It’s a way of making a photograph have a wider range in latitude than normal by bracketing the image (meaning making various exposures of it at different light intensities) so that you can later merge them into one image and manipulate the contrast within the picture.
or, in plain english, it’s a photo where the dark parts are made lighter and the light parts are made darker, and the “just right” parts are left “just right.” that way you can see all the details in the shadows (that would normally be all black) AND in the bright parts (that would normally be all white and over-exposed-looking).
the whole wide-contrast-range thing has been around a long, long time (since at least WWII, which i only know because i remember seeing pics like that in college of the early atomic bomb tests, and they looked really neat), but digital HDR was developed by pretty much one guy, back in the early or mid 90s (i think..?), and originally it required special sensors. then a few years later, that same guy (i don’t know his name) developed the technique of using several digital photos taken with different exposure levels and then combining them.
i guess there’s some crazy math and physics behind making the images merge right. i don’t know. me no get math. i just like looking at the pretty pictures!
samiboy
October 10th, 2008 at 23:32
what is hdr?
Alex
October 11th, 2008 at 06:30
HDR = High Dynamic Range
It’s a way of making a photograph have a wider range in latitude than normal by bracketing the image (meaning making various exposures of it at different light intensities) so that you can later merge them into one image and manipulate the contrast within the picture.
wtf
October 11th, 2008 at 10:12
or, in plain english, it’s a photo where the dark parts are made lighter and the light parts are made darker, and the “just right” parts are left “just right.” that way you can see all the details in the shadows (that would normally be all black) AND in the bright parts (that would normally be all white and over-exposed-looking).
the whole wide-contrast-range thing has been around a long, long time (since at least WWII, which i only know because i remember seeing pics like that in college of the early atomic bomb tests, and they looked really neat), but digital HDR was developed by pretty much one guy, back in the early or mid 90s (i think..?), and originally it required special sensors. then a few years later, that same guy (i don’t know his name) developed the technique of using several digital photos taken with different exposure levels and then combining them.
i guess there’s some crazy math and physics behind making the images merge right. i don’t know. me no get math. i just like looking at the pretty pictures!