows is essentially a review like others in the series but keep in mind that things could change since this is only the first beta of the program.

I’ll say upfront that Photo Engine is a very complex piece of software. It takes a bit of time to get a feel for it. There’s some terrifically complex coding in the background related to the HDR Relight feature to be sure. In general, while what I’ve seen so far is looking like it’s going to be a very good program, there some complexities and features that are superfluous and attention could have been paid elsewhere. More on that as we progress.  I also think that some of what’s in this software is geared toward CG artists and may not be a lot of use to photographers.

There’s a particular feature of Photo Engine that I haven’t tried yet and that won’t be covered in this preview.  It’s the HDR Relight feature.  I’ll state upfront that I’m a bit skeptical as to the applicability of this for photographers – it may be one of those aspects of the software that CG artists will use more – but will keep an open mind and reserve final judgement till I’ve had the chance to try it out.

On opening the software, you’ll see a GUI that has a screen with a lot going on.  There are three basic components of the app. as shows in the upper right corner – Browse, Edit and Help.  Browse is the default window.  This is where you select your files to work on.  A screenshot is below.

For file types the application can make use of, you’ll see a picture thumbnail.  For others, you’ll get a text thumbnail.  Down in the bottom section are a list of recent Photo Engine projects (using the proprietary .rcd file type) which have been worked on.

You’ll see in the screenshot above that .hdr files don’t have a picture thumbnail.  While the program can read Radiance file types, it can’t display the thumbnail.  OpenEXR files won’t be listed at all because the program can’t work with those.  32 bit TIFF will have a thumbnail with an exclamation point because while it can read and open ‘normal’ 8 or 16 bit TIFFs, it can’t work with 32 bit TIFFs.  Nor can it work with PSD files at all.  I’d suggest the lack of support for a wider range of 32 bit files is a negative for Photo Engine.  While we’re at it, while Photo Engine can read 32 bit Radiance files, it can only write 32 bit files in its proprietary .rcd format.  This makes Photo Engine essentially incompatible with other HDR or image editing applications on the market.  While I understand that the folks at Oloneo are trying to produce a ‘one stop shop’ software application, not building in cross-platform functionality is a big negative.

Opening a single file to work on is as simple as double clicking.  Opening a bracketed series to merge and tonemap is a bit different.  First you select the respective files in the browser using Shift + click or CTRL + click.  Next, in the window on the upper right titled Project Image Selection you click Add.  This moves all the selected files into the project window where you can work with them further.  To begin creating a high dynamic range document, move down into the HDR Tonemap window, select Auto Align or not, then click Create HDR Tonemap Project.  If you’ve added only the images you need for a single merge, there’s no need to highlight the images in the Project window.  If you’ve added images for more than one merge, you’ll need to highlight the ones you want to include before clicking the Create HDR Tonemap Project button otherwise all the images in the Project window will be used.

You’ll notice in the top of the Browse screen in the middle is the typical … icon to open a location and select files.  You can also use the dropdown menu and select by file or by folder.  As you open and work with various folder locations, these will be stored in this dropdown menu and you can select from a recent location quickly without having to go through the folder hierarchy again.  If you’re working with RAW files, the program will give you thumbnail previews, but these do take a bit of time to appear.

Once the files begin to merge, you’re taken to the Edit window.  You can switch back and forth between Edit and Browse without affecting the current merge.  In the Edit window, your tonemapping controls are on the right and your edit history is on the left as seen in the screenshot below.

There is no multiple monitor support.  While the image on screen is fairly large if you’re using a larger monitor, it would become relatively smaller on a smaller monitor.  Adding multiple monitor support so that the edit and history windows could be moved to a second screen would be beneficial.  Similarly, in the Browse screen, having all the supporting windows on a second monitor would be a good idea.

Based on my work thus far with Photo Engine, I’d suggest the Advanced Local Tonemapper is the way to go.  The difference between it and the regular Local Tonemapper is the addition of the Detail controls which can prove useful.  There are also Auto Tonemapper and Globabl Tonemapper options but these provide little user control and less than pleasing results generally.

The variety of controls available in the Edit window is quite extensive.  At the top are the usual tonemapping controls.  Moving down there are LDR adjustments, a white balance panel, print toning and below that very fulsom colour controls.

In addition to the white balance panel on the right, at the top there is an eyedropper which can also be used to select white balance.  I find the eyedropper to be quick and effective.  Activate it then click in the image on a white, black or neutral tone to set your WB.

The Photographic Print Toning panel is one of those aspects of the software that, to me, seems superfluous.  While I understand Oloneo is trying to give users a one-stop shop for image editing, I think it highly unlikely that advanced users are going to do print toning in this application.  Particularly when there’s no print module in the app.  If I want to tone an image for printing, I’m going to do it in Photoshop where I have significantly more control over the final outcome.

