Gustave Le Gray, the original "HDR Photographer"

Masters like Gustave Le Gray dealt with this problem by taking two photographs, one for the sky and one for the land or seascape, and then printing the sky from the properly exposed sky negative. Later, when panchromatic film was developed with more even sensitivity to colors and with greater recording range the problem was mostly handled by careful exposure and possibly using appropriate developers and developing process. This resulted in film recording a wider range of scene dynamic range but nobody called the resulting negative or the photograph HDR. The scene they photographed still contained a very high dynamic range.

Each generation of film, negative or slide, brought better handling of the scene brightness range. Yet, under demanding conditions photographers resorted to special developers or simply accepted the fact that there was a limit to what the film could record. Of course the Le Gray technique was still available to those who wanted to use it.

Enter digital photography, with its capabilities and limitations. Early sensors did not offer the dynamic range of good film, but each generation of sensors expanded the ability of the sensors to record greater dynamic range.

At this point it is important to talk about the recorded image, digital or film. Directly captured photographs yield images that are device-referred, that is what you see is determined by the capability of the device you are using. Part of the problem also lies with the way we record digital images, in 8-bit to 14-bit formats and convert them to at best 16-bit files. What that means is that in an 8-bit image there are 256 shades of gray that define each of the primary colors, Red, Green, and Blue. Although currently the best digital cameras do not record in 16-bit, they will likely do so in the not too distant future. In 16-bit images each of the RGB channels can use 65536 shades to represent their color. This is still device-referred, and although a 16-bit image can carry much more information it is still woefully inadequate to encode the scene brightness with adequate faithfulness. Some new cameras even create “HDR” on the fly by exposing several frames and combining them for a single photograph that accommodates the bright highlights as well as the shadow detail. Here in-camera processing may produce a more faithful photograph, at least as a starting point, free from artificial grunge halos or other “HDR” artifacts people cannot resist injecting. (See another photographer’s views and information on in-camera HDR.)

With the accessibility of HDR image formats (there are different ones like Radiance, OpenEXR) the possibility of creating files that are scene-referred emerged. The technology that we call HDR goes back to 1985 when it was developed by Greg Ward. In 1997 Paul Debevec presented in his paper a way to create HDR images from photographs, and the rest is history, as they say. The HDR file format—and I am not talking about what is called HDR Photography—is a 32-bit floating point image format. The jump from 16-bit to 32-bit should not be construed as “twice as much as 16-bit”. The critical change here is the “floating point” encoding of images. Where both 8- and 16-bit formats are capable of using only whole numbers like Red=32, Green=120, and Blue=200, the floating point format allows each color to have decimal fractions, like .562902. There are different HDR file formats (again, not photographs you see) and they can contain about 10-76 orders of magnitude of dynamic range (10, followed by 10 or 76 zeroes), now that is big! This gives the HDR file format the ability to contain an incredible range of scene brightness information. This format, since it contains full scene brightness information, is called “scene-referred” and this file can be processed just as if we are “photographing” that scene at different exposures.

This is all great but the resulting brightness range in an HDR file (not the photograph!) is enormously wider than what our measly display monitors can handle. What are we to do? Well, one option is to shell out upwards of $40,000 to purchase Professional Reference Monitor PRM-4200 from Dolby labs. Dolby acquired the BrightSide technology and improved upon it to offer this magnificent and magnificently expensive HDR display. This is not a real solution for mere mortals! The second option is to map the tones in the HDR file to that of a 16-bit or 8-bit file format which the current crop of displays can do a decent job of presenting it to many viewers.

You see, there is indeed an HDR image format but we cannot view it unless it is converted to LDR, Low Dynamic Range. The creation of the HDR image file from a series of digital captures about 2-stops apart is almost purely scientific process. At this stage there are not many options other than a few like reducing the chromatic aberration, image alignment, or eliminating ghosting that may be introduced by slightly moving objects like a tree branch. Then the algorithm goes and creates the best scene-referred HDR file it can. No artistic involvement there, just gather the information and store it in a format that can be extracted in different ways according to needs. So the “real HDR photograph” is a bundle of information that cannot be viewed in its entirety using standard equipment. In the process of creating the HDR file, we may view parts of it as Photomatix viewer provides for instance.

