Image "A"

Image "B"

Image "C"

I’m one of those people. You know, the ones who think that hdr software is one of the best things to happen since the advent of digital photography. Okay, that may be a little strong. But, I do like hdr. Oh, I know that it can be overdone. Sometimes it’s just interesting to see what you can do with all the sliders in the software and it can become pretty funky However, it can also help you present the scene the way you saw it..

I use an application called  Photomatix. I think it’s the best one available but I’ve read others who like the capabilities of Photoshop.

Recently, I’ve been less than thrilled, however, with my results when attempting to capture hdr images on bright, snow covered landscapes like the one in this post. So, today I decided to try a couple different approaches to processing images I already captured. I didn’t like the grayness of the snow in my hdr images and I wanted to see if different combinations of the images I already had safely filed away would make a difference. It did…but still no white snow.

These three hdr images are from the same set of five originals, taken at half-stop +/- increments. “A” is from the middle three (one-half stop under and over exposed). You can see that it did what I wanted in one respect. I held the detail in the sky. “B” is from three with two over exposed. In this case I lost all detail in the sky but, unfortunately, held the “grayness” of the snow. Finally “C’ is from all five. The differences are subtle. But, unfortunately I’m still missing the pristine, white snow I was hoping for.

I guess more experiments are in my future.