Below the print toning, there’s an Advanced section.  Here are where the colour controls are.  Two curve adjustments are available – Brightness and Saturation.  If you right click on the curve in either panel you’ll be presented with 3 options.  Bezier Spline, Catmull-Rom Spline and Linear.  What the ……?!?!  Here again, is where the developers may have gone a bit overboard.  None of these, on first blush, looks like the curve adjustment we’re used to in PS.  Ignore Linear.  It produces a non-smooth curve that is nothing like what we’re used to.  Catmull-Rom looks more like the standard PS curve adjustment but the interpolation between points is different.  That leaves us with Bezier Spline.  And this is the one that will work like the PS curve photographers are used to.  You can add points by clicking on the line and dragging.  What about the tangents on the curve?  These will adjust the slope of the curve locally.  Might be useful from time to time.  If all you want to do is get the ‘standard’ S-curve, click on the tangent arrow of the top point and drag it up.  Next click on the tangent arrow of the lower point and drag it down.  Voila, your standard S-curve contrast adjustment.  If you click to add points on the upper and lower sections of the curve and drag these, you’ll get something similar to the standard PS curve but not quite the same.  In this case you’ll probably want to move the upper and lower tangent points as well to make the curve smoother.  Lengthening or shortening the tangent lines will change the inflection point of the curve.

As noted above, this level of adjustability is more than most photographers are going to want.  Keeping in mind my earlier thought that this software is meant for both photographers and CG artists and doing some research into these various curve types, it does seem that these curves will be more familiar to those working in the CG world.

The Brightness curve works like the PS curve in the Luminance blend mode; affecting brightness without colour.  The Saturation curve below that begins making colour adjustments.  The bottom section of the curve works on areas of lower saturation while the upper section of the curve works on areas of higher saturation.  Dragging down or up will reduce or increase relative saturation levels respectively.

Below that are individual adjustments for Hue, Saturation and Brightness (Luminance).  The spectrum for each is split with a line for each colour/hue.  Clicking and dragging the point on the line adjusts saturation, brightness or hue for that particular colour, isolated from the rest.  Right clicking on a point and selecting ‘Free Mode’ allows you to move the position of the colour line left or right along the spectrum, effectively changing the relative relationships between the various colours.  Perhaps another bit of superfluousness.  While an interesting adjustment to have available, I’m not sure how much photographers are going to use it.  The adjustments that these controls make are precise; however, so the controls are effective.

The last thing to mention is the history panel on the left.  Like the history panel in PS or LR, a record is kept of each adjustment you make.  You can undo one thing at a time or several.  Like in LR (unlike in PS), if you save the file in the proprietary .rcd format, the edit history is stored as well so when you open the file in the future, you have access to everything you did previously.  This is only true if you save in the .rcd file format; however. Right clicking on a history point will allow you to add a comment or edit an existing comment.  Perhaps useful if you want to recall why you used a certain setting in the past.  You can also create an edit version (similar to the LR Snapshot) which you can come back to in the future.  If you create an edit version, then back up in the history to change something, you lose your version.  This makes the version feature less useful.  Versions should be retained so they can be brought back at any time (like the LR Snapshot).  The Play button steps through all the edit history from start to finish automatically.  This would be useful for creating tutorials.  You can have the playback stop each time a comment is found as well so the comments can be used to explain certain steps or processes.

Photo Engine is a colour managed application.  When you save a file you’ll be presented with a dialogue to tag it with a colour space (sRGB, AdobeRGB or ProPhotoRGB), a bit depth (if saving as a TIFF), a compression type for TIFF and quality level for JPEG and a resolution.  If you want, you can also add copyright information into the file. The program defaults to the .rcd file type for saving.

There are no text help files installed with the program, nor are there any on the Oloneo website.  The help comes in the form of video tutorials.  While a nice supplementary form of help, a text help file where people could search and get quick assistance would be beneficial.

There are no preferences to be set in Photo Engine.  Rather than having to choose what file type, bit depth, colour profile, etc, each time a file is saved, it would be preferable to have these established as user defaults which can be overridden if desired.  This would speed the workflow process.  In addition, there is no possibility; that I can find, to save tonemap settings as presets.  Particularly given the varied and complex adjustments available, the ability to establish presets would be beneficial.

How’s it all work?  Examples are below but generally, pretty well.  Overall, speed is good and comparable with the other top programs on the market.

First the realistic result of the existing HDR image.

Colour and contrast are good.  The blue in the water is well controlled.  Overall, a very good result and one that wouldn’t need a lot of additional work.

Next the surreal result on the existing HDR image.

It’s clear that Photo Engine can go from mild to wild.  This is actually one of the more appealing results on this image of all the ones tried thus far.

Now, how does Photo Engine do with files merged inside the application?

The realistic version.

The blue colour in the windows on the right is good.  Overall colour is good.  The result is a bit dark overall but this can be corrected with some more work in PS post-tonemap.

Next the surreal result.

Once again, we’ve gone from mild to wild.  Unlike in some other applications, the blue in the right side windows has been retained to a large degree.  The windows on the left are blown out, as in other software but in a different way and a good deal of the dirt on the windows has been retained.

In both cases, Photo Engine has handled the dynamic range in the images very well.  The surreal/grunge results are different from others and in a lot of respects better.

Overall, Photo Engine shows a great deal of promise.  There are some user-functionality issues that would make it better and easier to use.  The fact that, I think, they’re targeting both photographers and CG artists means there are aspects of the software that aren’t as relevant to photographers but that can be dealth with.  There is no version, at this point, for the Mac OS; however, Oloneo states that the software works well with Parallels Desktop 5 (which I believe is the current version at the time of writing).  There’s no deghosting function which is why that wasn’t tested.  The one other thing that Photo Engine doesn’t have that would be nice to see is a batch function.

