Inside the Big Lie
Welcome to the future

by Richard Martha

A new day is about to dawn, and President elect Barack Obama has been given the opportunity to lead this marvelous country into uncharted waters. The task is daunting because of what’s at stake, but the fact that Americans have chosen the most qualified individual to lead, who happens to be African-American (bi-racial), is a testament to the voice of a new generation. Off course only time will tell if he indeed has what it takes. Yet, in advertising circles it’s a well-known fact that the Association of National Advertisers named Barack Obama marketer of the year. Edging out Apple, Zappos, Nike and Coors while re-writing American politics. The man definitely demands attention, and I sincerely wish him best in bringing forth much-needed change.

In digital imaging we’ve also witnessed an evolutionary change. High Dynamic Range has been around for quite some time. Once touted as the best kept secret in Hollywood it has gradually crept its way into the photographic workflow. The roots of this development can be found in the multimedia approach by creative agencies, including more use of CGI in the image-making process. Mostly all render engines operate in 32-bit, which allows photographic input to be used as environmental lighting, making renders much more photorealistic. Naturally, this input has to be prepared as HDR to get the optimal result. HDR is also a viable way to bypass some of the exposure limitations of digital and traditional photography.

Last month, my trustworthy sidekick Julio gave an introduction to this HDR phenomenon from a technical viewpoint. I mentioned last month as well that this is something we’ve studied and experimented with for several months and we are very pleased with the results we’ve obtained. Our company policy has always involved staying as true as possible to the vision of the author (in most cases the photographer).  Most times we succeed at that, unless the end-client directs us towards a different objective, sometimes to the chagrin of the photographer.  To unshackle ourselves from direction and restraint for the purpose of displaying some of the advantages of HDR, we created and finalized a project from A to Z.  Photography. Digital processing. HDR merging. Tone-mapping. Panorama-stitching. Retouching. Color enhancements and special effects. All done by yours truly. It sounds very intensive...but it really wasn’t.

The project pictures were taken on a late Sunday afternoon in early September, from a viewing station on the Arizona side of the Hoover Dam Setting up and taking the shots took no longer than 6 minutes. And as you will see in the following tutorial, the shots are far from spectacular. All the post-production was performed 2 months later when I was able to free up some time from my schedule. Surprisingly enough, the whole post process took no longer than one day. I hope that through the following tutorial I can shed some more insight into the magical world of image making.

Step 1: Input

A great feature of the G9 from Canon is auto exposure bracketing, essential for creating HDR images. I set up my Manfrotto tripod and went to work. Tripods are pretty much essential to having any kind of success when aligning the multiple shots to create the 32-bit images.
The AEB mode was set up for –2 / +2 stops. I then shifted along the horizontal axes for the 3 frames that would give me the entire scene to create the panorama.

Step 2: Generating an HDR image and Tone-mapping

There was no need to process any RAW files since yours truly used the Large JPEG setting by mistake (you Canon users probably know what I’m talking about). So I was able to go straight to the fun part, which was; merging the exposures to create 32-bit images for each frame and then Tone-mapping these into 16-bit while pulling out the strong aspects of the relatively boring shots. In this case I decided to do three different Tone Mappings for each frame. One relatively colder for asphalt, water and sky. The second one was made a bit warmer for the overall mood. Believe me it was hot out there. And the third got that late summer afternoon treatment to further accentuate the mood. These were then automatically merged and manually masked in Photoshop, flattened and saved. This phase had the information that I was looking for. It contained detail, color variation and sharpness. It is however flat enough to adjust the image without risking damage.

Step 3: Generating the Panorama

Far from done, we reached a point were we had a choice to make. Were we going to retouch all those moving cars then or after we stitch the panorama together….
I decided with the latter, mainly because Photoshop’s photo-merge command might actually do some of the cleaning for us automatically. So, the three prepared frames were thrown into the photo-merge automated task and the result looked very promising.

Step 4: Ahhh…. finally some Photoshop-ping!!

No more automated tasks from here on. The rest is only for the patient and battle-tested.
Thanks to the exposure bracketing we have enormous range and detail in shadow and highlight areas, very close to what the naked eye would actually see. We also have a lot of car ghosting that will have to be removed. The same counts for the lens flares of which we now have too many. So I pulled up my sleeves and got sweaty for a couple of hours, removing all unwanted items. I followed that up with some local dodging and burning. Overall curves and contrast enhancements were applied to strengthen the desired mood. A new single flare, some more trickery and we ended up with an interesting Hollywood-esque landscape.

December 2008

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