Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past few years, you’ve probably heard of HDR, or High Dynamic Range imaging.  The major impetus for developing this technique was the severe lack of dynamic range in digital cameras.  Recall from chapter 2 that digital imaging sensors can only capture detail in a fairly narrow range of light levels: they can either retain detail in extremely bright areas of a scene, or in extremely dark areas, but not both (or not well, anyway).  For scenes having detail in both bright and dark areas, you’ll typically have to choose whether you want to retain the bright details or the dark details.  If you choose to retain the bright details, the darker areas of the image will generally come out as solid areas of black; alternatively, if you increase the exposure so as to retain details in the darker areas of the scene, you’ll likely blow the highlights, thereby losing details in the bright areas.  The idea of HDR is to take multiple shots of the scene at different exposures and then to merge those exposures so that details from both the bright and dark areas of the scene can be rendered together in the same, composite image. 
    The figure below shows an HDR image of a stationary bird.  This image resulted from merging three photos together.  The camera’s exposure bracketing feature was used to rapidly take the three photos in quick succession, using three shutter speeds: 1/160 sec, 1/400 sec, and 1/1000 sec.  As we’ll illustrate shortly, the slower shutter speed captured details in the dark body but blew the highlights in the head, whereas the faster shutter speed correctly exposed the head but resulted in poor exposure of the body.  In this section we’ll show two different methods for combining these details from multiple exposures into a single image.


     The first technique we’ll consider relies on the automated HDR merging facility in Photoshop.  Note that versions of Photoshop prior to CS5 (the newest as of mid-2010) had only a rudimentary HDR capaiblity.  Since most users will still be using one of these older versions at this time, we’ll cover only the older version.  The newer version will be addressed in a future update to the online version of this chapter.
    The figure below illustrates the Merge to HDR window in Photoshop version CS3.   At left are shown the photos being merged (three in this case).  As you can see, the top photo was overexposed by 1.3 EV units (exposure values, or stops of light relative to neutral metering—see section 6.1), while the bottom photo was underexposed by the same amount (1.3 EV). 


     There’s very little for you to adjust in the Merge to HDR window.  The check-boxes under the individual photos at left allow you to include or un-include any of the photos in the merging process; checking and un-checking these will automatically update the preview image shown in the middle of the window.  Including more images can be good or bad: although the brightest and darkest photos may seem to contain all the information you need for retaining details in darker and brighter areas of the image, respectively, the intermediate photos may help the merging algorithm to more accurately align the images during merging.  In some cases, however, including additional photos may increase the chances of a mis-alignment (since there are more opportunities for doing so).  In the figure below you can see what happens when images are not perfectly merged: there are obvious cases of duplicated features in the bird’s plumage, as well as other unsightly artifacts.


    The figure above shows the next required step in the HDR merging procedure in Photoshop CS3.  The first step actually merged the images, but stored them in a larger color space of 32 bits/channel.  Images in this ultra-wide color space can’t be used for many practical purposes, since most consumer-grade printers and computer monitors are 24-bit devices (8 bits per channel), and indeed, most of the image processing options in Photoshop CS3 are limited to 16 or even 8-bit (per channel) images.  You’ll therefore need to reduce the bit depth to 16 (or 8), as illustrated above using the Image > Mode menu option.  This conversion triggers Photoshop to bring up the HDR Conversion window, which allows you to control how Photoshop does the mapping from 32 bits to 16 bits.  This window is illustrated below.

     In the example above, we’ve opted to use the Exposure and Gamma method for the mapping from 32-bits to 16-bits.  Because I’m lazy, I typically use this option and leave the Exposure and Gamma sliders at their default values.  Many users, however, prefer to use the Local Adaptation method, which then opens a Curves-like interface in the Toning Curve and Histogam pane at the bottom of the window (shown collapsed here).  Just like with the Curves tool, the Local Adaptation interface allows you to draw a curve to dictate how pixel brightness values are to be transformed.  Whereas the Curves tool maps 16-bit pixels to 16-bit pixels (or 8-bit to 8-bit), the Local Adaptation converter maps 32-bit pixels to 16-bit (or 8-bit), but it otherwise is operating according to the same principle: the curve that you draw provides a mapping from brightness values on the x-axis of the curve (input values) to brightness values on the y-axis (output values).  A perfectly diagonal curve (the default) maps every brightness value to the same exact value, so no change in the overall histogram will occur.  However, since you’re mapping values from a 32-bit space to a 16-bit space, information will necessarily be lost, in intermediate values.  Any value in the 32-bit space that has no exact counterpart in the 16-bit space will be mapped to the nearest value in 16-bits.  Pixel values are thus conflated, and  this can result in loss of detail.  What you’ll typically want to do in Local Adaptation is to find those regions of the luminance domain that correspond well to areas in the image where you’d like to retain the most information.  You can then locally re-shape the tone curve in these areas so as to stretch intervals in the domain (input of the tone curve) to map them to larger intervals in the range (output of the tone curve); this should in theory result in fewer intermediate values in parts of the domain being conflated to the same values in the range. 
    In practice, I find the Local Adaptation interface in Photoshop CS3 to be far too tedious and unwieldy.  Instead, I either rely on the default tone curve during conversion and then apply my own, heuristic tone-mapping-like transformations in 16-bits, or bypass the automated HDR pipeline and merge the images manually via layers and layer masks; both of these techniques are described later in this section.  For serious HDR work, you’ll likely want to invest in more advanced HDR software such as Photomatix, or upgrade to Photoshop CS5.
    We’ll now consider the more manually intensive alternative to automated HDR.  Though more work is required on your part, this technique can give you greater control over the results, and eliminates some of the artifacts that can occur in automated HDR pipelines.  The idea is simply to load multiple exposures into Photoshop as separate layers, and then to use layer masks to choose which parts of which exposures to include in the final image. 
    The Load Layers interface (File > Scripts > Load Files into Stack) provides a convenient way to load multiple photos as separate layers in a single Photoshop file (see below).