Once I try the HDR Relight functionality, I’ll come back and provide an update.  If  you’ve been trying out Photo Engine and find an area where I’ve made a mistake in my commentary, please let me know, I’ll take another look and upate as required.

HDR Darkroom is another relative newcomer to the HDR software scene. I say relative newcomer because it came to market after many of the well known apps like Photomatix, Dynamic Photo HDR and FDRTools.  I only became aware of it in the last couple months and decided to add it to the growing list of software apps in this series.

I should state upfront that after sending some questions to the folks who produce HDR Darkroom, they’ve provided me with a full version (sans watermark) and in return, I’m going to provide them with some samples to use on their web gallery at no cost.

Unlike many of the other applications coming out on the market, HDRDR is ‘just’ an HDR application.  It’s not trying to be all things to all people, which is a plus in my book.  They’re concentrating on one thing with HDRDR and concentrating on doing it well.  32 bit files can be saved either as Radiance (.hdr) or OpenEXR (.exr).  When saving JPEG files, there are no quality options.  The file is saved at full size and full quality.  Personally, I prefer this.

On opening the program, the GUI is clean and simple with a menu bar at the top and menu icons down the left.  This allows you to use whatever method you’re comfortable with to work.  Positioning your mouse over an icon brings up a description of what it is so you’re not working blind if you use the icons.

There are no preferences available to be set so you can simply start working.  There is a batch function (thumbs up) but no colour management implementation (thumbs down).  Under the Process menu is an interesting item labeled ‘Export to Photoshop’.  Upon further inspection, it’s not quite as interesting as first thought as it only will export a BMP version of the file you’re working on.  If it could be reprogrammed to export a JPEG or TIFF, that’d be cool.  As it is, the standard workflow of tonemapping, saving the tonemapped image out as a JPEG or TIFF then opening that file in PS for any further work is the way to go.  There is no deghosting function so that won’t be tested.

How’s it all work?  Opening an existing 32 bit file is pretty quick.  The program goes through an initial ‘tonemapping’ step in order to display the image on screen for a first visual representation.  If you like what you see, you can save out the file from here.  Additional work is probably going to be needed.  A screen capture of the intial preview of our default existing image is below.

It’s actually not too bad, but it does need more work.  Into the tonemapping functions we go.  Going into the tonemapping functions opens up a new screen, but it’s not a double screen so you can’t flip back and forth – there’s no need to really so it doesn’t matter than you can’t.  In the tonemap screen, the tonemapping controls are on the right side of the screen and the image in the middle.  You can adjust the size of the preview between Small, Medium and Large.  The default is Medium.  Even selecting Large, the entire image fits in screen so you can see everything that’s happeningn with the tonemapping.  There is no multiple monitor support so you can’t pull the tonemapping bar to a second screen and get a bigger image on the primary.  Unless you’re working with a very small screen this should be alright because the tonemap bar doesn’t take up a lot of screen real estate and the workspace is clean otherwise so there’s nothing else to keep you from getting a good idea of what’s happening as you adjust the tonemapping operators.  Multiple monitor support is always a nice thing, but in this case – unlike with some of the other apps we’ve looked at – it’s not vital.

There are three tonemapping operators:  Local Tone Balancer (LTB); Local Tone Enhancer (LTE); and Fast Tone Compressor (FTC).  The first two are local tonemappers, the last is a global operator.  Based on what I’ve experienced in using the software, LTE is going to be the operator of choice in most cases.  It has the most flexibility and produces the best results on a consistent basis.  Unless noted otherwise, LTE is the one I’m using in this commentary.  There is also the ability to save tonemapping presets via the dropdown menu at the top.  A screen shot of the tonemapping GUI is below.

The sliders don’t offer a live preview but the update speed is quick.  Switching from one tonemapping operator to another, then back brings you back to the last settings you used in that operator – nice.  Keeping the Strength setting in the range under 50 is generally where you’re going to want to be for a more naturalistic/realistic look.  Fill Light is one that’ll be used sparingly in most cases.  It does do a good job though of working on the darker/shadow areas yet not brightening the lighter/highlight areas.  The Brightness slider does a nice job of making adjustments to the overall exposure and helping retain/regain shadow/highlight contrast.  Below the Tonemapping Parameters is a section for Post Processing tools.  There are two tabs – Color Balance and B/W Point Clipping.  The Color Balance sliders act like the colour balance tool in Photoshop and can be useful for adjusting the white balance in the image.  The B/W Point Clipping sliders on the second tab are where you’re going to set your white and black points.  Both work well and the B/W sliders provide enough fine control that you can get the overall contrast where you want it.  Eyedroppers for setting white balance as well as white/black points would be nice additions to make adjusting those settings slightly quicker.  Once done, click OK to apply the settings and you’re taken back to the original screen after the settings are applied which is pretty quick.  Tonemapped files can be saved as 8 bit JPEGs, 8 bit TIFFs or 16 bit TIFFs (noted in the dropdown as 48 bit – 16 per channel).  It can also save as PNG and BMP but these will be less useful for photographers.  The realistic version of our default existing file is below.

