Have you tried LDR?

LDR, or Low Dynamic Range, is fairly new and has some benefits over HDR.

Read this article first.

I used enfuse and had pretty good results. It's quick and easy. The only drawback to enfuse is it's a command line program. If you're used to that, it's pretty easy to use.

I don't have a great example to post yet, just this quick test below. I haven't made any adjustments to the final image, it's straight out of enfuse.

I used LR/Enfuse for this and these. What I find interesting in the article you linked is the author's declaration that a program like Enfuse is not the same as HDR. Why not? After all, it's generating a final image from multiple exposures. Maybe I'm unique in this, but I don't think of HDR as a specific technology, but rather as a technique. Therefore, whether an image is tonemapped or not, if it is generated from multiple exposures that are somehow combined to produce a final image that provides more dynamic range, and/or more detail than a single exposure, then I describe it as "HDR."

Along those lines, I have always understood LDR to mean an image that is generated from only one exposure, that as opposed to an image generated from multiple exposures, which can typically be classified as HDR. So whether I'm using Photomatix or Enfuse, I refer to the resulting image as HDR.

BTW, Enfuse rocks.

P.S. I just quickly peeked at your website....man you shoot some great images!

Yeah, I also think it should still be called an HDR. That's a pretty impressive photo in your first link.

I like the simplicity of Enfuse, and it's pretty fast, too.

Thanks for the compliment on my work!

Scott

To me, every time I bring the Levels sliders into the histogram I'm playing with an LDR image.

Heres a classic, maybe a touch extreme, example.

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As mentioned, to me this isn't something different from HDR, it's what high dynamic range SHOULD be - none of that tonemapped stuff. If manufacturers ever decide to pump up the dynamic range of a camera instead of jacking pixels, the output should look more like these.

Enfuse is a great tool and an alternative to the standard HDR workflow. I don;t see any real difference in the intent of either technique, they are both using multiple exposures of a scene and combining those exposures to extend the dynamic range of the captured data. The real difference is in the actual processing, where the standard HDR workflow generates a 32 bit dataset that can be used in myriad ways beyond tone-mapping for a photographic image, whereas exposure blending is really intended to produce a final, LDR image for print, display, etc. and does not produce the HDR dataset.

LREnfuse is a fantastic integration of Enfuse into a photographic workflow. The command line app will get the job done just as well, just in a different way.

Here are a couple of LREnfused images shot in harsh sun - I shot 3 exposures, spaced 2 EV apart, with the intention of enfusing them to deal with the lighting conditions.

"LDR" seems like an unclear, or even unfair, name to me.

I think in terms of:

HDR (or ultimately even VDR - Visible Dynamic Range) - that which is beyond the scope of a single raw image

CDR - Camera Dynamic Range - that which can be captured in a raw file

RDR - Reproducible Dynamic Range - that which can be displayed on a screen or printed on paper.

My two cents

Thanks for the link and info. I wasn't aware of Enfuse.

It's important to note, tho, that Photomatix also does enfusion. From the thread:

Exposure Fusion is also available from Photomatix: The “Exposure Blending” methods are all types of exposure Fusion. Exposure Blending - Adjust is actually the same algorithms as Enfuse - The photomatix team actually helped on testing Enfuse.

If anybody has ever tested both to see which works best, please post the results here!

Hmm, I hadnt ever heard of it....I'll have to look into this

this looks very interesting, i downloaded the software but i cant seem to get it to run, can anyone help?