An HDR photo is just a photo

Monday 6 June 2022, 20:02 by Nando Harmsen | 4,842 views | 3 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

An HDR photo is often seen as something special. A photo that is not a normal photo. Yet it is nothing more than an ordinary photo, which can and should be treated like any other non-HDR photo. There is nothing unnatural about HDR, unless you deliberately make it look unnatural.

HDR stands for High Dynamic Range, which translates into Dutch as high dynamic range. However, this literal translation is not quite correct. The correct translation should be: large dynamic range. This describes the actual meaning of HDR much better.

This is not what you want, clipped white. This can never be corrected. An exposure bracket would be the solution.
As a photographer, you know that there are times when the camera cannot capture the entire range from light to dark. The dynamic range of what you are photographing is then greater than what the camera can record.

The result is clipped white or blocked-up black. In many cases, this is considered undesirable.

If you photograph in raw file format, you know that you can correct the highlights and shadows to some extent in post-processing. Pure white, of course, cannot be corrected, because there is no image information left there, but you can often recover the dark tones, up to the point where noticeable noise and banding appear.

When you use Exposure to the Right, it is possible to use a large dynamic range in a single raw file. Like in this photo.
By lifting the shadows, you are effectively already turning your photo into an HDR photo, an image with a large dynamic range. After all, you are getting the maximum dynamic range from the raw sensor data. But in some cases, that may still not be enough.

An exposure bracket is the solution if the dynamic range of your raw file is not sufficient. You spread the dynamic range of what you are photographing over a number of photos with different exposures.

This exposure bracket can then be merged into an HDR photo.

With an exposure bracket, it is possible to capture any dynamic range. It can then be merged into a single photo. You should then process it like any other photo.
The only difference between an HDR photo made from an exposure bracket and a single raw file is the dynamic range captured in the file.

A raw file contains a maximum of 12 stops of dynamic range, for example, depending on the camera. A simple HDR contains a maximum of 16 stops of dynamic range, in a 16-bit TIFF file.

Whether it is a single raw file or an HDR file created by merging an exposure bracket, both are photos that need to be processed. In other words, in both cases you treat the photo as a normal single image file.

This HDR photo has a very natural appearance, without immediately shouting that it is an HDR image. The best HDR cannot be recognised as HDR.
With HDR, however, you can lift the dark areas further than with the raw file, and the light areas can often still be corrected.

This gives you more room to work with when editing. That is the big difference between HDR from an exposure bracket and a raw file.

But how can it be that so many HDR photos look so unrealistic? That question will undoubtedly occur to you, and may lead you to believe that HDR is something unnatural. The reason is simple. That artificial appearance has nothing to do with HDR, but with the processing of the photo.

This is the type of processing many people associate with HDR. But it has nothing to do with HDR, and everything to do with a particular type of processing. You either like it or you do not. I do not like it.
The artificial appearance of a photo that has given HDR such a negative reputation is the result of processing that makes all the light areas darker and all the dark areas lighter.

This can also be done with a raw file, with the same result. It has nothing to do with HDR.

The details are often accentuated as well, and the colours are either desaturated or boosted extremely. All of this together is called tone mapping, which is ultimately nothing more than a way of processing an image. You can do this with any photo, including a non-HDR one.

Is this an HDR image, or not? Can you tell? Does it even matter whether it is HDR or not? It is about the photo, not the way it was created, after all.
It is true that HDR allows you to take the extreme processing of a photo further, creating the familiar artificial appearance, but an HDR photo can also be processed in a normal, natural way.

So do not be afraid to create an HDR from an exposure bracket. If you do it well, you cannot even see that it is an HDR. That is the secret of a truly good HDR photo.

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About the author

Nando Harmsen has been photographing for more than 40 years. He specialises in wedding photography and landscape photography. Nando also gives talks, workshops, masterclasses and photo trips, and regularly reviews new and interesting equipment.

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3 comments

Stefanie wrote on Tuesday 7 June 2022 at 13:27 | reply
Met hetzelfde trapje waarmee je HDR maakt kun je natuurlijk ook aan blending doen, wat bewerkelijker maar je hebt alles wel zelf in de hand, daar waar de HDR software van elk deeltje de optimale belichting uit wil trekken wil je zelf misschien toch nog net wat meer schaduw of juist lichtere partijen bewaren. De meeste HDR programma's zitten bomvol presets die verschillende graderingen van tonemapping toepassen dus dat die look direct gelinkt wordt aan HDR vind ik niet zo vreemd
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Nando wrote on Tuesday 7 June 2022 at 14:01 | reply
@Stefanie:
Ik neem aan dat je luminosity masks (helderheidsmaskers) bedoelt als je het over blending hebt. Dat komt in mijn cursus HDR op Photofacts Academy ook aan bod.
Binnenkort komt een artikel en video online op dit blog met daarin een voorbeeld hoe ik bij voorkeur mijn belichtingstrapje samenvoeg, met lagen en maskers in Photoshop.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

Paul wrote on Sunday 12 June 2022 at 13:20 | reply
Leuk stuk over HDR. Wordt inderdaad vaak te ver doorgevoerd, zelfs in verder een fotoboek dat ik in een overmoedige bui kocht.
Wel is het zo dat je ook zonder speciale software al héél ver kunt komen in fotoshop.
Ik heb een lang fotoverleden (begon in 1961), en dus ook véél negatieven en dia's. Die laatste kun je niet veel mee, dynamisch bereik is te klein, maar negatieven! Zowel Z/W als kleur hebben veel meer in zich als er je zou denken. Al met het scannen kun je veel doen, en in bewerkingsprogramma's kun b.v. shadows/highlights tot zeer bijzondere resultaten komen, en mogelijk ook met speciale het programma's, dynamisch bereik is echt onverwacht.
This comment was written in another language and has not been translated yet.

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