This is pretty darn good as it stands right now.  The blue in the water is a little too intense but that’s easily fixed after tonemapping.  Without question this is on par with the best apps out there for generating a realistic result on this particular image.  Getting to this result took very little time and required not a lot of playing with the sliders.  There are Undo and Redo icons on the left side of the screen.

An interesting part of the way HDRDR works is that after you tonemap and go back to the main screen, you see the results of the tonemapping on screen but your 32 bit image is still there in the background.  When you save the file out as a JPEG or TIFF, it saves a copy so what you see on screen is still the 32 bit image.  If you then go back into the tonemapping operators, it opens the original 32 bit image back up with the previous tonemapping settings applied but clicking Reset takes you back to the original.  This is a nice workflow process if you want to try different tonemapping adjustments.

Now let’s look at the other end of the tonemapping spectrum.  Two files are below.  The first is a surreal/grunge look with the LTE operator, the second is a surreal/grunge look with the LTB operator.  They’re different.  In both cases the Strength slider is pushed well up past 50, which is where you’re going to want to go if you’re working for the less realistic look and in the LTB version, the Local Lighting slider is also pushed up toward the top end.  My only quibble with the LTB version is what it’s done to the waterfall pools.

HDRDR can swim in both ends of the tonemapping pool.  Getting from a realistic result to a less realistic is as simple as moving the Strength slider.  You’ll likely want to tweak some of the other settings as well but the Strength slider really does control a lot in this software.  Simple is good.  And the speed is very good througout.  As fast or faster than the other applications tested thus far.  Another important thing to note is that the program has handled the full drange of this scene very well.  Recall from the introductory article that I chose this particular scene because of the range of brightness it contained.  There are no presets other than the default settings but creating your own is easily done and with the simplicity of making adjustments to create different looks/versions, creating different presets takes little time.

We’ll move on to see how HDRDR does merging and tonemapping a set of files.  The screen for setting up the merge is very simple.  You can choose to align or not and you can choose to have the exposure information taken from the EXIF data or by guessing.  If you were using film scans or other images that didn’t have exposure information in the EXIF, you could use Guess as a starting point.  Once you choose your images and set the software to work the loading, aligning, merging and initial preview tonemapping happens in a pretty snappy fashion.  Perhaps not quite as fast in this case as Photomatix or CS5 HDR Pro but still quite quickly and faster than many of the other apps. tested thus far.

Once again, the intial preview is a very good starting point as seen in the image below.

The colour in the windows on the right is good.  The brightness in the windows on the left is well controlled.  Not quite the best we’ve seen so far but still very good.  Colours throughout are accurate, if a tad cool which is easily addressed.

Making the tonemapping adjustments and applying the tonemapping settings was a slightly slower with this 32 bit file than the existing one from above.  I’m not sure why that might be.  It could simply be a combination of the settings needed to get the result required more time to process than previously.  The Strength slider for this was a bit higher than on the first image so which would mean more processing behind the scenes so that could explain the slight time difference.  The difference was small enough that it could also have been due to other processes going on in my system at the same time.  More testing would be needed to know for sure.  Either way, it’s still quite quick.  Below is the natural/realistic version.

Here again, the colour in the windows on the right is good.  Brightness in the windows on the left is better than in the preview version.  Good shadow/highlight detail is retained throughout.  The colour from the dirt in the left windows shows up well.  It’s a very nice result and one that I’d only have to do a little extra tweaking to after the fact via a Curves/Levels type adjustment and/or perhaps a slight Shadow/Highlight adjustment.

The grunge/surrealistic version is below.

As with the realistic version, colour is good, detail is good in the highlights.  What’s interesting about this version compared to surrealistic versions from the other applications is the way HDRDR has rendered the highlight areas in the room itself.  The highlights areound the ticket windows, the old newsstand on the left and on the large pillar in the back corner add enhanced visual interest to this version that the others haven’t had to the same extent.  The mapping of the light in HDRDR, in this case anyway, has created a very appealing result.  As with the other images, the Strength slider is the one that largely controls the realistic or surrealistic look and in this case it was all the way at 100%.  In some other apps., moving the equivalent of the HDRDR Strength slider to 100% would cause the windows to become completely blown out but highlights are still well controlled here at the same time an interesting ‘grunge’ result has been generated.

After getting the fully unlocked version, I have to admit that I cheated and used it for more than just this review.  I wanted to see how it would handle some night scenes with wildly varying light levels and light colours.  I used it to shoot a timelapse segment in Toronto.  The last 5 seconds of this clip are images merged and tonemapped in HDRDR.  Tried the same files in Photomatix and liked the HDRDR results better so used them.

A Summer Night in Dundas Square from Robert Fisher on Vimeo.

Support for HDRDR is decent.  There are no Help files installed with the program.  There are some video tutorials on the HDR Darkroom website as well as some FAQ sections.  I emailed some questions to their general support email address and got responses within a business day.  The HDRDR offices are in Europe and I’m in North America so considering the time difference, that response turnaround is very good.  The responses I got were helpful.  My understanding from trading emails with them is that they’re working on revamping the website and I expect it’ll have enhanced information on it when the new site is brought onstream.

