HDR with Aperture and Photomatix

High dynamic range (HDR) images maintain detail in both the highlights and the shadows, often resulting in a striking amount of definition as compared to the original image(s). I have been experimenting with HDR images using a combination of Aperture and the Photomatix software. The process is straightforward – choose an image having a large range of luminescence values and vary its exposure using Aperture’s RAW converter. Depending on the image, two underexposures and two overexposures (0.5 EV each) or one underexposure and one overexposure (1.0 EV each) are a good starting point. The exposure-compensated versions, along with the original (0 EV) are loaded into Photomatix and an HDR image is generated using either an exposure blending or a tone mapping method. The resulting image can then be tweaked to your liking using a variety of value sliders within Photomatix. While HDR images are technically supposed to be constructed from a series of in-camera exposures, I’ve found that the Aperture generated exposures are a good substitute.

ORIGINAL IMAGE

HDR IMAGE (from +1, 0, -1 EV exposures), slight cropping

Technorati Tags: HDR, aperture, high dynamic range

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