Digital cameras are great to have but the cameras of today still aren't able to capture an image as accurate as the human eye can. If you want your photographs to look a little bit more like real life you can use high dynamic range tone mapping or HDR tone mapping. So how do you do it? How does it work? That is what I'm going to explain to you in this article.
So how does it work? When you use this technique the tonal values of high dynamic range images are being compressed into the tonal values of a lower range image. What's the reason behind this you ask? There aren't a lot of media that can display the amount of contrast a high range image has, especially not computer screens and printed paper. So to get the same effect as high range images you should use tone mapping. It's uses aren't limited by that however. It can also be used to give much more detail to your images or, as some people like to do, it can create a very abstract effect.
How can you do it myself? If you want your own mapped image you are going to need three or more photographs with the identical subject with with different exposures. Take a photograph of a tree for example. You are going to need an overexposed, a neutral and an overexposed version of that tree in order to create a HDR tone map. Once you photographed all of these images you can go into a photo editing program and merge them together.
Good mapping software:
Photomatix:
This program is created with tone mapping in mind. It is create by hdrsoft. Photomatrix runs on Mac and PC and for US$99 it is relatively cheap. The light version costs about US$39.
FDRtools:
If you want to convert a boring image into a beautiful image using tone mapping then FDRtools is something for you. You don't even have to spend anything as the basic version can be download from their site for free.
Photoshop:
Everybody knows Photoshop and it can be a great alternative to any program specialized in ton mapping. There are literally thousands of tutorials on line for this program so finding a tutorial about tone mapping will be relatively easy. It's going to take some work to make one of these images though, as it doesn't have a default mapping module built in.
Gimp:
This is a free program so you don't even have to invest in anything! It also has lots of support and tutorials and a lot of people underestimate how powerful it is.
If you'd like to know more about photography and tone mapping check out my blog.