Why is this an "artistic look"?

What is erroneously called an “HDR Photograph” is the result of tone-mapping and different tone-mapping engines may produce slightly, or significantly different results. In this conversion several things are attempted to bring under control. Overall scene contrast and brightness range is one, then the micro contrast which controls the contrast between adjacent areas of different tonality. Due to the nature of the process of micro-contrast and smoothing adjustments, some halos are intentionally or unintentionally introduced. This is what most HDR Photographs seem to strive to show, that’s why I asserted that this result has nothing to do with HDR recording and this kind of photograph need not come from multiple exposures. Indeed, you will find many examples of “single file HDR” which mainly go after the altered look rather than to capture a wide dynamic range. Whether you like this look, which is also called “the grunge look”, or surreal look, is a matter of taste. My taste in photography and proper use of the tools makes them unattractive to me. Not because they are HDR, which they are not, because I was there at the beginning of “HDR revolution”. I used to manually blend a linear conversion with one that was developed for the shadows from a single capture. (See related posts.) That was essentially an attempt to do what Le Gary did in the 19th century, the original HDR Photographer! That method is now incorporated into software like Lightroom or Adobe Camera Raw to extract the full 14-bit information in a way we would like to render it by using the appropriate sliders. Creating a linear conversion has become quite obscure as most software do not even show the linear encoded image, although I suspect Breeze Browser may still provide a linear conversion. (I checked, it still provides Linear Conversion as well as a “combined” option)

The main use of the HDR technology is to capture as much brightness information from a scene as possible and then decide how best to present the scene, on screen or in print. The current trend in the “grunge look” is the result of the early tools not being very capable and some early users not getting the hang of the tool and creating unwanted halos; believe me in those days halos were unwanted. They took the “artistic” defense and claimed that it was their interpretation and the technology that is also known as HDR got forever, and regrettably linked to that look. A well done photograph using HDR intermediary step and careful tone-mapping should look like, well, a properly exposed photograph with rich tonal range and detail. That was, and to me still is, the main purpose of developing this technology. HDR is also used in films, yet we do not recall any wide halos from Matrix or Spiderman series which used HDRI. Much of the CGI special effects also use HDRI with none of the tell-tale signs of “grunge”.

Let us call a spade, a spade. Grunge may be a look, but is not HDR. Sure, poorly handled tone-mapping after HDR creation may yield wide halos, but not because the source is HDR but because the user is either not careful in using the tone-mapping process or s/he is making an “artistic” statement. It still begs the question, why go through all that trouble of capturing the immense range and then pull everything to the mid-tones augmented by the grunge halos? You can easily do that practically with any photograph.

Imagine in the film days Kodak or Fuji announcing the “New HDR Film Capable of Recording 18-Stop Range Of Brightness”. Would we have taken photographs with that film and then immediately start to scratch the edges? It sounds silly, right? Of course it does because it is silly to think of scratching the film that contains that gorgeous photograph. Why do we feel compelled to do exactly the same thing on our gorgeous photographs digitally captured?

Beats me!

We had ordered a birthday cake and some pizza slices. We picked them up and went to the nursing home. The staff helped set up the cake, pizzas, and the soda and Jan and Edda went to pick up John from his room. They arrived with him 10 minutes or so later, he was walking with his walker but looked good. He helped cut the first slice of he cake which the nurse gave to him to enjoy. Jan had made his favorite, tomato soup cake. Don’t let the name fool you, it is quite good especially with lots of spices Jan adds to it.

John opened a couple of gifts, an album Jan made for him containing his photographs from when he was in the air force and from his later life, and a small gift from Edda. He seemed to enjoy looking at them and showing the photographs to the staff. All the residents at the activity room participated in sharing the cake and the pizza slices, one even came for a second piece of the cake. We stayed about an hour and left. I am sure John will enjoy sharing the album with others and telling them stories about his air force days.

