Playing around with HDR images

posted 8:35:14 PM on 7/9/2009

Before I start, let me say that in NO WAY do I claim to be any kind of photographer. My "equipment" consists of a 5 or 6 year old Nikon point-and-shoot, a $20 tripod I probably got from Wal-Mart, and some open source imaging software.

Now recently, I got interested in HDR images. I had dabbled in it a while back, but never felt like purchasing a license for Photomatix so I didn't really stick with it. The other day I discovered the free tool Picturenaut, and since then I've been playing around with it a bit.

I really don't expect to be producing any masterpieces, but tonight I did generate the first image that is clearly enhanced through use of these HDR tools. Now keep in mind this was just a random shot I grabbed through my window last night.. it's not particularly of anything.

I started with 3 originals, taken using my cameras basic Auto Bracketing function.







After a few minutes in Picturenaut and Gimp, I came up with the final image, which I believe shows much better color and lighting. Mission accomplished!



If the difference between the first and final images is hard to see on this page, right click and open them up in new tabs. I should also point out that the originals are in 5mp so there's an astounding difference between the full sized images.