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Take a set of photos of the same high dynamic range scene at different exposure times, ISO values or f-stops. In order to achieve best results the Exposure Value difference between the photos should be 1 to 2EV. EasyHDR will load not only JPEG photos, but also RAWs, TIFFs and FITs.
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Click File->Open and select all of the photos from the sequence that you want to blend into HDR. You can also load a single image and do only LDR enhancement. There is always a possibility to open additional photos or to remove those loaded by mistake.
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Click "Generate HDR" button if you want to create the High Dynamic Range radiance map from the loaded photo sequence, or "LDR enhancement" if you want to process a single image. If you have chosen to blend the photos into a HDR image, the HDR generation window will appear. Check if the calculated EV values are correct (they are calculated upon EXIF data or estimated if EXIF headers are not available) and choose appropriate options (anti-blooming and response curve type). |
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If the loaded photos are misaligned in respect to each other you may choose one of two possible options in order to align them before generating the HDR radiance map. The automatic alignment feature is capable of compensating for shift as well as rotational misalignment. However, by choosing the manual alignment you have much more control over the entire process. The manual alignment tool is capable of compensating for shift, scale, rotation and perspective. Just select the main (base) photo and place the pin pairs (each pair is marked with a different color), so they point exactly the same details visible on the base picture as well as on the photo to be aligned to it.
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In many cases however, automatic alignment will be sufficient. Just choose the base image to which the function shall align the rest of the photos and click "Apply".
When the alignment is done you may save the transformed photos for future use. You can do it any time - before or after generating the HDR radiance map.
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When the alignment is done you can finally generate the HDR radiance map. You can also choose to save the generated HDR image to a file in Radiance RGBE (.hdr) format. Instead of generating a true HDR radiance map, there is a possibility to merge the photo sequence using a pseudo-HDR algorithm (called Smart Merge) or to generate an image stack (average).
In case of processing very big photos it may sometimes be useful to enable HDR image size reduction.
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When the HDR is generated the photo is automatically tone mapped and resized (tone mapping preview size reduction) so the previewing process is much faster. Now you can manually tune the settings using the sliders, histogram clipping option and...
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...the curve adjust tool.
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While using the histogram clipping, use the overexposed and underexposed areas marking option. The clipped areas will be marked with blinking red or blue respectively.
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Having chosen the best settings you may process the whole image to get the final result by clicking the "Process all" button. The size reduction will be turned off automatically (set to 1x).
When the size reduction is disabled it is possible to preview a preselected image area at full resolution, so you can try various tone mapping settings quickly, while monitoring the result photo in the highest detail.
Note that when the "Process all" button is clicked the HDR image size reduction (defined in the HDR generation window) is not disabled. In such a case, in order to process the photo at full resolution the HDR radiance map must be recalculated.
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Before saving you may wish to process the photo using available filters - blur, sharpening, noise removal, white balance or sample/target balance. The processing is done on floating point data so there are no quality losses due to quantization or lossy compression.
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Now you can save the result (File->Save). When saving as JPEG choose the input photo from which the EXIF data shall be copied (if the EXIF is available). Note that easyHDR adds an additional field to the EXIF that contains a list of input images used to achieve the final photo. For best quality choose to save as 48-bit TIFF (16-bit per channel).
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