I did run into a few bugs when working with the software.  Two are minor and not worth going into detail on.  The third involves a difference in tonemapping when working in Batch mode vs. doing individual merge/tonemap operations.  Again, based on emails I’ve traded with their support group, they have a handle on the problem and expect to have a fix in the near future.

To discuss the Batch mode a bit more for a second, like everything else with HDRDR, the interface is simple and the process is quick.  Running the same set of files through both HDRDR and Photomatix, HDRDR completed the batch process slightly faster than PM.  You can choose to save either the 32 bit file, a tonemapped JPEG file or both.  The 32 bit file is saved in the Radiance format.  Since the software can save individually merged files in both Radiance and OpenEXR formats, giving that flexibility in Batch mode would be preferable.  Being able to save the tonemapped file as either an 8 or 16 bit TIFF file would also be preferable to just offering JPEG.  You have access to the same tonemapping operators in Batch as in standard mode.  You cannot; however, invoke a preset in Batch mode.  If you test out a merge to get your tonemap settings  figured out, you’ll have to write down the settings  and input them manually in Batch.  Being able to use presets here would also be a good enhancement.  You can merge up to 10 images in Batch mode which should be enough.  Nikon offers the widest bracketing at up to 9 in some of its models so unless you’re doing manual bracketing at 1/3 or 1/2 stops and capturing huge numbers of images per sequence (which really isn’t necessary), the ability to merge up to 10 images should suffice.

There is a noise reduction feature in the software which I didn’t try.

All in all, HDRDR is a very nice piece of software that does one thing and does it quite well.  The software is on sale right now for $79.  There are both Mac and Windows versions.  At that price it’s definitely a good deal.  Even at the full price of $99 it’s the same price as Photomatix Pro and in terms of the quality of the software and support, it’s pretty much on par with PM.

As with previous reviews, if you see any errors please let me know and I’ll work to make the corrections.  Thanks for reading and I’m happy to recieve your feedback.

Digital photography – which includes digital printing via high quality inkjet printers – has made a wider variety of printing surfaces available as like never before.

We have glossy and matte, warm and cool, smooth and textured, as we had in the past in the darkroom and these surfaces are getting better and better all the time, particuarly with the introduction of the fibre-based papers that have come on the market recently. Aside from the standard glossy and matte, we also have specialised surfaces like canvas and even metal. If you’ve not seen a print on metal, they really can be quite striking.

With all these choices available, it makes choosing the right surface to print a photo on even more important. There are lots of opinions out there on how to choose the right paper for the image and what follows is mine.

Right now, canvas is the hot item. It’s new. It’s cool. It’s different. Well, maybe not so different anymore. It seems like canvas is being used by a lot of photographers for a lot of images that would look better on another surface.  It’s almost become cliché, which is unfortunate.

When it comes to printing, I categorise media into two types – hard and soft. Hard are those surfaces that hold finer detail better, provide a crisp appearance, generally have a better colour gamut, more vibrant colours, better DMax and are typically harder to the touch. Gloss, semi-gloss, lustre would fit into this category. As would metal, obviously. Soft are the papers that offer, generally, more muted colours (albeit only slightly in some cases), a lower DMax, provide a more painterly look, a softer look and are softer to the touch. Pretty much just the opposite of hard papers. Things like Velvet Fine Art, watercolour, museum rag, textured rag and canvas are these types of media. A paper like Epson’s Ultrasmooth Fine Art can fit into both but in general the printing media available on the market will fit into one of those two categories.

Choosing the right paper for the photo being printed is as key, in my opinion, to making it look good as the editing of the image in the digital darkroom and the presentation of the printed piece afterward (framing, matting).

Choose hard papers for those images where you have lots of fine detail, where you want to retain as much sharpness as possible, where you have brighter, more vibrant colours.  Images like this would be the majority of landscapes, architecture, wildlife, nature, macro.  What could be termed as ‘hard’ images.

Soft papers would be used for those images with less fine detail, a more ethereal look, soft light, where ultimate detail and sharpness is less important, where a more muted colour palette may be desired.  These types of images would be things like soft florals, impressionistic images, softer landscape/nature (i.e., a fog covered field of spring wildflowers in early morning).  Or, in other words ‘soft’ images.

Portait/people images are a bit of a mixed bag and could fit into either category depending on the person/people and the intent of the image.  If the image is a portrait and the intent is to be more flattering then a softer paper may be in order; but not a heavily textured paper like an etching or watercolour.  If it’s an image of a person that’s intended to show grit, a weather-worn face of someone who’s spent a lifetime working outdoors in the elements then a harder paper would probably be better.  This is where a paper like Ultrasmooth Fine Art could come into play since it can often work in both situations.

In the end, it’s your choice what you print on.  It’s your photography and you can present it any way you like.  Thinking about the different media available and choosing the media based on the type of image can; however, have a big impact on how the print is perceived by the viewer.  And probably the last thing any of us want is to be seen as being cliché.

