tone mapping - before and after

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I've just found another tool. As Jerry Pournelle used to say, I can only call it "maddeningly good" or some such.

 

It's a plugin for the GIMP and it's programmable. Hence, you can do some very fancy processing, such as the tone mapping procedure outlined above, and you can play with your formulas and values to your heart's content.

 

There's also a visual programming aid which lets you build pipes and gates of filters. It's called the composer. I won't touch it again, not with a stick. It keeps on crashing on me.

 

However, the programming facility - without the composer thingy - is way cool.

 

You've been warned.

 

It's called MathMap.

[rickp13]

For those interested in getting into HRD and tone mapping in more detail, I recommend a book by David Nightgale called Practical HDR. Here is the listing at Amazon: Amazon.com: Practical HDR: A complete guide to creating High Dynamic Range images with your Digital SLR (9780240812496): David Nightingale: Books I have looked at a number of books on the subject and this is the best in my opinion.

 

my book arrived - it's very clear, and offers advice for photoshop and two other HDR software tools. the example photos are also of good quality, therefore useful for understanding the effects shown. mine came via amazon.de.

 

thanks very much for the tip.

 

rick

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One of the things I already have accomplished with MathMap (of sorts): I wrote a filter which measures the brightness of a picture along a line which runs horizontally through the middle of the image. It's a very coarse first attempt but you can see quite clearly the difference between Ece's pictures above.

 

 

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[allamande]

Now that Philipp pointed me in the direction of this thread, I am reunited with you all, and I am also totally overwhelmed by all the material I've missed so far . What was I thinking??? It'll take me some time to catch up, but I am going to try.

 

Ece

[Guest WPalank]

Back to pictures. M9 with 35mm Summilux.

 

First Image middle exposure of 5 bracketed.

Second image, merge to HDR Pro (CS5) from Lightroom.

 

 

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[allamande]

Love the detail in the clouds.

 

Here is before and after of the stump (also posted in Nature).

 

 

 

Ece

[Guest WPalank]

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Very nice Ece.

[rob_x2004]

Certainly an aquired taste. The whole idea is artistic interpretation?

[jpattison]

"The whole idea is artistic interpretation? "

 

ie: lack of realism!

 

For me anyway.

The TM examples are OK, I just think HDR can be too "false"

 

John

[Guest stnami]

ye olde metal biscuit tin photography:D

[jplomley]

Certainly an aquired taste. The whole idea is artistic interpretation?

 

Exactly why I refuse to use HDR and much prefer my 4x5 and drum scanned RVP 50 for landscape photography. For fine art B&W, Acros 100 or Delta 100 (reverse processed) are simply unsurpassed. I find this HDR technique renders images which I simply cannot qualify as a true photographic representation, as I find most images border on "illustration".

[Guest malland]

In my view, the problem is that the pictures that you refer to as "illustrations" look like kitsch — photographic kitsch is what I would call it.

 

—Mitch/Bangkok

Shophouse Demolition

[daveleo]

hi folks . . . i can imagine the various opinions that exist about this and that aspect of photography and art . . . and i like philosophy as much or more so than most people . . . but I hope this thread stays on track for us experimenters to learn what TM and HDR are and post some images to compare . . . let's not scare anyone away from trying this out, i guess is what i'm asking.

 

PS . . . i personally find that "TM" helps maybe 5% - 10% or so of the images I try it on . . . but i continue to explore and i love the results (when it works ! ) . . . and it has greatly helped my understanding of layers and what i want from an image and maybe how i can get there . . . maybe.

 

keep experimenting !

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In my view, the problem is that the pictures that you refer to as "illustrations" look like kitsch — photographic kitsch is what I would call it.

 

Kitsch as kitsch can. We're exercising a tool here. Art comes later, if it comes at all.

[daveleo]

here is a scene that i am working on (in PP) . . . the setting attracts me enormously, but the light is never right and the bugs eat me alive, so, i do what painters do . . . take a photo back to the studio and "paint" what i thought i felt when i was there . . .

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[rob_x2004]

So you dont use it for recovering difficult exposures or anything?

Far better off bracketing and reassembling things manually?

Mainly for an acrylic painting or printed reproduction kind of look?

[daveleo]

So you dont use it for recovering difficult exposures or anything?

Far better off bracketing and reassembling things manually?

Mainly for an acrylic painting or printed reproduction kind of look?

 

I started with it to "recover" dark areas and still maintain apparent contrast (there is a link somewhere way up top to the thread that spawned this thread). However, as I said before, I can get very close to this tone mapping process results using manual tweaks (curves, color tweaks, etc).

 

In fact, the "tone mapping" of the image of the benches just above I did with only two layers, tweaking the top layer to extremes and then sliding down its transparency . . . Is that strictly "tone mapping" ? . . . . beats me.

 

Finally . . . I am personally using this approach now to get a more painterly look to some photos. I expect a lot of photographers will consider this too much "manipulation" for their tastes, or too much computer involvement, or too non-literal results . . . . hopefully those discussion will be taken up in another thread and we can focus here on the technical process.

[daveleo]

I should have listed what I did for that bench photo.

I did this in the GIMP.

 

1. Created a duplicate layer.

2. Set the top layer property to "Dodge".

3. Lightened the yellow color of the bottom layer (slider action).

4. Added an alpha channel to the top layer.

5. Reduced the opacity (increased the transparency) of the top layer.

6. Tweaked top layer transparency and bottom layer yellow to my liking.

7. Added a micro-tweak of "softglow" to one of the layers (I forgot).

8. Flattened the image and added borders.

 

This is not exactly the TM process we started with, but I don't think that the process is strictly defined. Doing it my way, I could see the step-by-step effects as I went along and adjust to my desires.

[allamande]

Moonrise over tufa towers, Mono Lake. DL4

 

TM and then saturation and curves adjustment in CS4, normal blend.

 

 

 

After TM the tones came out a bit too much on the warm side for what I wanted (I still don't understand how the tones are altered in this way, though I am beginning to get a better sense of "what and how" of the local contrast and light adjustments, or so I think....).

 

Ece

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[Guest WPalank]

After TM the tones came out a bit too much on the warm side for what I wanted (I still don't understand how the tones are altered in this way, though I am beginning to get a better sense of "what and how" of the local contrast and light adjustments, or so I think....).

 

Ece

 

Ece,

I'm not sure if you are posing a problem that you haven't found a solution to but there are about three ways I can think of to correct the warmth of your images:

 

1) If you are a LR user (any version) and exported to CS4 from LR, simply hit File>Save and the TMed image will be reimported into LR. There, just open the Develop Module and adjust the temperature slider.

 

2) If you just have CS4, Save out he image then hit File>Open and in the dialogue box that appears, select the image (do NOT double click on it!) and then at the drop-down menu in the lower center next to "Format:" select "Camera RAW" and hit "OK" which will then open the ACR panel and adjust the temperature there.

 

3) If you feel the warmth effects more specifically the highlights, shadows or midtones; in Curves, select "Blue" in the upper drop-down menu and place a point on the curve that represents the warm area, then use your up arrow key (Blue is the opposite of Yellow) until things look good.