Apr

Book review - HDRI Handbook

Recently I have begun to do quite a bit more HDR work, particularly in the area of real estate. I currently have only hotshoe flash - the 580EX - and I can only take it off camera as far as my sync cord will let me. With some properties, this has forced me to rely on HDR in order to get the lighting right. In general, I like the effect of HDR on certain landscape shots but dislike it for real estate - my opinion being that it makes the light too flat and the shots lit with multiple flashes look more dramatic. Nevertheless, I decided that it was time to learn more about HDR so I found a copy of the The HDRI Handbook: High Dynamic Range Imaging for Photographers and CG Artists +DVD at my company’s library and took it home to read. Originally I planned to buy the book online but then decided it was better to preview it first. To be honest, I was very glad that I did this, because overall I do not plan to purchase it.

First, the good points about the book. The main positive is that my understanding of HDR was completely wrong. The vast majority of pictures that we see and call HDR are not HDR at all - they are HDR images converted to LDR images using various types of tone mapping. A true HDR image still contains all of the original color data and generally is not stored as a .jpg or other standard image format. This generally means that the entire dynamic range of the picture cannot be displayed on the screen. Of course new monitors, such as Dell’s new 30″ wide screen monitor are improving in the area of dynamic range and the book mentions some true HDR monitors in prototype. However, for the vast majority of us, this means that we need to use a slider to go through the dynamic range of the picture.

This also means tremendous differences in how we approach workflow - as a number of the standard Photoshop tools work quite differently on true HDR images. The author emphasizes that the vast majority of editing should be done in the HDR copy of the image, and only when an LDR copy is requited should the image be converted.

The most useful part of the book involved going through the workflow for several types of shots. The workflow was started in Photomatix, then resumed in Photoshop CS3. It was very helpful to see how the true HDR pros go about their workflow and I learned a number of things about Photoshop.

However, there are a number of negatives about the book. Perhaps the primary reason I will not buy this book for my ‘collection’ is it will be out of date within a very short period of time. The author goes into detail about the myriad image formats and high end digital camera equipment available today. However, technology moves very fast and this information will all be out of date within a few months of publishing. Since this information takes up a large percentage of the book, that means most of it will be out of date.

The other major drawback is, from a photography point of view, I learned very little. There was no information pertaining to the actual capture of HDR and panoramic pictures that was new to me. There was quite a bit of information that just did not seem relevant. For instance, there is quite a bit of information involving taking a panorama picture with a shiny metal ball - in case you want to save money on the optics. However, as he goes through the workflow it is immediately obvious that this is a very painful way to go - with obvious image quality issues. This seems to be mainly for the benefit for photographers with Point and Shoot cameras, though in the beginning he stresses that you really need an SLR capable of manual settings.

Another major pain point is the insistence on taking 360 degree and complete sphere panoramic shots. While this information would be useful for creating IPix fly through images, most photographers do not take completely 360 degree pictures. Therefore the workflow that most of us require is quite a bit different than that stated here. He really makes something that can be done easily with a number of tools out there into something overly complex.

The final chapter, about CG and HDR, I skipped completely as I do not practice this nor do I intend to. For some graphic designers forced to add or remote significant objects to a photo, this will likely be useful information, but for the majority of photographers this is only “by the way” info.

The truth is, of the 344 pages here, only a handful of them were very useful to me. A lot of the information will be out of date quickly and even more is not useful for most photographers. I was really excited about this book when I received it, hoping that it would go into detail about how best to take HDR shots in the field, but I ended up disappointed. From the reviews I read, this is the best HDR book out there. In that case I suspect most of my learning will be from the HDR experts in the various forums.