Over the next few posts on the blog, I’m going to do reviews of some of the many HDR software applications out there on the market. These aren’t going to be highly technical or get into the nitty gritty of what each individual slider or control does. What I’m looking at is results. Results on real world images. How easy and intuitive is the software to use? How easily can you generate a ‘realistic’ result? How well can it generate the ‘grunge’ HDR look? How fast is it (i.e., can it be used in a workflow when turnaround time is important)? What’s the look and feel of the software? These are the kinds of things I’m going to be looking at.  I’ll also look at what kind of documentation/support is available for each application.  In all cases, once the HDR file has been tonemapped into a 16 bit space, no further editing will be done.  The goal is to show only what the HDR applications in isolation can do.

‘Who the hell are you?’ you may be asking as you read this. Well, I’m no Jack Howard, author of “Practical HDRI” or Trey Ratcliff of Stuck in Customs fame.  Not on their worst days and on my best days.  I’m just you’re averge schmuck photographer who (a) likes HDR and what it can do, (b) has tried a fair number of different HDR apps and (c) uses HDR in some of my photography.  I’ve written a few previous commentaries on HDR here in the blog as well.  I’m not sponsored by any company and I don’t get freebies so the thoughts and opinions expressed during these tests will be genuine and without the filter of having to try to keep someone happy in order to keep the swag train running.

The process is going to be fairly simple.  Each app. will be put through two tests.  The first test will be with an existing, already merged Radiance (.hdr) file from my archives that would have been merged in Photomatix.  I’ll open that file in each of the applications and tonemap it.  I’ll try to get a realistic result and a more surreal result.  The second test will be to load a set of bracketed exposures into each app. to see how it handles that part of the process – how long it takes to load the files, how well it aligns the various image layers and then how the tonemapping works out; and there could be some different results from a merge done in the software vs. using an existing .hdr file merged in another app.

Each app. will be scored on several criteria on a scale of 0-10.  I’ll weight each criterion (based on my own perception of importance) and then come up with a weighted average score for each application.

The apps that will be included in the review are the following:

Photoshop CS5 Extended

Photomatix Pro

Dynamic Photo HDR

Artizen HDR

HDR Photostudio

Ariea HDRMax

SNS-HDR Pro (this is a new one I’ve recently become aware of, use the Google language dropdown in the upper right corner of the homepage to change the language, unless you’re fluent in Polish).

HDR Darkroom

Once all the tests are done, I’ll do one final comparison and include price to come up with a pseudo-value for money score.  PS CS5 will be left out of this last comparison.  It’s so much more expensive than any of the others it wouldn’t be fair to include it on that basis.  It also does so much more than the others that it’s difficult to separate out just the cost component of the HDR functionality.

Some of the apps, I’ve paid for and are fully licensed.  Some are trial versions.  A quick note to software vendors before going on:  If you’re going to make a trial version of the software do two things – (a) make it fully functioning so people who want to try it can get a true sense of what it can do and (b) don’t cripple it in some fashion such as not allowing trial users to save full bit depth files or put a big-ass, ugly watermark across the image.  Time limit to whatever period (30 days, 60 days, whatever) and let people have at it.  Stepping down off the soap box now.

My concept of speed may be very different from yours.  My computing environment is as follows:  Asus M2N-E motherboard, AMD Athlon 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ @ 2GHx, 4GB DDR2 Dual Channel PC6400 RAM @ 800MHz, Windows 7 64 bit OS, 160GB Seagate Barracuda SATA with OS/applications, 1TB WD Caviar SATA for scratch disk.  Not a speed demon by today’s standards but not quite snail slow either.

So there you have it.  Those are the basics of the review.  I hope to have each new review up within a couple days of each other.  I’m not going to spend weeks and months playing with these applications.  This is meant to be a real world test and not many of us can spend the amount of time that people who review gear and software for a living can spend with a particular application.  I’ve already spent a fair bit of time with several of these applications and the only ones that are really new are PS CS5 and SNS-HDR.

In an earlier post about geocoding, I’d talked a bit about options for Nikon users and noted that, at the time of writing, Canon didn’t have anything available, to my knowledge, for its users.

Well, Canon has come out with updated versions of some of their wireless file transmitters; the WFT-E2 II A, the WFT-E4 II A and the WFT-E5A, all of which offer the ability to embed geotag information into the EXIF of image files.  The downside is you still need a separate GPS device (via USB connection) and these wireless file transmitters cost anywhere from about $640 to $750 depending on the model.

At least Canon is in the game now, but not in an overly user friendly or bank account friendly way.

I wrote a post a while back called The Great HDR Debate.  That was almost a year ago.  It seems that the debate over HDR, its validity as a photo editing tool, the results generated and the concept in total remain every bit as controversial and perhaps even moreso than at that time.  It seems as though the anti-HDR camp is becoming increasingly zealous in their opposition to HDR in any form.

I was recently on a photo forum where a member had asked a question about how to do HDR.  He’d seen some, thought it was interesting and wanted to try it out but didn’t know how to get started.  Through more than a page of responses there were a raft of people telling him ‘don’t bother’ or ‘HDR sucks’, or ‘go ahead and check it out but NEVER use it on real photos’.  Probably a dozen or more responses telling him how bad HDR was but not one person answering his actual question.  Is this what it’s come to?  If so, why?

