Notre-Dame de Paris - HDR picture merged from 5 bracketed shots spanning from -1.3 to +1.3 EV. This scene does not characterize with very high dynamic range (apart from the lights, which actually take just a fraction of the image). However, the HDR processing with easyHDR, of 5 differently exposed photos, allowed to improve the quality, by merging together the best exposed areas. The noise level has therefore been greatly lowered - especially in the sky and in the shadows. That allowed to boost the local contrasts and make the image look dramatic. The vignetting effect was also very helpful to achieve that. The moving water was a major problem, but was easily overcome with automatic ghost removal. Also the lens distortion has been automatically corrected with easyHDR in order to straighthen the field of view. The sky was processed with slightly different tone mapping settings than the rest of the photograph by using layers. That allowed to better tune the settings, depending on the different characteristics of those two areas. © Frederic Schvartzman |