    The problem with using this method to load your image layers is that it bypasses the Adobe Camera Raw interface, so you’re not able to specify custom adjustments to be made during RAW conversion, and as we saw in chapter 12, certain adjustments are often better made during RAW conversion than later in Photoshop proper.  The solution to this problem is to simply open each of the photos in the usual way, going through Adobe Camera Raw, and then to copy and past each photo into a single Photoshop file.  You can do this by using the Select > All option to select the image pixels of each photo, press Cmd-C / Ctrl-C to copy those pixels, and then paste the selected image into a common file as a separate layer, via Cmd-V / Ctrl-V. 
    The figure below shows the result of applying this procedure to load two images as separate layers of a single Photoshop file.  In this example we’ve included only the brightest and darkest of the three images used in the previous example; we’ve then added a layer mask to the top layer to allow some pixels from the lower layer to show through.  Since the bottom layer was the brighter of the two, we drew the layer mask (using a soft-edged black brush) so as to mask out the bird’s body; this allows brighter body pixels of the lower layer to show through, while the darker head pixels of the upper layer occlude the overexposed head pixels of the layer below.


    There are two potentially tricky aspects of the technique illustrated above.  The first is the careful blending of the different layers at the edges of the layer mask.  In his case, the use of a soft-edged brush when drawing the layer mask sufficed; the mask was kept strickly within the brown region of the bird at the neck line, so that no obvious blending artifacts would show up.  In some cases you may actually need to zoom in and carefully brush a detailed contour in the layer mask at critical junctions.  A shortcut that sometimes works quite well is to first use the Quick Selection tool to select a region of a layer and then leave this selection active when you create the layer mask; the selection will be copied to the layer mask as an initial masking pattern.  You can then fine-tune this initial mask as needed, using a standard black or white brush (or an appropriate shade of gray for blending). 
    The other tricky aspect that can arise is the proper alignment of the layers.   This is typically less of an issue than in automated HDR, since you generally won’t be merging pixels at a very fine level as in the automated approaches.  The issue typically only arises in the form of alignment of whole body parts, and in these cases you can perform the alignment by hand, using the Move tool (which is invoked by pressing the V key).  With the Move tool you can drag a layer using the mouse cursor.  In order to help you prcisely align two layers, you may need to zoom in to 100% or more; you’ll obviously need to have an image mask in place so that you can see a portion of both layers.
    Finally, we’ll briefly address a topic closely related to HDR: that of so-called tone-mapping.  Recall from our discussion above that the conversion of 32-bit HDR image files to 16-bit files utilized a tone curve to allow local stretching of the luminance domain, so as to mitigate loss of details due to conflation of intermedate 32-bit values to their nearest 16-bit values in the parts of the domain deemed most important.  The process of specifying this curve is sometimes referred to as tone mapping.  The term is also used, however, to refer to tricks applied strictly within the 16-bit or 8-bit color space to produce effects reminiscent of those often seen in HDR imaging.  In the case of 16-bit images, this technique is in a real sense a true form of HDR, since the 16-bit file will generally have a higher dynamic range than what most computer monitors can render.  (Recall that JPG files are 8-bit-per-channel images, and that most computer monitors are at most 24-bit devices, meaning that they utilize no more than 8 bits per channel).  The idea is simply to adaptively adjust the 16-bit image—typically region-by-region—to maximize the amount of detail apparent in each region, prior to conversion to 8-bit.  This is essentially the D-PIE approach introduced in section 11.1: differentially processing image elements so as to maximize the detail and aesthetics of each part of the image—e.g., the bird versus the background, or even the bird’s face, wings, eye, beak, etc., separately.


    When looked at more generally, the idea of locally optimizing parts of an image—whether you call it tone-mapping or D-PIE or something else—is a very powerful, and in fact very old concept.  In the ancient days of film, darkroom effects such as dodging and burning were sometimes used to lighten shadows and darken highlights, to achieve an effect more aesthetically pleasing to the artist.  Though some “purists” might consider this a perversion of reality, in truth there is some theoretical justification for applying such transformations.  Though the human eye is much like a camera lens, the process of continuous human perception is more complex than that of capturing a still image with a camera.  The iris of a viewer’s eye can continuously vary the aperture as he or she directs his/her attention to different parts of a photograph or painting (or a natural scene).  To some degree, this can be thought of as a biological means of mapping the enormous dynamic range of the real world to the more restricted range of the visual system (about 6.5 f-stops for the human retina).  Though humans are thought to be able to discriminate about ten million different colors (roughly 7.8 bits per channel in an RGB color space), and can in theory achieve a 10-stop contrast ratio via adaptive use of the iris and other biological means, doing so is not necessarily easy.  Locally adapting a photograph to use a narrower range of intensities may thus make viewing easier for the human observer.  In this sense, the static human retina can be considered a low-dynamic-range sensor, and the tone-mapping technique is thus justified for mapping a higher dynamic-range computer image (even if only a paltry 8 bits/channel) into a more pleasing representation—i.e., an image that is “easier on the eyes”.