I’ve said in the past that I’m not a big fan of the hyper-processed, way over the top, comic book looking HDR effects.  It just doesn’t appeal to me.  But I know it does to some.  So be it.  It’s part of the subjective nature of the appreciation of art.  It continues to surprise me (although maybe it shouldn’t) that there is still, in this day and age, such a closed-minded, intolerant, ignorant presence in the art community.

HDR is a terrific tool for photographers to have in their arsenal.  I spent some time recently in an old, unused, train station in Buffalo.  The Buffalo Central Terminal is a terrific example of Art Deco architecture.  It was built at a time when Buffalo was the 2nd busiest rail hub in the U.S. after Chicago.  Closed for over 30 years and falling into disrepair, a private, not-for-profit group has bought the building and is beginning to restore it.  If they’re successful in raising the money to complete the restoration, it’ll be a beautiful building again.

The building has very large windows that allow a lot of natural light in but there are also very dark areas that make  getting a single, correct exposure difficult.  Below is a single exposure at the ‘correct’ meter reading.  It’s pretty blah.  The light streaming in the large window to camera left shining on the granite floor makes getting the floor and the space under the To Train Concourse entrance difficult.  The Shadow/Highlight tool helps but that can also do a lot of damage to an image.  What it does illustrate is just how good today’s DSLRs are at capturing a pretty wide brightness range.  This was shot with a Nikon D700 at 200 ISO and 1/3s @ f8 with a 28-70 f2.8 at 45mm.  As a documentary or record shot, it’s not bad.  As an artistic photo, it’s not overly good.

My plan going in was to shoot for HDR.  I knew it would help with the brightness range and also knew it would help generate a more ‘artistic’ result depending on how I tonemapped it.  The image below is a 9 shot (+/-4) bracket processed through Photomatix from TIFF files exported out of Lightroom.  The tonemapped HDR was then opened in Photoshop for final editing.  I purposely took a little beyond a strict ‘photorealistic’ look.  I wanted to try and evoke a bit of a 30s Art Deco coloured graphic look to complement the architecture. I also wanted to enhance the ‘grittiness’ of the environment.

Could I have got a more photorealistic look?  Sure.  Absolutely.  The image below is a 7 image merge in Enfuse using Timothy Armes’ Lightroom Plugin.

To my eye, this blended image looks much better than the single shot.  It’s got better colour, better overall dynamic range and contrast yet it’s still photorealistic and at the same time has a better artistic look than the single image.

But that’s not HDR, you say?  You’re right, it’s technically not.  It’s a blended exposure and it stayed in the 16 bit space throughout the processing.  But it’s still possible to get a ‘realistic’ look using HDR too.  I could have tonemapped the Photomatix image differently and achieved the look of a ‘real’ photo.  The image below a 7 shot bracket processed through HDR PhotoStudio via its Lightroom plugin.  HDR PS is a terrific program.  It works differently from other HDR applications but the results it generates are quite striking.  Jack Howard wrote a piece on the app. on the Adorama Tech Tock Blog.

A more ‘real’ photo look.  Better colour, better dynamic range and still a more ‘artistic’ look too.

Neither the Enfuse or HDRPS merges had any additional work done to them.  With a little time in either Lightroom or PS to ‘polish’ them off, the results could be even better.  Much better than a single shot could give.

HDR can be a very useful tool for photographers.  The people who continue to play ostrich are missing out on an opportunity to improve their imagery when the situation suits/requires.  HDR has a number of potential applications in commercial photography – real estate and architecture in particular.  It’s a wonderful tool with plenty of potential and those who refuse to use or learn it are going to be left behind and miss out on business opportuntites to those who do make good use of it.

I’m stepping out of my ususal photography-related ramblings for something different and more important.

Pat Burns has been the coach of four National Hockey League teams (Montreal, Toronto, Boston and New Jersey). He also coached successfully in junior before coming to the NHL. He’s won 3 Coach of the Year awards and a Stanely Cup.

Burns has battled cancer for several years now. He’s received treatment on a couple of separate occasions and gone into remission. The cancer has now metastasized to his lungs and he’s decided not to have any further treatment.

Burns’ coaching record deserves to get him into the Hockey Hall of Fame. There’s a Facebook group trying to get him elected while he can still enjoy the honour.   This piece at the Ottawa Citizen discusses the group and the effort to get Burns elected.

Join the FB group.  Pass it on to your friends.

There’s a discussion going on in my HDR Timelapse group over at Vimeo between another member and I about workflow for HDR timelapse video creation. For many it’s likely the nth degree of esoterica but it got me thinking.

It seems as time goes on the pursuit of perfection in our artistic endeavours becomes increasingly fervent.  We analyse and tweak pixels to within an inch of their lives.  We work to create perfect video output from absolutely imperfect input.  Music is recorded and re-recorded and mixed and remixed till it’s so perfect it hurts.  Why?  Has it always been this way?  Is perfection a good thing?  Once we get it perfect, what else is there?