Happy birthday John.

My sincere appreciation for all the support I have received and my congratulations to the winners of the contest.

PS MagCloud is running a sale on all full-priced publications through February 14, 2012.

To have the full print size as well as to place the text lines below each photograph I had to bring the photographs to Photoshop and create the final version there. Then I uploaded the files using their eFTP software which I find much simpler than the more elaborate, and that much more (and unnecessarily) complex ProDesign. Here I will outline a process that will create the output file directly from Lightroom with a minor trade off: On Windows computers Lightroom 3.x does not allow entering more than one line of text for the Identity Plate text that can appear where you like. This is an issue only if you want to use more than one line of text and other embellishments like a separating line. (A quick check on the public beta of LR4 shows that this is still not fixed.) The biggest advantage of outputting directly from Lightroom is that you see how your print will appear, possibly against a background color other than paper white, and using Lightroom to apply proper amount of print sharpening to the output file. On top of that, it is very simple! As straight forward and quick it is, it will take me longer to explain these steps than to actually do them. So, don’t let the length of the post mislead you.

Decide on the output substrate and size

First thing first, you should download your printing company’s upload software. For Printmakers, my choice is eFTP and I recommend you use that to submit photographs for printing. Download it from their Web site. It should be a quick download and it is written in Java so it should run on any platform.

Now, open it and if this is the first time you are using eFTP add your personal information. You will find a button at the top of the screen next to E-FTP “My Information”. Click on it and fill in your information.

Look at the printing options on the left. You need to pick the “product” you want which ranges from standard prints to jewelry. Remember, I am only covering prints on paper as you see on your Lightroom screen. So, you will not use any templates or other products like Fusion Books, School products, etc. So the current list of relevant product for this post are Standard Print Sizes, Metallic Prints, and Metals. Choose the substrate you want and now focus on the size you want for your print. Make a note of the size or sizes for different photographs you would like to have printed. For this example, I will choose Metallic Prints and 10″ x 15″ size for one photograph I want to output on that paper.

Decide on the print layout

After deciding on the paper size, or sizes now switch back to Lightroom and pick the photograph(s) that will be output. In Lightroom, select the thumbnail of the photograph you would like printed and pay attention to the pixel dimensions of the photograph. If it is severely cropped the photograph may not provide quality output. Printmakers workflow indicates the file to be at 240 dpi. So, if your photograph is 2400 x 3600 it will print as 10 x 15 with no upsampling. If the image is of high quality you could probably get good results even if you have to increase the size 1.5 times and I am probably being conservative here. In this example the selected photograph is _MG_3804.CR2 and its dimensions will allow printing comfortably 10″ x 15″, but I will leave some margin around and the actual image size will be smaller.

Adjust Layout Style, Image Settings, and Guides

The image to be printed highlighted, move to the Print module in Lightroom. Start at the top with some basic adjustments and skip over the middle part for the time being. See the two images below, the first one shows “Single image/Contact Sheet” and “Rotate to Fit” selected, and make sure the “Show Guides” is checked so that we can see guidelines for print cell and margins.

Adjust Print Job settings

Now, look at the second image which shows the last panel “Print Job.” Doing this first, although it may be counter intuitive, will show us the actual paper proportions on the screen for placing the photograph and possibly adding a line of text if we like.

Note that:

• Print to shows “JPEG File” since that is what we want to produce
• File resolution is set to 240 ppi as Printmakers would like
• Print sharpening is set to “Standard” (choose other options if you like)
• Media type is set to “Glossy”
• JPEG quality is at 100
• Custom file dimensions shows the paper size I chose earlier
• Profile is set to sRGB and the rendering intent is Perceptual

Adjust Layout options

Here we can adjust the placement of the photograph on the paper with some margins around it. Since it will be output to a file, print margins can be set to zero as I have. The only margin that is set is the bottom margin and that is to pus the image a little above the center. This gives a more stable placement to the image and also allows to place a line of text if we want it. Here, three margins are set to zero and the bottom margin is set to 1″. The result is an image cell size 11.36″ x 8″ which is very suitable for this photograph. I am satisfied with the blank space around the photograph but you can adjust the image size by simply dragging the guides.

