The HDR Look In ON1 Effects

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The HDR Look filter in ON1 Effects delivers tonal and particular controls often applied to HDR photos. The filter is non the same as merging bracketed exposures in an application like ON1 HDR or ON1 Photograph RAW. What it does offering is a way to add an HDR fashion to a single exposure. The type of detail and texture HDR Look delivers is different than other the ON1 filters similar Dynamic Dissimilarity. So it is worth knowing about.

Pinch And The HDR Look

A traditional HDR alloy combines the shadow, midtone, and highlight details from a series of bracketed exposures into a single image. A bracketed ready of iii images is typical. An underexposed photo to maintain highlight item, a normal exposure, and an overexposed frame to reveal shadow detail. From a histogram bespeak of view, the underexposed photo is crowded toward the shadows on the left, the normal exposure is largely the midtones, and the overexposed frame has spikes on the right in the highlights. You can think of the HDR merge process as overlaying all of those histograms into a unmarried histogram. From the perspective of the normal exposure, the extra shadow and highlight information is pulled in from the over and under exposed images. The tones beyond the three brackets are compressed into the visual range of a single image.

In the HDR Wait filter, the Pinch slider simulates this beliefs, manipulating the histogram. Every bit the Pinch slider is increased, the left and correct edges of the histogram are contracted and move toward the midtones. The histogram is "compressed." The resulting look delivers a like appearance to a classic HDR merge. Shadow areas are opened up and highlight areas are reigned in. The overall photograph may have on a slight matte look as well.

The image without adding Compression. Notice the histogram stretches across the full spectrum of tones.

Past default, a moderate amount of Compression is added by HDR Expect. The histogram is squeezed, or compressed from both ends.

Increasing Compression squeezes the tones even more, amplifying an HDR stylized look.

Controlling Detail, Tone, And Fashion

A main feature of HDR styled photos is a high corporeality of detail, bordering on a hyper-realistic corporeality of texture. The two controls that deliver that are Item and Clarity. Item is the tamer of the two sliders, and accentuates local texture. Particular can really be taken in the negative management, although the results are quite faltering (at least to me) and not typical of an HDR styled photo. Clarity is more aggressive, boosting local dissimilarity and exaggerating tonal edges. Usually a moderate amount of Clarity is sufficient.

The remaining sliders in the HDR Await tool I allocate every bit convenience sliders. They are:

  • Highlights: Brighten or darken the highlights in the photo.

  • Shadows: Burnish or darken the shadows in the photo.

  • Vibrance: Increase or decrease color richness in the photo.

  • Glow: Add a nighttime glow to the photo. Shadow areas tend to exist more affected.

  • Grunge: Increase texture and dust.

While ON1 Effects has other tools and filters that provide these functions, when but a small tweak is needed, their being in HDR Look speeds up workflow. You don't have to accomplish for another tool.

Highlights and shadows may need to be tweaked if the Pinch slider in bereft to get the await you want. Compression affects both ends of the histogram, the brights and the darks at the same time. The private Highlights and Shadows sliders give you independent control over these tonal regions.

Vibrance increases or decreases color richness, Glow adds a diffused softness to darker areas of the photograph, and Grunge adds a desaturated feel to a scene while as well boosting detail. For these sliders, I will oft turn to different tools in ON1 for more than control. The Colour Adjustment tool offers more than control over contained colors channels. Likewise, the specialized Glow and Grunge filters have many more options than a unmarried slider can offering.

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The HDR Wait Filter Is Not An Actual HDR Merge

The HDR Look filter is just that – a expect. Information technology is non the same as blending bracketed photos. Where a proper HDR merge delivers more shadow and highlight data for postal service-processing, the HDR Wait filter will not magically recover clipped highlights or shadows from a single exposure. Think the Pinch slider … even though information technology pulls in the deep shadows and bright highlights toward the center of the histogram, it cannot and does not fill in gaps in lost shadows or highlights.

The photo of the prison house cell below was captured on an older Nikon camera that had skilful, but not cracking, dynamic range. The blown out highlights of the sunday pouring in through the skylight are obvious. They are also not recoverable with the Pinch slider. Even with maximum compression, a spike of highlights remain at the right edge of the histogram. HDR Look is a filter that works on the data in the given frame. An actual HDR merge of bracketed photos with a product similar ON1 HDR or ON1 Photo RAW would provide options to recover more highlight information.

The HDR Await has limits on highlight and shadow recovery. Even with an extremely loftier Compression setting, find the highlight spike at the right edge of the histogram.

Even with limits, putting all of the sliders to work together can produce HDR-styled photos with texture, grit, and dark glow.

As camera engineering science has improved and the dynamic range of sensors has increased, the need of HDR as a merging technique has get less of a technical requirement. A unmarried frame can often capture all the tonal data, fifty-fifty in a highly dynamic scene. The look and experience of an HDR processed image continues to be a good artful for certain photos. With a unmarried exposure that has proficient tonal latitude, the HDR Look delivers solid results.

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