In the example of the conversation at Vimeo, the discussion surrounds the ideal workflow for creating HDR timelapse video from still photos.   One of the bugaboos people have with this type of work is a think called ‘flicker’.  Flicker is a perceptible change in light levels between frames – brighter, darker, brighter, darker and so on.  Because the process compresses time, in serious instances it can have an almost stroboscopic effect.  The goal, of course, is to create an output video that is flicker free.  There are different methods for doing this.  Some believe the way of capturing the stills plays the biggest part.  There are de-flicker filters you can apply to video to deal with it in editing.  Being new to the world of timelapse and HDR timelapse, I’m still working things out.  The end result, if we’re lucky, is a perfect, flicker free video.  Lucky?  What’s wrong with a little flicker?  Watch old movies and you see all kinds of flicker in them.  Were directors and editors less concerned about it?  Is it a matter that they didn’t understand it?  Is it a matter that they didn’t have the tools to deal with it?

My guess is probably a combination of the first and the last.

Digital music now sounds perfect.  But what’s wrong with a little pop and hiss from a vinyl record?  I used to love dropping  an old Glenn Miller or Artie Shaw 78 on the turntable.  Now even that great old music has been ‘remastered’ to sound, well, perfect.  Why?  Is it really better?

Photography isn’t any different.  We have better tools today to deal with imperfection and help us get to a perfect result.  We sometimes spend inordinate amounts of time with countless layers and filters and plugins.  We end up with image files (when did the word ‘photograph’ go out of fashion) of several hundred megabytes in size.  Perhaps a multiple of 10 or more of the size of the original image file, er, photograph.

In movies we have CG this and CG that.  It’s almost too difficult to tell what’s real and what’s computer generated.  Is that really where the art of making films is going?

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I’m all for getting the best possible result.  But I’m not sure I’m in favour of perfection.  It sometimes seems that in the strident pursuit of perfection we become far too analytical, cold, calculating.  The process becomes more mathematical than artistic.  I sometimes wonder whether we’re losing the art in pursuit of the math.

So what do you think?  Is perfection a laudable goal?  How far should we go in pursuit of it?  Or is a little imperfection a good thing?

I’ve enjoyed using Lightroom since v1.  With the improvements and new editing tools introduced in v2, it’s vastly improved.   And now with v3 on the horizon, the story should only get better.  Lightroom is now my main editing application and I typically only use PS for things that can’t be done in LR (e.g., perspective correction, more complex layer work).

As good a tool as it is for organising your photography database, I think there are a good number of people using LR who still don’t know how powerful an editing tool it is. Everything I did with the photos below can be done in PS and probably PSE and other editing applications. In most cases I find the result is better with the tools in LR and the workflow is faster and more natural. In addition, to do the same things in PS would require, in most cases, using layers to maintain the integrity of the original image which increases file sizes and chews up hard drive space.  First I’m going to show 4 images in a before and after comparison.  You may not like the photos, you may not like how I approached the editing.  That’s all fine.  I think they do show the power of the tools in LR for editing; however.  In all but one case, the only tools used were the Adjustment Brushes, Spot Removal and the Clarity slider.  In one, a slight Tone Curve adjustment was made and in the last a crop was applied.  I wanted to do a couple things with these.  I wanted to highlight the bits of colour in the surrounding evergreen trees.  Second, I wanted to bring out the texture of the Precambrian rock of the Canadian Shield.  Beyond that, I wanted to enhance contrast by darkening certain parts of the water and existing shadow areas without completely losing texture or detail.  In the last, I also wanted to brighten the waterfall itself which was hidden in fairly deep shadow and crop to create a near perfect mirrored symmetry with the reflection.

Primarily the Brightness adjustment brush was used as a Dodge/Burn tool and the Sharpening brush was used to selectively sharpen or de-sharpen specific areas of the photos.  The Saturation brush was used to ‘pop’ the bits of fall colour from the surrounding evergreens.  The Saturation brush was also used to desaturate some colour in parts of the water and in the last image to reduce saturation of parts of the cloud reflection.  The Brightness brush as a Dodge/Burn tool is superior to any method I’ve tried in PS, including the use of a separate Dodge/Burn layer (which is a very good method).  The ability to selectively sharpen (or de-sharpen) areas with the Sharpening adjustment brush is simpler than doing it in PS – although I still like the High Pass method in PS for global sharpening quite a lot.  The Spot Removal tool (Clone/Heal) is terrific and particularly with respect to healing, is superior to the Healing Brush in Photoshop.  The ability to very finely match the source and destination with both the Clone and Healing features of the Spot Removal tool is terrific.

When you use any Adjustment brush in LR it puts a control point on the image.  The screen captures below show the various control points for these 4 images.

These control points make it very simple to go back and change prior edits without affecting the edit history on the left.  If you hover your cursor over a control point, a mask will be placed in the image to show the area that has been affected by the specific adjustment (image below is an example).

Hover over different control points till you see the mask covering the area you want to go back and work on.  If you then click on that control point, it will become active, the specific adjustment you made (e.g., Brightness, Sharpening, Contrast, etc.) will become active and you can edit the adjustment to your liking – all without having to backtrack in the History.  If you do go back in the History and make a change, you then lose all of the subsequent adjustments (unless you save a Snapshot).  By activating individual control points, the integrity of the History is maintained yet you can still change previous edit adjustments.  It’s somewhat like using the non-linear editing feature in PS (only better and easier).

Using the tools available in Lightroom entails a different workflow than using Photoshop.  But I think taking some time to become comfortable with Lightroom and the editing tools it offers would be time well spent.  Happy editing!