Adjust Page options

The last bit that may need attention are the options under the Page tab. Here we can set a background color (just don’t go crazy!), as well as a line of text. I would not use other options here for a single page complete photographic print like crop marks. They may be useful only if the photograph would be cut out, or the Photo Info which will likely be of little use to the viewer. But, hey, it’s your photograph.

To change the background color from the default white, first click in the box next to “Page Background Color” and then select the color by clicking on the color patch next to it. I will set this to black for this photograph. If you like to add a line of text for the title, you first need to put a check mark in the box next to “Identity Plate”. This will make it possible to either choose from one of earlier identity plate options you might have created or to create a new one. Click on the small triangle in the identity plate and select edit. The editing of this text can be quite awkward, but here are some tips:

• Select all the text
• Change the size to a small point like 10 or 12
• Choose a typeface and color that will go with the photograph
• Don’t worry how big or small it looks at this point
• If you are going to use the same text or at least the style on more than one photograph, click on the drop-down menu and save it as an identity plate option

When you are satisfied with the text, and optionally after you saved it, click on OK. Your text will likely appear in the middle of the page. Lightroom does not give the user an easy option to precisely position this text. I prefer this to be centered and here is how I do it:

• Drag the text somewhere below the image
• Using the middle handles on either side of its containing box pull them to the right and left edges of the paper. Your text will increase in size, that’s OK. It should now be centered under the photograph
• Now, move the middle handle on the top (or the bottom) edge of the containing box down (or up) to change its size and bring it roughly where you would like it
• Then, use the up and down arrows to more precisely position the text

Turn off the guides by removing the check mark from “Show Guides” under the “Guides” panel if you want to see the layout with no distractions. If you are satisfied with the result, click on the “Print to File” button on the lower right corner of the application. If you will be creating several files to upload, it will be a good idea to create a folder where you can see only these files for ease of uploading in the next step.

Upload your order

Back to eFTP! When the program opens, pay attention to the sequentially numbered steps, 1, 2, 3, 4.

1. First choose the product you want, for this example choose “Metallic Prints” and 10″ x 15″ paper.
2. When the paper is selected you will see a blank page in the middle showing the proportions of the selected paper size.
3. Then, on the right hand side with a big “2 Choose Your Images” at the top, click on the “Folder” button to navigate to the folder where you have the photograph(s).
4. You should now see all the photographs in that folder. Unless they are all the same size and going on the same substrate like metallic paper, I prefer to order them one at a time.
5. Simply drag the image from the well containing the thumbnails on to the paper in the middle. Since we created the image to fit exactly to the paper size it should, well, fit exactly! No trimming, no cropping, no fitting, no fuss, no surprises.
6. If you want to have your photograph mounted, choose the mounting option in the block on the lower left of the interface, labeled “4 Select Options”
7. If you are ordering more than one of this photograph enter the quantity in the box left for it and click on “Add to order”. The button will momentarily flash to indicate that it has been added to the order.
8. Repeat 1-7 for the other images until done
9. When you are done, click on “Review Order” to see a list of photographs that will be uploaded for printing. Review them carefully and note that the paper choices you have made do not show up on this screen. You may add a short note by clicking on the “Instructions” button. When everything looks as you want, click on “Complete Order”. The actual upload speed will depend on your connection and how many photographs you have in the queue.

Remember I told you that this takes much shorter to do than to explain, now it’s your turn to try and prove me right. This process should work for any photo lab that uses either eFTP or similar software for submitting photographs to print or places where you can take your files and print yourself. You just need to be organized if you have multiple print sizes and order them in batches of the same size.

Now look at the screen captures that illustrate many of the steps.